CSI Colusa

My morning was off to a relatively easy start and then I got the phone call.  "Did you see the photo I sent you?"  My construction supervisor called me from the field at 830 to see if I received his text message photo.  I had not.  When I checked it I had no idea what I was looking at.  It looked like a stone cylinder so I asked what it was. When you work in construction there are certain words you never want to get a call about.  The obvious one is accident.  Then there are less obvious ones such as 'artifact'.  A harmless little stone cylinder?  No.  An artifact.  That means that an archaeologist has to be called to the site.  Upon arriving an hour or so later the archaeologist finds the remains of a human skull.  Another word you don't want to hear about, 'remains.'  After further investigation it turns out that abalone shells were discovered and these are common as part of a burial ritual.  It now seems we have unintentionally unearthed at the least a Native American burial site and at the worst a Native American cemetery.  The latter is unlikely as we wouldn't have been allowed to dig there much less would a pipe have been allowed right through a cemetery.  That being said a single grave could be overlooked.  Later I received confirmation that the coroner and three detectives visited the site.  After it is determined that the remains are in fact old and not recent then another organization will try to find the modern descendants.  The modern descendants will likely want formal reburial and then we never revisit that site again.  And that is how my morning was derailed.