Bone find ancient

Press, 2 June 1988, Page 3

Bone find ancient

PA Rotorua Police yesterday closed their investigation into the discovery in April of human bones under a Rotorua shed after receiving' a scientific report that the remains are several hundred years old. Carbon dating has shown a femur from a woman aged between 25 and 40 years is at least 600 years old and an arm bone of a child aged about 10 years at least 300. “It is no longer a police matter,” Detec-

five Constable Scot Gagen of the Rotorua C. 1.8. said yesterday. “I suspect the bones were found by someone — perhaps while they were out hunting — and were then put in the back garden of the property at Ngongotaha. “They were definitely not buried there originally. “I have had reports from old people in the area that there are bones littered across an old Maori battlefield in the nearby Mamaku area.”

Unless someone from the local Te Arawa tribe wanted the bones for reburial they would be disposed of through Rotorua Hospital, Detective Constable Gagen said. The bones were found in April by a young couple, Mr Paul Adams and his wife, Lisa, as they demolished an old shed. The find appeared to be sinister, as the bones were buried under the shed floor and were covered with a block of concrete.