State officials are investigating reports that a north Alabama developer is building homes on the site of a Native American village and likely burial site in Huntsville.

The development, called Flint Crossing, is in the Hampton Cove (or Big Cove) area of Huntsville, off Taylor Road near the Flint River. Jeff Benton Homes began building the subdivision last year, but nearby residents reported finding pottery shards, spearheads and even possible fragments of human remains in and around the construction site.

Those residents contacted Ben Hoksbergen, post archaeologist at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal, who says he informed the developer and the city of Huntsville about the finds in May and June of 2019. Hoksbergen also found a site assessment of the property conducted by a private archaeological firm in 2010 that showed significant evidence of a Native American village at the site from roughly 500-900 AD.

Hoksbergen said he informed the developer and the city last summer that the construction may be in violation of a state law and city ordinance protecting human burial or historic sites, but the construction is still ongoing.

He also told the Alabama Historical Commission, which is now looking into the situation.

Jonathan Jones, one of the residents who initially contacted Hoksbergen, said he was walking a trail at the Wildlife Sanctuary when he noticed unusual objects in the dirt back in June 2019.

“I was walking on the trail and I saw there were a bunch of shells, like mussel shells and snail shells and just shells that were from the river. But I noticed it was in a really weird spot,” Jones said. “So I went over by the shells and I noticed a couple bones laying around and saw part of a skull, like a crushed skull and a tooth.”

Jones showed cell phone photos of those items to AL.com. He said that upon returning to the spot later, the area where he found the remains had been covered with “a thick layer of fill dirt and crushed rock.”

Developer: ‘Zero information’ indicating burial site

Jeff Benton, owner of Jeff Benton Homes, said via email that the company had no prior knowledge of “significant artifacts” or human burials on the site.

“Prior to development, we engaged a local geotechnical engineering firm to do a site evaluation on this property,” Benton said. “They reported no significant historical/archeological features on the property.”

The Alabama Historical Commission – the state agency that enforces the Alabama Burial Act – said that it could not comment on an “active investigation,” but that the act requires construction to stop if human remains of any age are found on the site.

“When there is an accidental disturbance of a cemetery – or discovery of human remains (or remains that might be human) - all ground disturbing work should stop within a minimum 100-foot radius of the discovery and law enforcement should be notified immediately,” AHC spokesperson Andi Martin said via email.

The Alabama Legislature amended the act in 2010 to specifically include all human remains, not just those in marked or known cemeteries or recent remains. Martin said the law recognizes that accidental disturbances may occur at unmarked sites, but that developers have a responsibility to act when they find human remains.

“Accidental disturbance of a cemetery and/or human remains is not a violation as long as the discovery is reported as soon as possible,” Martin said. “If a cemetery/remains are disturbed and ground disturbance continues after the discovery, this may represent a willful criminal violation as defined in the act.”

Hoksbergen, the Redstone archaeologist, said he repeatedly attempted to contact the developer, and city and state authorities about the situation since last summer but finally felt compelled to speak about the situation with AL.com when construction continued.

Hoksbergen said some of the bones found at the site were faunal, most likely deer, but some appeared to be a human tibial fragment, skull fragment and teeth.

“This site is technically legally protected,” Hoksbergen said. “It'd be just like if this was an early plantation cemetery or slave cemetery, it's got the same legal protection.”

Benton said the company had heard from “a gentleman that wanted to dig for artifacts in the site,” last May but they did not give him permission to do so.

“As for a potential burial site we have zero information to suggest this,” Benton said. “We have found nothing during construction that would indicate this and no information that suggest the potential for a burial site.”

Artifacts still visible

In February 2020, standing just outside the construction site’s silt fence on the Wildlife Sanctuary, Hoksbergen can quickly identify and pick up several artifacts on the surface. He points out a spearhead fragment here, a piece of rock with stone tool markings there as excavators move dirt around in the background.

“I work with developers, I work with the Army engineers and I understand their need to meet a bottom line, but the law’s the law,” Hoksbergen said. “I can’t just sit and watch this happen.”

Hoksbergen said after he learned of the site, he consulted the Alabama State Site File, where he found an archaeological site assessment performed by Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research in 2010 for the previous owner of the property. TVAR is a private archaeology firm that has been contracted by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Alabama Department of Transportation, Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Alabama and other clients.

Their assessment showed hundreds of historical artifacts from a Native American settlement estimated to be from 500-900 AD and recommended that portions of the site be preserved or maintained as green space due to the high concentration of artifacts.

“It is clear that this site is extensive and certain locales within the site reflect intense American Indian occupation,” the report said, adding that the site may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The report recommended that the areas of the property with the highest concentration of artifacts be preserved from development.

Hoksbergen said the number of artifacts described in that survey is exceptionally high.

“Normally when we find five artifacts or more, we consider it high density and potentially National Register eligible,” Hoksbergen said. “TVAR, some of their shovel tests had well over 100 artifacts in each test. So that's extraordinary, especially in an upland area like this.”

The TVAR survey did not uncover human remains, but Hoksbergen said Jones and other local residents have sent him photographs of human remains found on the site since construction began.

“Folks in the neighborhood would continue to come out here and collect it as the construction was going on,” Hoksbergen said. “People were sending me pictures of skull fragments and teeth and so I got confirmation that there is in fact burials out here, which we suspected from the beginning.”

Hoksbergen said that the TVAR report was included in the Alabama State Site File should have been reviewed as part of the environmental assessment for the project.

Benton said his company had not seen the TVAR report until AL.com emailed him a copy last week. He said that according to his understanding of the law, he was not obligated to report such findings if they occurred, attaching a PDF of what appears to be a scanned version of the Code of Alabama from 2003, before the law was amended in 2010.

Hoksbergen said he also contacted the Huntsville Police Department and spoke with the city attorney about the situation, but the city had declined to take action.

City of Huntsville Communications Director Kelly Schrimsher said via email that the city was not aware of any historical sites in the area.

“The site assessment from the developer, Jeff Benton, for that project showed no evidence of historical material on the property,” Schrimsher said. “City records also show no evidence of historical sites in the area of the development site.”

Huntsville’s municipal zoning code requires a setback of at least 25 feet which “shall extend from the boundaries of significant historical or archaeological sites as determined by the Alabama Historical Commission,” which maintains the Alabama State Site File. The Alabama Historical Commission declined to comment on this case, citing an active investigation.

Schrimsher said the city planning department did not have access to the Alabama State Site File, and the TVAR report “was not provided to the city at the time of development.” She said the city to her knowledge had received no reports of human remains being found on the site and that there were procedures in place to shut down construction sites if human remains were found on site.

The city provided AL.com a copy of the developer’s site assessment, a six-page document that describes environmental conditions at the site. According to the assessment, the engineers conducted a “review of available literature,” and contacted government agencies. The document did not specifically cite which documents were reviewed or which agencies contacted.

Under the subhead “Historic and Archaeological Features,” the document says “None evident.”

Hunter Johnson, the archaeologist for TVAR who conducted the assessment in 2010, said the city was aware that there were artifacts in the area.

“I can't say specifically for Jeff Benton, but the city and the environmental consultant that hired us originally to do that [report], they were aware of the sensitivity of this site,” Johnson said.

A tale of Alabama’s past

Today, the site is on the sprawling southeastern edge of one of Alabama’s fastest growing cities, located across Monte Sano mountain from downtown, in an area that was largely farms and swampland just 30 years ago. Recently, new schools and new homes have flooded the cove. But around 1,500 years ago, the area likely became a refuge for a people on the run.

Hoksbergen said of the indigenous settlements of that time were mostly centered along the rivers, but around 535 AD, settlements migrated to upland village sites. Hoksbergen excavated one such village site located on Redstone Arsenal and said based on the TVAR report, the Hidden Springs site would probably have been similar.

The reason for the inland migration appears to be a widespread climatic event beginning in 535 AD that impacted much of the world. It’s unclear whether it was sparked by a major volcanic eruption, or a meteor that collided with Earth, but the predominant belief is that a significant dust cloud enveloped much of the Northern hemisphere, blocking out the sun and leading to almost worldwide crop failures. Written records from Ireland to China describe famines occurring around this time, and the event appears to have impacted Native American peoples as well.

“Worldwide, if they have any sort of written record, they talk about 10 years of winter, you know, temperatures dropped, in the middle of the day it looked like midnight,” Hoksbergen said. “10 years of a solar eclipse, essentially.”

Hoksbergen said the area’s original inhabitants retreated away from the rivers, possibly in response to new tribes moving into the area. Hoksbergen said the burials found in north Alabama from this period indicate a time of violent conflict, with remains often showing shattered skulls, broken bones or other injuries, based on excavations of similar sites in the region.

“We noticed about 75 percent of the skeletal samples we had had evidence of violent trauma,” he said. “We had scalp marks and trophy heads and people with fractures on their forearms like they were blocking blows. Several of the skulls had compression fractures like they'd been clubbed.

“We think that big population movement off the river was the result of some external group moving in and raiding to try to supplement their resource base, and that pushed the local population of hunter-gatherers up into the uplands.”

Hoksbergen said the fossil record showed that the inhabitants stayed on similar upland sites for about a century before migrating back down to the rivers, but the years appeared to be difficult based on what appear to be ancient trash pits.

“They limited their access to their traditional resource bases [by moving inland], so they’re desperate and eating snails,” Hoksbergen said. “We noticed that squirrel bones are way over represented compared to other sites, so they’re hunting smaller game and all the animal bones we found were over-processed. Deer bones were just crushed to a pulp and boiled for, you know, to try to get every nutrient that you could possibly get.”

Hoksbergen said the inhabitants were not building large burial mounds during this period, instead choosing to bury their dead near the villages.

What next?

Construction on the subdivision is ongoing.

When the TVAR site assessment was conducted, its purpose was to determine which parts of the property should be preserved or excluded from development. The owner at that time, Margaret Anne Goldsmith, was donating portions of the land to the city of Huntsville to create what is now the Goldsmith-Schiffman Wildlife Sanctuary.

At the time, the land was being used to grow cotton, but the in the TVAR assessment report, Johnson recommended that the site be preserved due to its historical significance.

“It is recommended that the site be planted in grass and used as a green space,” the report states. “If the site remains in agriculture, it is the recommendation of Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research that no till farming be practiced at the site.”

However, at some point after that site assessment, the portion of the property containing many of the artifacts was divided from the wildlife preserve property and sold to Jeff Benton Homes.

Johnson said he was initially told the site would be preserved.

“We were told verbally, I don't think we had this written, but we were told that they were going to, because of the sensitivity of the site, that they were going to incorporate it into the preserve,” Johnson said.

“Obviously, that didn't happen.”

Hoksbergen said he would like to see the space preserved, possibly as part of the wildlife sanctuary, with an educational marker about the area’s prior inhabitants.

“I initially reached out to the developer and they didn't want anything to do with me,” Hoksbergen said. “Otherwise, I would like to work this out with them.

“But what I would encourage them to do is use the site boundaries that TVAR established and exclude those sections from development.”