Parkway work to resume under deal to protect bones

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The effort to build an outer beltway through west Harris County will proceed despite the recent discovery of prehistoric human remains in its path under a proposed agreement between state, local and tribal officials.

In response to the wishes of tribal leaders, the Texas Department of Transportation will drop its request to remove the bones and take steps to protect the burial sites during construction of a 15-mile, four-lane segment of the Grand Parkway, a planned 180-mile loop around greater Houston. The deal will allow the state agency to resume work without changing the route.

The Harris County Historical Commission and five American Indian tribes with possible ties to the remains have backed the agreement. A sixth tribe, which is based in Oklahoma, was scheduled to consider it Saturday.

The agreement comes nearly three months after former 234th District Judge Reece Rondon granted TxDOT's request to remove ancient human remains from the project's path. The historical commission appealed the decision, arguing that the judge may have ruled differently if he had known more about the size and age of the ancient burial site.

With the tribes on board, the transportation department and county commission likely will ask the court to dismiss the case next week.

"It really is resolved," said Glen Van Slyke, an assistant Harris County attorney representing the historical commission. "Our interest was for the tribes to be notified and consulted about the remains. They were not initially."

Raquelle Lewis, an agency spokeswoman, said the deal is not yet finalized but could be soon.

"Our hope is to move forward without court involvement," she said, adding that the road project remains on schedule to be completed in early 2014.

Under the agreement, TxDOT will fill the excavated areas and cover them with rip rap, creating a permanent burial site near where the road would cross Cypress Creek, about three miles south of U.S. 290.

Archaeologists had found 10 sets of human remains as old as 14,000 years. The first discovery came in June, creating a temporary roadblock for the $322 million project.

Bryant Celestine, of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, said the bones should not be removed to "continue the sanctity of the burial."

"When a native dies, they are put in a place for a specific reason," he said. "We do not know why these people were put there, but there was an intent.

"To remove them would infringe on the original intent."

Not much is known about the burials, which may be from the time of the Paleoindians, who migrated across North America from Asia.

The site may have the most sets of remains from the period in the New World, said Kenneth Brown, a University of Houston anthropologist.

Brown expressed frustration over TxDOT's handling of the site, saying crews saved some artifacts but ruined the area for richer study. The agency's crews scraped and sifted mechanically instead of digging by hand.

"When you scrape, you will find things, but you won't be able to see how they were associated," Brown said. "That is a shame because we do not know what people were doing 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, and we won't know now."