Detectives, heritage agency begin probe after Durban skeleton discovery

Brighton Beach detectives are now investigating with the help of the provincial heritage conservation agency, also known as Amafa KwaZulu-Natal.

Archeologists have spent the better part of the week carefully exhuming the bones from the soil, without causing them further damage.

It is a painstaking process that involves using paint brushes and trowels to remove as much soil as possible from around the bones and fragments, before carefully lifting them out of the ground.

The soil they dig out is also passed through a sieve, to extract any loose fragments they might have missed.

At this stage, Newswatch understands they believe the remains belonged to a woman.

A piece of fabric - believed to have once formed part of a blanket - as well as sea shells, and pottery were also found at the site.

Local historian Duncan Du Bois - who is something of an authority on the history of the Bluff, in particular - says if indeed the remains are as old as these early estimates suggest then they could have belonged to a member of the Tuli tribe.

“The Tuli tribe inhabited the Bluff roughly from about 1717,” Du Bois says.

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He explains that they were a pastoral people who were driven down the South Coast by white settlers.

"The Tuli tribe had cattle and when white settlers began to occupy parts of the Bluff and deprive them of water springs for their cattle, the British authorities were very upset by this and so the Tuli tribe was relocated from the Bluff - in the period after 1853 - down to where Umgababa is today."

Amafa’s Ros Deveraux says what we do know at this stage is that this is an old, unmarked, traditional grave.

“And traditional graves are protected in terms of the KZN Heritage Act, so that’s why Amafa was called in,” she explains.

Deveraux says investigations are at too early a stage at present to conclusively say how old the remains are.

“But the archeologists have had a look at them and from experience, they have established that they are archeological remains”.

She says carbon dating and other tests will reveal more though.

Once their age has been established, Deveraux says that - depending on how old the bones are - Amafa might try to find a living relative to give them to.

“We would have to investigate further as to a possible age,” she says, “But if they are fairly recent - eighty or a hundred years old - then we’ll try to find possible relatives. If we can’t, then they will be stored in our storage facility for human remains”.

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