The bones are being examined by the state medical examiner's office. Debra Call, president of Knik Tribal Council, said the tribe has asked the Matanuska-Susitna Borough to pay for DNA testing to determine if the body is a relative of any living Knik tribal members.
The borough will also pay for the reunited remains to be buried in the tribe's nearby cemetery. Call said she hopes the reburial can take place this year before the ground freezes.
"To know that this could be a family member -- it's hard to know who this may be. It could be my grandfather's little brother, or my grandmother's cousin," Call said.
"We don't have a written history, we have an oral history. We're trying desperately to hang on to what we have, and when something like this happens, it's devastating."
The skull -- and later the body -- was found while the Wasilla-Knik Historical Society was excavating a basement for a warehouse next to the Knik Museum.
Historical Society president LeRoi Heaven said his group in 2004 received a $20,000 grant from the borough to put a warehouse on a foundation there. The warehouse, built in Wasilla in 1917 by Knik and Wasilla entrepreneur O.G. Herning, will provide display space for the museum, Heaven said, and the basement will provide secure storage and a workshop.
After residents said there might be graves in the area, the site was surveyed using ground-penetrating radar with permission of the Knik Tribal Council. The radar survey did not show a graveyard but workers were advised to proceed cautiously.
"It was a swamp, filled in," Heaven said of the site.
Monitors watched as dirt was removed. Heaven said several things were unearthed in what may have formerly been a landfill in the swampy area -- buckets full of broken champagne and other bottles, and even part of an old horse-drawn wagon.
A body, however, was a surprise.
Call, who has been researching the issue since the skull was first found, said the body was wrapped in birch bark, which might have prevented it from showing up during the radar survey.
Dena'ina Athabascans do not traditionally bury their dead in birch bark, she said.
Call said scholars she has spoken with speculated that the person may have died during the 1918 flu epidemic that ravaged several Alaska villages. Perhaps the body was in the swampy area because the death happened during winter, when the men in the village were away hunting or trapping and the women could only dig a shallow grave near the camp.
But that's all speculation, she said.
Work stopped immediately. The state medical examiner and state archaeologist Dave McMahan examined the skull and looked for other likely grave sites. McMahan said none were found.
Heaven said work resumed slowly and the moved dirt was reexamined. The bones were found next to where the skull had been, in the last few feet of the area that needed to be excavated.
Heaven said the excavation is complete and the Historical Society will get on with its project, installing a foundation and putting the warehouse on it this fall. He said the museum has no further plans for excavation in the area.
"No more buildings can be added to the area. It's already made into a kind of park," he said.
Meanwhile, Knik Tribal Council members hope to learn more about the body that was uncovered and are trying to piece together how to find out if other graves are in prime construction areas. Not far away, several Dena'ina house pits were flattened to make way for a subdivision.
If a Knik Arm bridge goes in, the road between Point MacKenzie and Big Lake will likely uncover more graves, she said. The Dena'ina have been using that area for 10,000 years.
"The reality is, the history of the Mat-Su Borough is quickly being erased off the map," she said.
Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her at 352-6709.
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