Centuries-old skeletons found in NY

New York - Two burial vaults were discovered beneath a street in the heart of New York University's campus by workers replacing a water main.

Two centuries-old burial vaults discovered beneath a street in the heart of New York University's campus by workers replacing a water main were likely part of a Presbyterian church cemetery, an archaeologist said on Thursday.
One of the roughly 15-foot by-18-foot (4.57-metre by 5.5-metre) crypts was clearly disturbed, with the skeletons and skulls of between nine and 12 people pushed into a corner while more than a dozen stacked wooden coffins can be seen in the second one, said Chrysalis' Alyssa Loorya, the project's principal investigator.
"You never know what you can find beneath the city's streets," she said at the site in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood. "You bury people to memorialise them, and these people were forgotten."
Anthropologists and archeologists have hung lights in the excavated area and will use digital cameras with zoom lenses to take pictures of the coffin plates in the hopes of identifying the buried. And because city policy is to leave burial grounds undisturbed if possible, project engineers are planning a new route for the water main.
"We knew we could be encountering remains or other items in this area," said Thomas Foley, an associate commissioner with the city's Department of Design and Construction. "We'll do some exploring to discover what other lanes we might have."
Loorya's firm was contracted to work on the three-year, $9 million project because Washington Square Park, adjacent to the excavation work, was a potter's field for yellow fever victims in the early 1800s, officials said. - AP