When in 1996 a human skeleton was discovered on the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick in Washington State, controversy erupted after it was given a radiocarbon date of 9,300 years. Five native American tribes claimed that the individual was an ancestor of tribes now living in the vicinity, and was entitled under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to be handed to his descendants for reburial. But anthropologists who wished to examine it in detail disputed the legal judgment that this course was in order.
As commentators in Science for September 29 and Nature for October 5 have explained, United States scientists are disputing the ruling of the US Department of the Interior. This is because they wish to study bone mineralisation, to obtain specimens of DNA to give an indication of ancestry, and to make detailed skeletal measurements.