COLUMBUS — Archaeologists still are trying to figure out what they found more a year ago when they unearthed prehistoric graves at the state corrections training academy near Orient in Pickaway County.

        “It's pretty amazing,” Stephen Biehl, a former Ohio Historical Society field archaeologist in charge of the dig, told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday. “We're seeing here some mortuary practices never seen before in Ohio.”

        The dig uncovered the remains of adults, adolescents and children that had been dismembered and distributed across 12 burial pits.

        “From what we've seen so far, it was a place of interment for around 20 individuals in a fairly small area,” said Cheryl Johnston, the society's project chief for the site.

        “There's lots of weird stuff like two people in one grave pit with no heads.... Nobody's seen this kind of thing before.”

        Some skeletons have no skulls, some skulls have no bodies and body parts don't always seem to match up.

        Buried with the bones were about 50 artifacts including a trophy ax, beads, antler-bone points, shells, grinding tools, and bear and rodent teeth.

        “We were just astounded when we uncovered these particular burials with these arm features,” Mr. Biehl said.

        Ms. Johnston is doing doctoral work at Ohio State University on how prehistoric people reflected their cultures in their mortuary practices. She presented her preliminary findings on the site at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in April in New Orleans.

        Grave sites for the Hopewell, the prehistoric people who occupied Ohio about 2,000 years ago, have contained only trophy skulls that might be souvenirs of war or ancestor worship.

        The skulls or bones of ancestors might have been kept as family heirlooms and buried later with their descendants, she said.

        “I don't think it represents that they were being grotesque or brutal to their people. I think it was more like a respectful way to be left for the afterlife,” Mr. Biehl said.

        Martha Otto, curator of archaeology at the historical society, said artifacts found at the site indicate the graves date to the era before the Hopewell existed.

        Archaeologists were called to the site in late 1999 after Mount Sterling Police Chief Chris Carty found loose bones along an embankment.

        Ms. Johnston has spent the past year preparing and cataloging the material. A survey of the area will be done this fall using a ground-penetrating scanner, but Ms. Johnston doesn't know whether there will be further excavations.

        “We're not sure we shouldn't save it for people 200 years from now with better instruments,” she said. “It's that important a site.”

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