This modern forensic case spotlights just how much a skeleton can reveal. The remains can tell us not only about the deceased person in life, but also about events prior to and surrounding death and burial.

In 2002, archaeologists uncovered an isolated grave just outside the log wall of a fort built on an island in the James River almost four centuries earlier. Who was buried there?

In 1992, archaeologists recovered the remains of an infant buried beneath the floor of the 17th-century Brick Chapel at St. Mary's City, Maryland. Investigators had only the bones and burial clues to tell the child's story.

In August 2005, excavators discovered a skeleton inside James Fort, along the western palisade wall. Clues indicate the burial took place during the first weeks or months of settlement at Jamestown. Was this the colony's first fatality?

This modern forensic case spotlights just how much a skeleton can reveal. The remains can tell us not only about the deceased person in life, but also about events prior to and surrounding death and burial.

Archaeologists from Anne Arundel County’s Lost Towns Project discovered the site of Leavy Neck, a small 17th-century farm, in 1991. A decade later, they uncovered a surprising find in the cellar of a house—a human skeleton.

With skeletal remains, the story of Africans in the Chesapeake is slowly unfolding, person by person. Remote-sensing technologies are helping scientists locate forgotten men and women, such as the young woman found at an old tobacco plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore.