Owsley and Bruwelheide, Human Skeletal Remains from Site 44HE814 (2012)

THE NUMBER IS A FLOOR, NOT A TOTAL. Do not write “fifty-three individuals” and attribute it to these authors.

The strings “53 individuals” and “fifty-three” appear nowhere in this analysis. What the anatomists wrote:

“Based on bone counts for the total series, a minimum of 44 adults (individuals 15 years and older) and 9 children (ages 14 years and younger) are represented.”

And in summary: “The remains of at least 44 adults… and 9 children… are present.”

Fifty-three is the arithmetic sum of two minimums, with the word minimum deleted. It circulated from a website summary into the archive and hardened into a fact. It is a floor stated as a census.

The Family Representative Council confirms the direction of the error: it is “quite likely that additional human remains and artifacts are still located beneath the Kontos Building” in the roughly ten-foot unexcavated portion of the well.

Correct usage: “at least fifty-three,” and say that more remain under the building.

On cause of death, the analysis is equally careful, and its caution is load-bearing. Of the tubercular individuals: they “may have been brought to the hospital for treatment, with subsequent death and autopsy. These may also represent bodies of the recently deceased that were exhumed.” The bones do not say whether a person was robbed from a grave or died in the infirmary.

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