Partial skull left on courthouse stairs more than 1,500 years old

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In December 2020, the partial remains of a skull were discovered near the Main Street entrance of the Perry County Courthouse. Surveillance video obtained from a business on the Perryville Square showed an individual in the vicinity at approximately 6:30 a.m. Dec. 21 but due to the angles and shadows further identification was unable to be made.
Carbon-14 dating analysis conducted by the FBI revealed that the partial skull found in 2020 at the steps of the Perry County Courthouse in Perryville is between 1,500 and 1,700 years old.
Sgt. Jim Rice of the Perry County Sheriff’s Office was called to the scene shortly before 4 p.m. Dec. 21. The skull was recovered and turned over to Perry County Memorial Hospital. Eventually, the item was turned over to the Perry County Coroner’s Office.
For a brief period of time, Rice said “it was the talk of the town.”
Those remains were packaged and sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for further testing and investigation by Perry County Coroner Bill Bohnert.
The results are in, and the alleged age of the remains go back more than 1,000 years ago. Bohnert received a full report from the FBI earlier this year.
“The analysis of carbon-14 from item 1 yielded a date range for the last incorporation of carbon-14 to be from 260 CE (common era) to 550 CE, making item 1 approximately 1,500 to 1,700 years old,” according to the FBI report, which was released Feb. 15.

The item, as presented, was identified as a partial cranium of human origin. The remains, which were shipped in a tape-sealed box to the FBI, were determined to include the neurocranium, including the front, left and right parietals and occipital squama though the facial skeleton and cranial base were absent.”
With few measurements available, no metric analysis was performed on the skull remains, according to the report.
There was insufficient skeletal material to estimate ancestry or stature while staining, missing bone and embedded debris suggest long-term deposition/burial and that the item may not be medicolegally significant.
The lack of depositional contest limit further assessment of the item’s medicolegal significance, according to the report.
“Moderately pronounced supraorbital ridges and a moderate external occipital proturberance suggest possible male sex, but female cannot be excluded,” according to the report. “Closure of cranial sutures indicates skeletally mature (adult) status, but no more specific indicators of biological age are present.”
A couple of unanswered questions regarding the incident include: where were the remains from and how did they get to the courthouse steps?
At the time, the Perry County Sheriff’s Office sought further information regarding the incident, posting a short video clip and photo in an effort to obtain more details. It was not determined at the time who placed the skull at the steps or why the individual or individuals did so.