Place of unrest

[Corporate Avenger]

Artifacts found on the black market
hail from this disturbed crypt

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By Sally Apgar
sapgar@starbulletin.com
Less than a five-minute walk from a main road in Kohala lies a Big Island cave in which a native Hawaiian group said they reburied sacred burial artifacts and human remains last November to honor their ancestors.

After the bones and artifacts were placed inside the lower levels of the winding lava-tube cave, large boulders were piled over the entrance to secure it from grave robbers, according to witnesses present for the nighttime reburial.

But a recent visit to the entrance of the cave revealed it is wide open.

The large boulders that once reportedly choked and hid the entrance, which roughly measures 3 by 4 feet, are now piled around the vertical hole in the ground.

A rancher, who leases the land and escorted a reporter to Kanupa Cave on condition of anonymity, said the entrance was completely covered last fall so that "it blended into the desert landscape" of lava rock and keawe.

"I don't know when the cave was reopened," said the rancher, who had not visited it again until recently.

http://starbulletin.com/2004/08/26/news/story2.html