14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Campbell and Nicole Sauve from Sarnia, southern Ontario, Canada, were shocked to find that they are supposed to cough up an impressive $5,000 (€3,745) and pay the archaeologists who dropped by and assessed a 400-year-old skeleton that the couple had found in their backyard.
The two Canadians only became aware of the fact that a fairly old skeleton was buried not far from their home when deciding to build a new fence.
While digging to have the fence installed, the couple came across the remains of a woman.
Ken and Nicole called in experts, and asked them to carry out an archaeological assessment of the skeleton they had found.
The experts did not take long to arrive. After analyzing the remains, they concluded that they belonged to a Native American woman and that they had been buried for at least four centuries.
The woman was about 24 years old when she died, and her teeth suggest that the society in which she lived centered around hunting, gathering and fishing, the archaeologists told the couple.
And then they asked them to pay $5,000 for their analysis of the Native American woman's remains.
Daily Mail says that, as odd as this may sound, people living in this part of Canada are actually required by law to pay for the archaeological assessments that are carried out on their property.
Had Ken and Nicole known this, they probably would have opted for pulling the ground back over the remains and keeping their silence.
On the other hand, their not letting the authorities know that they had found these remains would not have been the right thing to do either.
“God forbid you have a murder victim. Never will that person be brought home; never will their family have closure,” Nicole Sauve reportedly commented on the law asking her and Ken to pay for the assessment of the remains.
Ken and Nicole are now looking for some way to avoid having to pay the archaeologists' bill.