The state will ask a professional mediator to help archaeologists and Indian groups resolve their differences over how Maryland should design and manage a resting place for the bones of American Indians now held in Annapolis.
Housing and Community Development Secretary Jacqueline H. Rogers has asked that all parties be invited to a "retreat" as early as next month where "professional help" would be provided to help them strike a compromise that the state could then implement.
The Indian remains are stored with the rest of the state's archaeological collection, in locked cabinets in Annapolis. A 1993 state law requires the state to return any remains that can be linked by blood or heritage to descendants or culturally affiliated groups.
Any other remains must be given a more respectful, "appropriate place of repose." But scientists must continue to have access to them for study. That would require some kind of climate-controlled vault or mausoleum.
Most Indians want all ancient remains returned to them for reburial, and oppose any interment by the state that would keep the remains accessible to scientists.
Archaeologists and other scientists have opposed any plan that would limit their access or permit the remains to decay.
In October, Ms. Rogers had warned that she might resolve the matter by ordering one set of remains buried before she left office, even if the solution pleased no one. She has backed away from that position and recognizes that the issue won't be resolved on her watch. "It's as far as I could get it," Ms. Rogers said. "At some point you shake your head and say, 'All right, it's for the next bunch.' I hope the archaeologists and the Indian community will have the wisdom to come up with a suitable compromise."
The goal is an agreement on precisely how the remains will be interred and what sort of access scientists will have to them.
The advisory board of the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum in St. Leonard, Calvert County, voted Wednesday to accept Ms. Rogers' designation of the park as the eventual resting place for the remains. But board members said the parties to the dispute must first settle their differences. "The advisory body . . . does not want the park to become a focal point for controversy," Ms. Rogers said.
Wayne E. Clark, executive director of the park, said the location is "the one thing we seem to have general agreement on. So I think that's a step forward."
Ms. Rogers, meanwhile, has agreed to two related requests from the board and representatives of the Maryland Historical Trust, the Maryland Indian Commission, and the state Advisory Committee on Archaeology.
First, she agreed to provide for separate storage for all human remains when the state's archaeology collection is moved late this month from Annapolis to new storage facilities at the Spring Grove Hospital Center. The current storage site has been sold to St. John's College.
The bones would be stored separately from the rest of the collection, in a manner to be determined after consultation with Indian groups.
"This is the interim step we're going to take, at least as a gesture of recognition that we, too, recognize that human remains are different from other artifacts," said Richard B. Hughes, the state's chief archaeologist.
Second, Ms. Rogers has made $15,000 available this year to hasten an inventory of the remains so the state can begin establishing which of today's Indian groups may have legitimate claims to them.
The work is expected to take several years.
"Under federal and Maryland law, we can only return remains to descendants or to culturally affiliated tribes," Mr. Hughes said. "Until we focus on who the affiliated tribes are, we can't return anything."