An effort to sell a 600-year-old human skull at a rural North Carolina auction house was abruptly halted over the weekend after a group of opponents led by Native Americans intervened.
Bidders gathered at the Mebane Antique Auction Gallery in western Orange County on Saturday for the sale of nearly 500 estate items, from age-worn oil paintings to 19th century American rifles.
The small skull — marked Lot 243 in the auction — “appears to be complete and original, missing some teeth,” according to the listing, which dated its previous purchase to an antique gallery in Montreal sometime in the 1960s.
