CRANSTON - As the state continues to work on plans for the reburial of remains found in old graves that were exposed by erosion alongside Route 37 in the Sockanosset Cross Road area last year, examination of the bones has given archaeologist more insight into the lives of those who died at the State Farm at the turn of the 20th century.

Yesterday, state Department of Transportation spokesman Charles St. Martin reviewed some of the personal possessions that were recovered when archaeologists examined the remains of 67 men, women and children and painstakingly combed through the shreds of their pine coffins.

Buttons, hair combs, a key, a pair of wedding rings, false teeth, and the remnant of a ruffle from a long skirt were carefully laid out on a long table at Public Archaeology Lab (PAL) Inc., the Pawtucket firm that has been working on the recovery project with DOT archaeologist Michael Hebert.

As St. Martin, Hebert and PAL senior archaeologist Jay Waller surveyed the items that had been darkened by years of being buried, they said that perhaps the most telling clue about the lives of those that died at the former State Farm comes from what was not found.

Noting that funerals generally were elaborate events in the late 1800s, Waller said that it is unusual to find gravesites from that era with so few personal possessions.

The state burial ground was used by the State Farm from 1875 to 1918, and Waller said the rings, teeth, metal buttons and combs all came from the coffins of people who were buried the 1870s. The graves from around 1916 contained only shreds of hospital gowns and the white glass buttons that fastened them, he said.

The evolution of the artifacts is proof of documented changes at the State Farm which once included a poor house, a work house, hospitals and prisons, Waller said. In the 1800s, those confined to the gloomy barn-like buildings on a hilltop off Pontiac Avenue were more likely to be buried in their own clothes along with whatever personal possessions they had managed to hold onto.

Within a couple of decades, all of that changed, he said, and the state facility was recycling clothing among its residents and burying its deceased clad only in their button-down hospital gowns.

The potter's field, which had apparently been forgotten, was discovered in June 2006, when heavy rains sent bones tumbling down from the highway embankment and into a field that fringes the parking lot of the former Davol building, on Sockanosset Cross Road. The building is now an operations center for Citizens Bank and the bones were discovered by a bank employee.

As archaeologists researched the matter, it was determined that while other cemeteries that once served the State Farm either have grave markers or known boundaries, the one disturbed by erosion had long been forgotten and most of it lies beneath Route 37. Archaeologists working on the project have said that the burial ground encompasses about 3.4 acres and probably contained about 1,000 graves.

It was decided last year to only exhume remains that were in danger of being disturbed by erosion, and, throughout last summer and into the fall, archaeologists carefully scraped the earth around the northern slopes off Route 37 looking for traces of grave shafts.

In the end, the remains from 67 graves were removed and had been stored at PAL through the winter as the state prepares to reinter them in a state cemetery at Pontiac Avenue and Knight Street.

That roughly 4-acre cemetery, which straddles the Warwick line, originally contained more than 630 graves of people who died at the State Farm between 1933 and 1940, St. Martin said. However, he said, in the mid 1970s, more than 570 gravesites from another state burial ground off Pontiac Avenue were exhumed to make room for the Cranston Industrial Park and were placed in collective graves there.

Before the remains of those found near Route 37 are buried there, parts of the cemetery will be researched by archeologists using a special backhoe to check the soil for signs of unmarked graves. Also, archaeologists will research the genealogy of each of the deceased and run public advertisements in an attempt to locate any next of kin.

In addition to the scientific work, the reburial plan must be approved by a number of local and state historic committees as well as municipal boards in both Cranston and Warwick.

Still, St. Martin yesterday reiterated the DOT's commitment to follow the exhaustive process so that at the end, there can be a dignified service for those whose graves were disturbed.

The details of the reburial are still being planned and there is no estimate yet on how much the entire project - from the exhumations to the final service - will cost the state.

"We want this done properly and we will go through all the proper channels plus take into account the concerns of any descendants who are found," he said.