The skeletal remains of up to 27 people unearthed accidentally two decades ago were finally put to rest Thursday.

The small box of bones, which had for years been housed in the lab of a local anthropologist, was buried on a grassy plot behind the Houston Fire Department's maintenance complex, just north of downtown, not far from where the fragments were dug up by a construction crew in the 1980s.

"It was dignified; it was respectable," said City Councilwoman Ada Edwards, who pushed for the reburial. "It's given an impetus to the whole way we look at historical preservation."

Since the bones are unidentified, they could represent the ancestors of any Houstonian, she said.

The fragments were unearthed in the mid-1980s by workers digging a 10-by-50-foot utility trench behind the complex. The group of buildings had been built on the grounds of the original City Cemetery, where Houstonians were buried from about 1840 to 1870.

The bones landed in the hands of University of Houston anthropologist Ken Brown, who said he planned to study them.

He had criticized the city for continuing to dig in the area where the bones had been uncovered.

Why it took so long to rebury the remains is unclear.

The city blames Brown for allowing the box to collect dust in his lab. But Brown said he asked the city to rebury the fragments and officials never responded. After a few years, he simply forgot about them.

"I'm glad that the bones have finally been reinterred, and they're not that far from the rest of the remains of those individuals," Brown said after attending the ceremony. "It sort of brings closure."

Last year, Edwards heard about the bones in limbo and asked Capt. Karen DuPont, HFD's City Council liaison, to find a fitting place for reburial.

"Once we were made aware of it, we immediately took steps to get it done," said DuPont, who organized the project.

Edwards, members of HFD and several local historians were among those who participated in the ceremony Thursday morning. DuPont said a chaplain read a biblical passage and a member of the department's Honor Guard played taps after the remains, in a donated casket, were placed in the small grave.

In March, Public Works employees under the supervision of an archaeologist spent a day digging systematically and carefully in the same plot where the bones originally had been buried. They managed to find a 12-inch-by-24-inch space to bury the remains without disturbing other bones in the area.

City parks employees then beautified the area by removing an old fence and laying fresh grass. The plot is one of the only grassy sites within the complex.

DuPont said she hopes a local historical group will donate a plaque to properly mark the burial site.

An old marker dedicates the area to 32 Confederate soldiers buried there. But historians now know the site also holds the graves of others who lived during that period, including freed slaves and children, some of whom were victims of cholera and yellow-fever epidemics.

"That marker there right now reflects one particular interest group," DuPont said. "I want it to reflect the use of the cemetery as a whole."

Edwards said the burial sets an example for how the city should handle this type of situation in the future.

"We're gonna run into some bones down the line," she said, "and it's good seeing now that we have a policy in what we do and how we do it."