NORTHAMPTON — A construction crew unearthed an unexpected discovery while digging at a work site in Florence: an old tombstone, and near it, bones. Workers at the site quickly called the Police Department to investigate what they had found buried.

These findings forced all work at the site to pause briefly until state archaeologists could examine the findings and determine how to proceed.

Northampton Police Chief John Cartledge said in an email that a crew from Keiter Builders was on a construction site Monday at 81 Maple St. when they came upon the tombstone, dated 1877, along with a few bones nearby.

Cartledge said that according to Brona Simon, executive director, state historic preservation officer and state archaeologist with the Massachusetts Historical Commission, determined that the tombstone was “most likely a discarded gravestone from sometime after 1880 when St. Mary’s Catholic Church relocated many graves from an old cemetery to a new one.”

The bones found at the site were determined to be pig bones. Work there has already resumed, Cartledge said.

Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.