 They were first systematically studied in 1901.In 1989 a construction project was halted when bulldozers revealed the presence of burial caves cut into the rocks; construction was halted, and the Israel Antiquities Authority allowed archaeologists to investigate.The "Tomb of the Shroud" in Akeldama is "one of very few examples of a preserved shrouded human burial" dating to the first-century C.E., with the bone samples yielding evidence of the pathogens "Mycobacterium tuberculosis" and "Mycobacterium leprae", the latter being "the earliest case of leprosy with a confirmed date in which "M. leprae" DNA was detected".