Recent archaeological excavations at the Aklis Site, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Summary

The Aklis site (12VAm1-42) is a multicomponent prehistoric conch shell midden containing cemetery and habitation components. Large portions of the site are currently subject to damage from rising sea levels and modern disturbances, including looting. Salvage excavations of two sets of human remains in 2012 led to the development of an archaeological field school in 2014, offered by Mississippi State University and in conjunction with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Survey and excavation focused on mapping the site, documenting, mitigating, and stabilizing the midden deposits, and recovering exposed features, including burials. This paper presents the preliminary results of human skeletal, zooarchaeological, lithic, and ceramic analyses, spatial and geoarchaeological data, and discusses Aklis in a regional cultural context.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage