Reconstructing social identity, impairment, and potential caregiving relative to treponematosis at the pre-European contact Aklis site, St. Croix, USVI.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "(De)Pathologizing the Past: New Perspectives on Intervention and Modification as Care in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Despite extensive clinical documentation of the psychosocially and physically debilitating effects of treponematosis (e.g., yaws) and intensive investigations into the disease’s ancient burden in the Americas, physical impairment as well as disability and health-related caregiving have not yet been substantially explored relative to treponematosis in the pre-European contact Americas. Here, we consider impairment downstream to healing lesions diagnostic of treponematosis, and potential disability and caregiving, relative to the social identity of an adult individual exhumed during recent salvage excavations at the Aklis site. Aklis (12Vam1-42) is a pre-European contact coastal cemetery, midden, and habitation site on St. Croix, USVI. St. Croix has been the focus of little anthropological work, yet Aklis is likely one of the Caribbean’s largest ceramic-era cemeteries. Additionally, Aklis yields highly atypical variation in burial position—exemplified by the individual focused upon—and high frequencies of midden and secondary burials; likely represents a community transitioning into the still poorly understood social complexity that European invaders fragmented; and, like St. Croix, lacks a known Indigenous descent community, largely due to colonial violence. Therefore, reconstructions of caregiving may grant otherwise inscrutable insights into biocultural adaptations to debilitating endemic disease relative to social identity and ethnogenesis in the immediate pre-contact Caribbean.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• (De)Pathologizing the Past: New Perspectives on Intervention and Modification as Care in the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50281