St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

Justin Dunnavant1

Figure 1. Map of St. Croix with Estate Little Princess highlighted.

We returned to Estate Little Princess for the first time since the pandemic to continue archaeological excavations at the eighteenthcentury Danish sugar plantation. Our team comprised colleagues from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and the California Academy of Sciences, as well as four students in the UC-HBCU program, which seeks to improve diversity and strengthen UC graduate programs by investing in relationships between UC faculty and historically Black colleges and universities. Among the students was Darartu Mulugeta, an undergraduate Bunche Fellow at UCLA. Excavations explored the extent of the village once housing the enslaved community and the architecture of the cabins, as well as the daily life of enslaved Africans on the plantation.

1. Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty member of the Cotsen Institute. Figure 2. Justin Dunnavant demonstrates GPS mapping to UC-HBCU student Jasmine Mitchell, an undergraduate student of history at Fisk University.

Figure 4. Jasmine Mitchell (left) and London Booker (right) sort artifacts at Estate Little Princess.