On this edition of Your Call, we rebroadcast our conversation with archaeologist Dr. Justin Dunnavant about the environmental impacts of the transatlantic slave trade with a focus on the former Danish West Indies, which are now the US Virgin Islands. Between 1500 and 1875, 4.8 million enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean, compared with 389,000 brought to the US. About a million people died in transit.

Dr. Dunnavant has conducted archaeological research in the field and underwater with Diving with a Purpose, an organization that specializes in the documentation, protection and interpretation of African slave trade shipwrecks. He’s part of the training program that searches for sunken slave ships. In the US, there are fewer than 20 Black archaeologists doing maritime archaeology work related to slavery and the African diaspora.