Departmental News

Posted:  Feb 20, 2025 - 12:00pm

E. James Dixon, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and colleagues have published “Shuká Káa Cave, Southeast Alaska: Archeology, Ecology, and Community, (Alaska Anthropological Association’s Aurora Monograph IX, 345 pp., 14 ch., 5 apps.) December 2024.

Edited by Dixon, this interdisciplinary volume reports and analyzes the artifacts and human remains found at the Cave and interprets them in the context of the regional geology and paleoecology. It features contributions by 23 researchers and project participants. Several chapters are authored by former UNM Anthropology students, Drs. William Taylor and Mark Williams, and Melyssa Huston Johnston, and UNM Anthropology Professor, Heather Edgar, all of whom conducted their research at the Maxwell Museum.

Shuká Káa Cave is an important archeological site located on the Northwest Coast of North America that is perhaps best known for the discovery of the partial skeletal remains of a young man who died at or near the cave approximately 10,500 years ago. The volume documents how the US Forest Service, tribal governments, and researchers worked together in a respectful partnership that benefited all the stakeholders at a time when the Kennewick Man controversy was raging elsewhere in the United States.