Conquistadors, Excavators, or Rodents: What Damaged the King Site Skeletons?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2000
Description
It has been claimed that many Native American skeletons from the King site in Georgia show evidence of wounds from sharpedged metal weapons that were wielded by members of the sixteenth-century de Soto expedition (Blakely and Mathews 1990). The supposed massacre of these villagers has caught the attention of the public and scholars alike. But we failed to find any evidence of damage caused by sixteenth-century Spanish weapons in our examination of the King site skeletons. Our finding - there is no evidence for a massacre - eliminates a major discrepancy between historical and archaeological information used in reconstructions of the de Soto route.
Citation Information
Milner, George R.; Larsen, Clark Spencer; Hutchinson, Dale L.; Williamson, Matthew A.; and Humpf, Dorothy A.. 2000. Conquistadors, Excavators, or Rodents: What Damaged the King Site Skeletons?. American Antiquity. Vol.65(2). 355-363. https://doi.org/10.2307/2694063 PMID: 17607863 ISSN: 0002-7316