France, Aug. 22 -- In Saint-Francois, a town on the eastern tip of Guadeloupe, human remains have been appearing for several years on Raisins-Clairs, one of the island's best-known beaches.

The popular tourist destination is also home to a cemetery for enslaved people.

France's National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, Inrap, identified 48 graves there during excavations in 2013 and 2014. Researchers believe the cemetery may still contain hundreds more, dating from roughly the 17th to the 19th centuries.

But the cemetery was probably much larger in the past before parts of it were lost to the sea.

"On aerial photographs from the 1950s, you can see that the cemetery was in the forest. Now it is disappearing into the se...