A Tuscaloosa man was arrested earlier this month after Moundville Archaeological Park employees found him digging a hole on the top of a mound.

Carlos Kendrick Fountain, 19, was charged on Feb. 9 with desecration of venerated objects, said University of Alabama spokesman Chris Bryant.

The park manager called Moundville Police after finding Fountain and a woman digging a hole at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 1, according to court records.

The two were wearing turbans, told officers that they were Moorish sovereign citizens, and said they wanted to put their feet into the earth. The hole was about two and a half feet wide and just more than a foot deep. Damage to the soil was estimated at $1,839.

Moundville Police turned the investigation over to UAPD.

UA's Office of Archaeological research agreed to press charges, leading to Fountain's arrest on the misdemeanor charge the next week. He has been released from the Tuscaloosa County Jail on $1,500 bond.

The Moundville site was occupied by Native Americans from around A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1450.

The FBI considers sovereign citizens "anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or 'sovereign' from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement."

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Moorish sovereign citizens "emerged in the mid-1990s on the East Coast when some people began to merge sovereign citizen ideas with some of the beliefs of the Moorish Science Temple, a religious sect dating back to 1913."

"Moorish sovereigns added new ideas, including the notion that African-Americans had special rights because of a 1780s treaty with Morocco, as well as the belief that African-Americans were descended from African 'Moors' —and often as well the belief that African-Americans were also a people indigenous to the Americas."

Some adherents claimed to be descended from the ancient mound-builders of the Mississippi-Missouri Valley, according to the ADL, and to actually own the Louisiana Purchase.