Project Update: The Search for Tampa Bay’s Earliest People

AWIARE recently completed the initial phase of a multi-phase project to identify and study submerged archaeological sites in Tampa Bay.  A report documenting the first systematic effort to identify terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene sites beneath Tampa Bay was submitted to the Felburn Foundation, which provide a $12,000 grant to help underwrite the project. This was matched with an additional $8,000 in private donations.  Decades of archaeological finds from dredge-and-fill activities, geological research, bathymetric mapping, sediment cores, and paleoenvironmental data were synthesized by archaeologists Kendal Jackson and Robert Austin. The report demonstrates that Tampa Bay was a focal landscape for early human occupation for at least the past 12,000 years, when lower sea levels exposed a mosaic of freshwater lakes, rivers, wetlands, and chert outcrops that attracted Paleoindian and Archaic peoples. Artifacts recovered from dredged shell deposits and spoil—ranging from possible pre-Clovis through Early Woodland periods—provide strong evidence that intact archaeological sites once existed on terrestrial landscapes and that became flooded by sea-level rise and sedimentation during the Middle to Late Holocene.

Building on this evidence, a preliminary predictive model was developed to guide future underwater archaeological research. By integrating reconstructed pre-dredge bathymetry, geomorphology, sediment distributions, subsurface stratigraphy with the locations of known artifact recoveries, the model identifies priority target areas with high potential for preserved paleo-landscapes and in situ sites. These include areas adjacent to previously disturbed sites, depositional karst basins such as the former Paleolake Edgar, and undisturbed shoals and inshore sub-basins likely to have sheltered archaeological deposits. The report concludes that a long, continuous record of human occupation lies beneath the waters of Tampa Bay.  Jackson and Austin outline goals for a second phase of research that include focused geophysical survey and coring to identify intact landscapes and potential in-situ archaeological deposits, radiocarbon dating or organic material, and sediment analysis to identify geochemical markers (namely platinum) that have been associated with the Younger Dryas climatic anomaly (ca. 12,000 years ago.  If identified in buried sediments, platinum may serve as a reliable chronological marker for the Clovis timeframe in sediment deposits that lack well-preserved biological materials for radiocarbon dating.

  The Search for Tampa Bay’s Earliest People.   Phase I Report and Predictive Model for Submerged Archaeological Sites in Tampa Bay, Florida