STUDENT RESEARCH GRANTS – 2023

STUDENT RESEARCH GRANTS FOR 2023 - DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION 12/15/2022

AWIARE, in cooperation with the Levett Foundation, is making available up to $10,000 to provide assistance to graduate students who are conducting archaeological, historical, and paleoenvironmental research in the greater Tampa Bay region.


Types of projects that will be considered include field research, laboratory analyses, collections research, and documents research.  Priority will be given to applicants whose proposals include; 1) field research at Weedon Island Preserve; 2) research using artifact, faunal, or documents collections at AWIARE; 3) field research sites at the greater Tampa Bay area (Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando, Citrus, Manatee, and Sarasota counties); 4) research using Tampa Bay area collections held elsewhere (Florida Museum of Natural History, Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, Smithsonian Institution, local museums, and private collections).

Research related to the Weeden Island Culture and Period is encouraged but not required. Paleoenvironmental research must have applicability to archaeological or historical time periods (i.e., Late Pleistocene through the modern era) and interests (e.g., human-environment interaction; effects of sea level variation on human populations; climatic variability through time).

Individuals interested in applying must be currently enrolled in a university graduate program.


THE DEALINE FOR APPLYING FOR THE 2023 GRANT IS DECEMBER 15, 2022! 

Submit proposals to: Dr. Robert Austin, AWIARE, 1500 Weedon Drive NE, St Petersburg, FL 33702 or by email: awiare1@gmail.com 

AWIARE Provides Grants for Weeden Island Research

RESEARCH

Grants Awarded

To further our mission of facilitating archaeological research and educational opportunities, AWIARE, in cooperation with the Levett Foundation, is offering up to $10,000 in grant funds annually to support student research on Weedon Island and the Weeden Island culture.

This year the awards committee chose three worthy recipients to receive funding. University of South Florida doctoral candidate Kendal Jackson will receive funding for 12 radiocarbon dates to assist in dating relict estuarine flooding surfaces to determine how human-environmental interaction shaped the establishment and development of late-Holocene (ca. 6500 BP-present) estuarine ecosystems in Tampa Bay. Kendal’s project is a fine example of using an interdisciplinary approach (archaeology and geo-sciences) to address a topic that also has relevance for today.

Trevor Duke, from the University of Florida, will receive funding that will contribute to his petrographic and instrumental analysis of clays used to make pottery found in mortuary and domestic contexts at Weeden Island and Safety Harbor culture sites in Tampa Bay. Determining whether mortuary pottery was made with different or more restricted varieties of clay, would support the hypothesis of ceramic specialists and will contribute to his doctoral research topic of assessing the role of mortuary pottery specialization in creating, maintaining, and transforming social connections in the region during these periods.

The final recipient, Heather Draskovitch, is an MA student at USF who is currently surveying and testing the Weeden Island site to better understand its chronological development. Her grant funds will help obtain radiocarbon dates to document this development. Congratulations to all three recipients for submitting clear and well-developed proposals that are consistent with the overall mission of AWIARE.

AWIARE and FAM 2019

EVENTS

Family Archaeology Event

Every March, Florida celebrates Florida Archaeology Month (FAM). FAS chapters, archaeologists, heritage professionals, museums, historical societies, and the public come together to promote and celebrate Florida’s archaeological sites and knowledge about the past through events, workshops, lectures, and archaeology days.

On March 2nd, the Weedon Island Preserve was full of archaeological activities to celebrate Florida Archaeology Month. Heather Draskovich and Kendal Jackson, who are University of South Florida graduate students, gave two short presentations focusing on current archaeological project at the Weeden Island site. Heather discussed her research to determine when and where Indigenous people were occupying the site and Kendal presented a summary of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) excavations undertaken since 2007.

Also, Rebecca O’Sullivan and Kassie Kemp from the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) created an inventive pop-up exhibit outlining the USFSP excavations with associated artifacts of shell tools, pottery, stone tools, and plant specimens, which gave attendees a new perspective of what has been uncovered at the site over the last 12 years. While people were enjoying the lectures and the pop-up exhibit, visitors also were able to walk over to the AWIARE Research Station where AWIARE’s Secretary Phyllis Kolianos exhibited artifacts from her recent archaeological excavations at two Weeden Island sites along the Anclote River.

The final act of the day was a short hike out to a portion of the Weeden Island site where USFSP and AWIARE have been excavating and Dr. John Arthur (AWIARE’s President) and Elizabeth Southard Razzouk (AWIARE’s Vice President) gave a lecture of the excavations and what they have been finding at the site. If you missed this year’s celebration of Archaeology Month at the Preserve, we will be doing something similar next year. So come on out and celebrate Archaeology Month next March!


FAM 2019: Shared Collections—Shared Stories

A major highlight during the month-long celebration is always the new FAM poster, developed every year to illustrate a unique theme within Florida Archaeology. For the 2019 poster and theme, the FAM team drew from the vast network of archaeological collections on display throughout the state.


 

Hands On Training

RESEARCH & EDUCATION

Anthropology Students Get Hands-On Training at One of the Most Famous Archaeological Sites in the Southeast

Hidden deep in the heart of Weedon Island Preserve, a nearly 3,200-acre natural area on Tampa Bay, is an archaeological dig site that dates back 1,000 years.

Students working at the Weedon Island archaeological site.

From left: Kristina Wood, Bethany Brittingham, Zorana Knezevic, and Chandler Lazear working at the Weedon Island archaeological site.

Following a nearly invisible trail through groves of pine trees and ferns, the ground rises a bit, right before the dig site appears. This rise is called a midden, or shell mound. Soft chatter from a group of students can be heard, followed by the scraping and brushing of earth and rapid swoosh-swoosh sounds coming from screens where dirt and small debris is sifted out.

Led by Dr. John Arthur, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USF St. Petersburg, 16 undergraduate anthropology students are working to uncover remnants  of human history. Arthur couldn’t take all his students to the highlands of southwestern Ethiopia, where he has conducted research for 23 years  on the history and prehistory of the Gamo people with Dr. Kathryn Weedman Arthur, Associate Professor of Anthropology at USFSP. The Weedon Island archaeological site is the next best substitute to provide a  local hands-on experience for students to learn methods of archaeology.

“I wanted to take students out to a site that they could excavate and see if they actually liked archaeology,” said Arthur. “So, this is a  perfect place. It is close to campus and it is accessible.”

Weedon Island is one of the most intact and famous archaeological sites in the southeast U.S. and has provided substantial evidence of early Florida inhabitants. The shell mounds being excavated by USFSP students are human-made piles of shell. Students are primarily uncovering “household” artifacts. Households include pottery, different types of modified shells and shell tools such as scrapers and hammers.

“Excavation allows me to practice the methods we are learning about,” said Shana Boyer, a senior majoring in Anthropology. “I’m a hands-on learner, so being able to actually excavate with my own hands has really enabled me to learn on a deeper level.

This is Boyer’s first time at the Weedon site but not her first time excavating. Previously she did work at the Gamble Plantation in Ellington, a Civil War era site that was a very different experience.

“It was really easy to get through multiple levels of soil in a day, as opposed to here, we may get through two levels a day,” said Boyer. “We were finding a lot of discarded nails and bottles. Here we are finding animal bone and shells.”

Another student at the site is Kristina Wood, a senior at USFSP majoring in Anthropology. This was not the first time Wood was involved in digging at Weedon Island. In 2014, she assisted a graduate student on her thesis project.

“I did all of it! I am pretty sure that I analyzed the entirety of the material that was dug during that year,” Wood said.

Over the course of her studies, Wood has volunteered more than 100 hours in the lab analyzing artifacts.

Archaeologists adjusting a screen at the Weedon Island Archaeological site.

From left: Shana Boyer and Andrew Haines adjusting a screen at the Weedon Island Archaeological site.

This hands-on archaeological experience is all part of an anthropology course called Seminar in Archaeological Methods and Theory. When not excavating, students read theory throughout the week. Then during lunch on the days they work at the site, they talk about the articles they read.

“This course was started at USFSP,” Arthur said. “No other university in the state has it.”

Arthur is also president of the non-profit organization Alliance for Weedon Island Archaeological Research and Education (AWIARE). The Alliance made headlines in 2011 when its members excavated a nearly 40-foot prehistoric canoe from the island’s  shoreline. The canoe is the longest dugout found in Florida.

On this day, Wood stands over one of the three screens at the site.  The one-quarter inch by one-eighth-inch screen, framed and held together by pieces of two-by-four in the shape of a ‘z’, sifts out small shell particles and dirt, leaving the remaining shells and shell pieces intact. The shells are then placed in three-gallon Ziploc bags and  labeled with detailed coordinates and other data, to be taken back to the archaeology lab at USFSP for analysis.

“We are very precise about where it was that we took artifacts out of the ground,” Wood said. “You will find different artifacts depending on the layer of soil they are found in.”

They also record everything with a camera, taking pictures of sediment striations, darkened areas in the soil where postholes once were, and exact locations where artifacts are found.

Both Wood and Boyer have plans to go onto graduate school and continue their work in anthropology. Boyer is planning to study  paleoethnobotany at USF Tampa and Wood has her sights set on a graduate program in Liverpool, England, studying bioarchaeology and genetic research.

“I really enjoy all of it, which is why I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to focus on for grad school,” Boyer said. “I just find it all so interesting. There is a takeaway from everything in anthropology.”


BY KARLANA JUNE, USFSP CONTENT SPECIALIST -- MARCH 2018 --
https://www.usfsp.edu/home/2018/03/07/anthropology-students-get-hands-on-training-at-one-of-the-most-famous-archaeological-sites-in-the-southeast/