Hunter-Gatherer Settlement and Subsistence at Letchworth Mounds (8JE337) Martin Menz, M.A., Doctoral Candidate, University of Michigan The Letchworth site (8JE337) near Tallahassee is one of the largest Woodland period ceremonial centers in Florida. The site includes a 15-meter tall platform mound and several other low mounds, as well as a habitation area roughly 500-meters across….
Localized Histories of Calusa Ecology and Economy, Southwestern Florida, AD 1000 — 1500 Dr. Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Climate Science, Penn State University Dr. Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Climate Science at Penn State University. She is the director for the Socio-Ecological Histories of Estuarine Landscapes (SHEL) Lab…
Fire and Water: Pre-Columbian landscape management in the Southwestern Amazon Dr. Neil Duncan, Associate Professor, University of Central Florida Recent investigations reveal that peoples of the Llanos de Mojos of Bolivia utilized hydrological engineering in the seasonally flooded savanna to modify the landscape for farming, fishing, and hunting. For thousands of years, people significantly transformed…
The Archaeology of Colonialism at Fort Mose: Forging Freedom Through Practice Lori Lee, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Flagler College Fort Mose was the first legally sanctioned free black community in North America. The Spanish governor of Florida guaranteed the legal freedom of self-emancipated Africans and African Americans if they converted to Catholicism, built and…
Black Cemeteries Matter: Erasure of historic Black Cemeteries in Polk County, Florida Juliana Waters, CRM archaeologist and master’s student in the Department of Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida In the past several years, the Tampa Bay area has experienced a reckoning with regard to the intentional erasure, destruction, and abandonment of historic…
Ice Age Florida in Story and Art Robert Sinibaldi, PhD (author) and Hermann Trappman (artist) Florida’s Ice Age was vastly different from what the North experienced. Ice Age Florida: In Story and Art investigates the fascinating fossil record and prehistory of the Gulf Coast compared to what most envision when the term Ice Age comes…
Muskogean Council Houses and Indigenous Democracy in the Southeastern US Jacob Holland-Lulewicz, Ph.D. Department of Anthropology, Washington University Recent re-dating of the Cold Springs site in northern Georgia has led to the identification of the earliest known council houses in the ancestral Muskogean homeland by at least AD 500. This is roughly 500 years earlier…
Lost Cities of the Cloud Forest: Archaeology in the Eastern Andes Anna Guengerich, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Eckerd College Located between the Andes Mountains range and the tropical forests of the Amazon Basin, the Eastern Andes were long assumed to be too rugged, too rainy, and too dense with vegetation to support the development…
Feasting and Fishes: An Investigation into Seasonal Patterns, Labor Organization, and Monumental Architecture from Florida’s Crystal River Site and Roberts Island Shell Mound Complex In recent decades, archaeological research has provided evidence that some mounds in the southeastern United States were constructed in short episodes. A large work force would have been required to accomplish…
Five Millennia of Environmental Changes in the Coastal Southeast U.S. Katharine Napora, Ph.D., University of Kentucky Webb Museum of Anthropology Dr. Napora presents insights into over 5000 years of coastal paleoenvironmental changes based on analyses of ancient buried bald cypress trees recovered from the Georgia Coast. Information from tree rings and chemical analyses, supported by…