This Season's Previous Lectures
APRIL 13, 2023
Tracing Marine Transgression at Manasota Key Offshore (8SO7030)
using Crassostrea virginica
Melissa R. Price
Manasota Key Offshore (MKO; 8SO7030) is a Florida Archaic period mortuary pond (7214 ± 30 cal BP) consisting of worked wooden stakes and human remains preserved in peat. It was initially located inland of the current coastline prior to Holocene sea level rise but is now located in the Gulf of Mexico offshore of Sarasota County, Florida. This presentation discusses how oysters (Crassostrea virginica) that were attached to cultural and human skeletal material were used to investigate marine transgression
MARCH 9, 2023
Shell Mounds, Coastal Evolution, and Indigenous Engineering of Tampa Bay’s Inshore Bayous
Kendal Jackson
In this talk, Kendal Jackson discusses key findings from recent geological and archaeological investigations at several of Tampa Bay’s inshore bayous, including Double Branch Bay, Papy’s Bayou, Cockroach Bay, and Bishop Harbor. Drawing on data from 65 estuarine sediment cores and 38 excavations at Native shell-mound sites—including more than 100 new radiocarbon dates— Jackson outlines a new history of environmental transformation extending back ca. 30,000 years, including detailed sequences of estuary formation and transformation from ca. 6,500 years ago to the present. The new work reveals that millennia of shell-mound construction by ancestral Indigenous peoples substantially influenced the trajectory of inshore estuary development and continues to structure the character and distribution of tidal wetland habitats.
FEBRUARY 9, 2023
Indian Slavery and Maronnage in Early Modern Florida
Theodora Light
This presentation analyses instances of Indian maronnage across La Florida and the circum-Caribbean during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Indian slavery spread across the Spanish and English territories, distinct communities of displaced peoples appear across the historical record. Using the frameworks of maronnage, this presentation examines the role of these communities in the early colonial south.
JANUARY 12, 2023
Beer - A Global Journey Through the Past and Present
Dr. John Arthur, Ph.D., USF, St. Petersburg
Ancient and contemporary beers from the Near East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas document the remarkable influence Indigenous beers have had in shaping the development of food production, state level societies, and is an essential food for contemporary Indigenous societies inspiring their social and economic actions.
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DECEMBER 15, 2022
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.
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SEPTEMBER 15, 2022
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 occupied a fort on the frontier of St. Augustine, and fought against Spanish enemies.
OCTOBER 20, 2022
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.
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NOVEMBER 17, 2022
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
Humans experience climate effects on scales that directly affect the availability of key subsistence resources, such as the location and abundance of fish populations. This is especially true for those populations that reside near and depend upon estuarine ecosystems where sea level change and/or changes in salinity can act as primary driving forces in the distribution and configuration of these ecosystems.