LECTURE PRESENTATIONS
The CGCAS monthly lectures have moved to a digital format. We are using the Zoom platform. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Zoom, here are PDF Instructions to help you set up Zoom and participate in the lecture. Please follow the steps prior to the meeting to be ready to view the lecture. The registration link will be provided with the Lecture Announcement or on our Facebook Event Page. The CGCAS Archaeology Lecture series is sponsored by the Alliance for Weedon Island Archaeological Research and Education (AWIARE).
APRIL 10, 2025
Shell Midden Landscapes of the Western Atchafalaya Basin
Dr. Jayur Madhusudan Mehta, Associate Professor in Anthropology, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Florida State University LEARN ABOUT THIS SPEAKER
Monumental shell works, shell middens, and earthen mounds are found throughout the interior of the Atchafalaya Basin and just inland from the margins of the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Many of these sites surround Dauterive Lake, Lake Fausse Point, and Grand Avoile Cove, water bodies artificially impounded by early 20th century levee projects. The geomorphology of Bayou Teche also significantly impacted settlement dynamics in this region before modern levee building. While significant grey literature exists for this region, very little information has been published or made publicly available. This presentation situates the archaeology of the region relative to other published surveys in Petite Anse, Tensas and Yazoo Basins, the Natchez Bluffs, and the Lower Mississippi Valley, and presents on new findings from recent archaeological work in the region.
THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 7:00 - 8:00 PM EDT
Zoom Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/ye27t263
MARCH 13, 2025
North America’s First Pots: Insights into Stallings Culture and Cuisine
Dr. Emily Bartz, Arkansas Archeological Survey and the University of Arkansas
At the intersection of clay, cuisine, and culture, pottery offers profound insights into ancient communities. In this talk, Dr. Emily Bartz explores the cultural history of the Stallings culture of the Savannah River valley, creators of North America’s earliest pottery, and their somewhat unique tradition of indirect-heat cooking. Through experimental archaeology, including stone-boiling simulations with replica vessels, she highlights the technical and cultural innovations of these early potters. Dr. Bartz will also share pioneering results from organic residue analysis, revealing what was cooked in these vessels and how these findings enhance our understanding of early culinary practices and community life in the ancient Southeast.
Dr. Emily Bartz is the station archaeologist for Pine Bluff with the Arkansas Archeological Survey at the University of Arkansas. A recent graduate of the University of Florida, she specializes in the study of ancient pottery and cooking techniques. Her research integrates experimental archaeology and organic residue analysis to uncover insights into past culinary practices and the daily lives of ancient communities of the American Southeast.
FEBRUARY 13, 2025
The Long Human History of Tampa Bay
Dr. Evan Bennett
People have lived in the Tampa Bay area for far longer than there has been a bay. Much of the record of human life around the bay has been left in mounds and middens or etched on its shorelines. Too often, though, in the history of the region, these records have been ignored, treated as mere prologue, or, perhaps worst of all, mythologized. As we confront Tampa Bay’s future, it’s all the more important to remember the bay’s human history is unbroken. Historian Evan Bennett will discuss the need to – and the challenges of – pulling together archaeology and history in writing about Tampa Bay’s long past.
Dr. Evan Bennett is an associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he teaches courses in Florida history, maritime history, and labor history. He was born and raised in Tampa and earned his BA and MA in history at the University of South Florida before completing a PhD in history at the College of William & Mary. His most recent book is Tampa Bay: The Story of an Estuary and Its People.
JANUARY 9, 2025
Mapping the American Sea: A Cartographic History of the Gulf of Mexico
Rodney Kite-Powell, Director of the Touchton Map Library, Tampa Bay History Center
America’s history has been largely written as an inevitable march from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, an unstoppable manifest destiny starting with the English colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth, and ending with the California Gold Rush and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. This narrative downplays – or outright ignores – the role that the Gulf of Mexico and the states (and countries) bordering it have played throughout the last 500 years. Mapping the American Sea seeks to reset that narrative and place the Gulf States, particularly Florida, along with Mexico and Cuba, in their proper context as crucial players in the history and development of the United States and North America.
DECEMBER 12, 2024
In the Footsteps of Flag and Jody: Historical Archaeology of The Yearling
Edward González-Tennant
The Yearling is one of the nation’s most beloved books. Set in a rapidly disappearing rural Florida, the captivating story of young Jody Baxter and his beloved pet fawn Flag is as powerful today as when it was published in 1938. However, few who read Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Pulitzer prize-winning novel are aware of the story’s historical roots. Rawlings based her book on interviews with residents of Pat’s Island, located in the Juniper Prairie Wilderness of the Ocala National Forest. Fewer still are aware that MGM shot the 1946 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck on location in the same place. This talk presents the results of two seasons of archaeological research in Pat’s Island, which focused on excavating the Long homesite and documenting other historical resources in the area. Topics include the environmental history of the area, preliminary interpretations of the excavated materials, and ongoing efforts to commemorate this history using traditional and emerging methods.
NOVEMBER 7, 2024
The Spanish Seminole: The Untold History of the Spanish Indians as Told by a Descendant
David Rahahę·tih Webb
In the 1700s, as Florida’s Indigenous tribes were displaced, the forebears of the Miccosukee and Seminole descended along the southwestern Gulf Coast. They soon began working with Hispanic-Latino and Indigenous fishermen from various Spanish colonies, who had seasonal operations along the barrier islands, including Sanibel. Eventually, these seasonal operations became prolific year-round fisheries and communities, incorporating the fishing practices previously learned from the 6,000-year-old Calusa culture. Their productive estuarine fisheries were called ranchos, which served the same significant commercial and cultural function that the deerskin trade did for their contemporaries. The author, David Rahahę·tih Webb, is adding to our understanding of the ranchos- writing from the perspective of a descendant. His direct ancestors, Juan and Mary Montes de Oca and family, belonged to the Sanibel Island Spanish Seminole rancho community.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2024
Foodways of the Florida Frontier: Zooarchaeological Analysis of Gamble Plantation Historic State Park (8MA100)
Mary Maisel
The Gamble Plantation sits on the banks of the Manatee River in Ellenton Florida and has been home to a wide variety of occupants since its construction in 1844. Archaeological research at the site has recovered material culture spanning the entire occupation of the estate. One of the most universal aspects of life that these many residents shared is that they all prepared, consumed, and disposed of food and food waste in the same midden on the property. This presentation will discuss the analysis of faunal remains recovered from the 2017 and 2018 excavations of Gamble Plantation, the evaluation of the perceived status of diners through the perceived quality of meat, and think broadly about what this information might suggest about social relationships on the Florida Frontier.