In ancient Mesoamerica, as the Aztec calendar predicted the end of the world with a total solar eclipse followed by a cataclysmic earthquake, neighboring cultures also looked to the heavens for signs of their future.

Their painted books depicted solar eclipses, comets and other celestial patterns, for the skies brought good fortune or bad, a successful crop season or dreaded famine.

Predictions and records of climate cycles appear in the Codex Borgia, the finest of the five Borgia group manuscripts to survive the Spanish conquest of the Aztec in 1521. Many scholars over the last   few centuries have offered interpretations of events documented in the Codex Borgia, a 76-page screen-fold book made of deerskin, but they had not taken into account its origin in Tlaxcala and notation of real events.

New research using tree-ring data to match climate events described in the codex shows dates that may be deciphered using the Aztec calendar.

Florida Museum Curator of Latin American Art and Architecture Susan Milbrath displays a copy of the Codex Borgia in front of a replica of the Aztec calendar stone in the Dickinson Hall courtyard on the UF campus. © Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace

“Mesoamerica is a single cultural area and the calendar works similarly — many of the deities are the same, but unless we establish who made this codex definitively, we can’t talk about anything,” said Florida Museum of Natural History Curator of Latin American Art and Architecture Susan Milbrath. ”Initially, Aztec sources were used to interpret it, then the Mixtec scholars around the 1960s started to claim it. Now, with the work of Tony Aveni and this study, we can definitively say it was Tlaxcaltec, but it’s taken about 40 years for it to get pulled back into the Aztec dialogue.”

In a study published Oct. 5, 2011, in Ancient Mesoamerica, Milbrath and Chris Woolley, a University of Florida history graduate student, used tree-ring data extrapolated from Douglas fir   in Puebla, Mexico, to show the Codex Borgia reflects Tlaxcaltec records. The study focuses on pages 27 and 28 of the Borgia, which feature a central illustration of Tlaloc, the Postclassical period central Mexican rain god, surrounded by imagery of the planting season.

“These are like farmer’s almanacs and I think this is fascinating because we don’t have consistent climate data in the United States prior to the Civil War, as far as humans recording climate events,” Milbrath said. “Up until recently, these almanacs were looked at as fortune-telling, yet they actually record real dates correlating with weather patterns, such as in 1467, which corresponds to One Reed and One Crocodile on Borgia 27 in a scene with abundant rain and a bountiful maize (corn) crop.”

This almanac and the one on page 28 show a variety of weather conditions that can be correlated with tree-ring records. During times of drought, trees are unable to grow at their normal   rate, so the width of the rings were compared with the calendar year and its accompanying images, which range from dry land riddled with rodents to star-and circle-speckled worms.

“An entomologist at UF recognized a caterpillar called the fall army worm based on the raised bumps on their skin,” Milbrath said. “The stars painted on these caterpillars are appropriate because they will become moths that are nocturnal. The caterpillars attack maize especially toward the end of the growth stage, and by that time, they’re burrowing sideways into it and they destroy the cob — they don’t eat the whole cob, but they ruin it.”

Milbrath has spent many years interpreting the Codex Borgia, incorporating astronomical events, cultural history and agricultural cycles to draw a picture of life in central Mexico before the Spanish Conquest. By reconstructing 15th-century paleoclimate events, she hopes the research may also be applied to understand long-term agricultural patterns in relation to variable weather and climate changes.

“This codex also shows events in 1496, the year of the only total solar eclipse seen in the post-classic period, and seasonal plants and animals in relation to weather patterns in that year, providing another form of natural history record,” Milbrath said. “The tree ring dates are real and can be compared with the records in the Codex Borgia, but this is just a starting point. Ultimately, I’d like to find out if the Mesoamericans were good natural historians.”

Mysterious appearance

Named after the Italian Cardinal Stefano Borgia, the Codex Borgia was discovered in Italy in the 1800s. According to legend, Cardinal Borgia rescued the 35-foot document from being burned by the neighbor’s children.

“This is pre-Columbian — there was not a single bit of evidence that the Spaniards had arrived in the paintings,” Milbrath said. “The Codex Borgia was something they took back to Europe with them, and it ended up in Europe very early, but it’s kind of mysterious how it ended up in Italy.   There are two codices that Cortez took back, and this is possibly one of the two.”

When Hernan Cortez first arrived in central Mexico, the Tlaxcaltecs were willing to help him because they were surrounded by their enemies, the Aztecs, she said.

“The Tlaxcalans ended up collaborating with the Spaniards, so I think this codex was a gift to the Spaniards because they were on good terms. We don’t have any Aztec pre-Colombian codices — they were all destroyed by the Spaniards, but this codex was probably preserved because the Tlaxcaltecs were their allies.”

While Milbrath’s research alters the basis for interpreting the codex, the painted symbols, like Bible stories, will always be up for interpretation. Even seemingly obvious characters stand a test of hundreds of years’ time. Today, new methods can be applied to the analysis, using natural history records that can be correlated with “real-time events” in the codex.

“Growing up, I thought locusts were related to drought, but they actually need some moisture to breed,” Milbrath said. “When they are running out of food, they become more aggressive so they  form swarms. These swarms appear in the Codex Borgia in a scene that shows a puddle of drying water with a sunny sky overhead, unlike most other scenes showing rainy skies.”

The tree-ring records for that year show early rains followed by dry conditions, an ideal situation for forming swarms of locusts.

“If you didn’t know this codex the way we do now, you might think it is just predictions,” she said.   “You can read and re-read these symbolically charged images and come to a new understanding of how the people of ancient Mexico viewed the world of nature.”

This photo shows copies of pages 27, right, and 28 of the Codex Borgia, a 76-page ancient Mesoamerican screen-fold book made of deerskin. © Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida Museum of Natural History researcher Neill Wallis recently received a $20,000 grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to analyze and digitally document pottery made by prehistoric people of the southeast U.S.

The grant will help Wallis analyze Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery used by hunter-gatherers of northern Florida, Georgia and eastern Alabama from A.D. 100 to 800. Methods include recording vessel shape and form, photographing designs, and conducting neutron activation and petrographic analyses and radiocarbon dating soot on the pottery. The grant will fund the neutron activation and petrographic analyses.

“This will be useful to many archaeologists working in Florida, Georgia or Alabama – there are a lot of sites that have Swift Creek pottery,” Wallis said. “It’s really going to give us a sense of how hunter-gatherers interacted with other hunter-gatherers.”

The research will expand the work Wallis conducted for his book, “The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast,” published in February. The book, featured in April by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Library, showed significance could be found in seemingly meaningless items, such as cooking pots that were found to be exchanged long distances.

“This project is of a much larger scale, to create a database we can continue to build on in the future,” Wallis said. “When we have enough data, we should be able to pick out patterns of population migration, marriage alliances, or exchange, and actually be able to discern the difference between those things.”

Swift Creek pottery is unique because the designs created by stamping a paddle into a vessel before it is fired can be traced to specific sites with vessels sharing the same impressions. The designs are like “fingerprints,” enabling researchers to map where ancient people lived, the distances they traveled and with whom they interacted, Wallis said.

The samples are from the Woodland period, which spanned 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 1,000, a time of considerable cultural development and increased burial mound ceremonialism, Wallis said.

“Around 1,500 years ago, people were organized in ways we don’t understand that well,” Wallis said. “At a level of social organization somewhere between large chiefdoms and small bands of hunter-gatherers, anthropologists don’t have a very good idea of how those people interacted or how exchange or mobility shaped their society. This pottery allows us to establish patterns in the movement of ancient people or the movement of objects in ways no other artifacts can.”

About one-third of the samples used for the project are housed in the Florida Museum’s collections. Other contributors include the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, the University of South Florida, the University of Georgia and Valdosta State University.

The University of Missouri will conduct the Neutron Activation Analysis, a process of determining chemical signatures for the pottery and distinguishing local and non-local pieces. Ann Cordell, a senior biological scientist at the Florida Museum, will conduct the petrographic analysis, which identifies the mineral inclusions in the clays.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation is a private organization supporting worldwide research in all branches of anthropology. The foundation awarded Wallis the maximum funding available to applicants in the “Grants for Post-Ph.D. Scholars” category for the one-year project, which began July 1.

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Source: Neill Wallis, office: 352-273-1920, cell: 352-745-6888, nwallis@flmnh.ufl.edu
Writer: Danielle Torrent, dtorrent@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact:  Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida archaeologists uncovered the remains of a more than 300-year-old building Friday in St. Augustine that may predate the famous Castillo de San Marcos fort.

Researchers from the Florida Museum of Natural History located coquina stone and tabby foundations of an at least 90-by-40-foot-structure, making it one of the largest churches in colonial Spanish Florida and the only mission church made of stone.

The team believes the church may be the oldest stone structure from Spanish colonial Florida. It was found on the site of the first Franciscan mission in Florida, the Nombre de Dios, which was the longest-enduring mission in the Southeast, in operation from 1587 until 1760.

“This is a truly exciting rediscovery of a long-lost building,” said co-investigator Kathleen Deagan, a distinguished research curator emeritus of historical archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “The Nombre de Dios mission was the first and longest-lasting of the Spanish Franciscan missions in Florida.”

As America’s oldest city, St. Augustine houses some of the nation’s first European settlements and this discovery is thought to be a church commissioned by Florida’s governor in 1677, Deagan said. Owned by the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine, the church was constructed in honor of the Shrine of Nuestra Señora de La Leche and Buen Parto (Our Lady of the Milk and Safe Delivery), which was erected in the 1650s. After English raiders destroyed the church in 1728, the ruins were gradually buried and the location forgotten.

“This is a major building that has been found,” Deagan said. “For its time, it would’ve been one of the largest in Florida.”

Artifacts recovered at the site, including Spanish pottery, building nails and glass fragments, date to the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Scientists plan further excavations to determine if the structure was built on earlier mission or church ruins.

The site is located about one quarter of a mile north of the Castillo de San Marco, the fort built on the city’s coast to defend Spain’s claim to the New World in the 17th century. The Florida Museum of Natural History and the Lastinger Family Foundation are supporting the excavation.

“To find the remains of the first stone structure built in St. Augustine is pretty incredible,” said co-investigator Gifford Waters, Florida Museum historical archaeology collection manager. “This is the first time we have conducted excavations at that section of the site, so we’re getting a look at an undocumented portion of the site.”

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Source: Kathleen Deagan, 352-222-0165, kd@flmnh.ufl.edu
Gifford Waters, 352-514-0601, gwaters@flmnh.ufl.edu
Writer: Danielle Torrent, dtorrent@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new book by a University of Florida researcher challenges traditional theories about the exchange of prehistoric pottery and its value among ancient peoples in north Florida and southern Georgia.

“The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast” by Neill Wallis, an assistant curator of archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, provides evidence early peoples found symbolism in seemingly insignificant items such as cooking pots.

“I discovered cooking vessels, considered normal, everyday items people use, break often and throw away in their kitchen garbage, were exchanged in ceremonial and in mortuary contexts,” Wallis said. “That’s really unexpected because archaeologists rarely think of ceramic cooking vessels as exchange items.”

Typically, archaeologists look for rare items that may have brought prestige or power, such as trinkets made of copper or mica. Cooking vessels have not been singled out as exchange items in the past because they are heavy, cumbersome, break easily and are comprised of everyday materials such as clay.

Wallis analyzed samples in village remains and burial mounds from 30 sites throughout north Florida and south Georgia, including Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery, which many archaeologists consider the pinnacle of prehistoric pottery in eastern North America, said Thomas Pluckhahn, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.

“People have realized that this pottery has huge potential for understanding the people who made it because the designs are so unusual and so particular,” Pluckhahn said. “It’s a level of detail that you can get down to maybe not the individual potter, but close to it, which we don’t often get in archaeology.”

Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery was created by carving a design of lines and curves onto a wooden paddle used to stamp the ceramic vessel before it was fired. The patterns are associated with different peoples from the Altamaha River in Georgia and the St. Johns River in Florida.

Swift Creek culture spanned parts of northern Florida, Georgia and eastern Alabama about 1,500 years ago, from A.D. 100 to 800. Wallis compared form and function data on the samples he collected, including soot, abrasions and shape of the reconstructed pots, all of which offer clues about how a vessel may have been used. He also analyzed the chemistry and mineralogy of the samples to identify non-local specimens at each site.

Surprisingly, all the non-local vessels were found in burial mounds rather than middens, or trash mounds. Wallis suggests this represents exchange rather than the movement of people. The vessels would have been used as social and political capital, objects important for creating alliances. These exchanges are most pronounced when someone dies, triggering repayment of debt obligations, he said.

“It’s particularly unusual because it comes out of a domestic production context,” Wallis said. “Probably women at the household level were making these vessels and using them every day – but some of them also were exchanged. It’s like someone giving you the pot they use to boil their pasta, but they’ve used it for 10 years.”

The samples are from the Woodland period, from 1,000 B.C. to A.D. 1,000, a time of considerable cultural development. The period is well known for the increased popularity of burial mound ceremonialism, Wallis said. It saw the rise of long-distance exchange networks, the spread and diversification of ceramic vessels across the eastern United States and the emergence of new pottery-making traditions.

“In general, we do find that pottery was buried with people, but in this particular location, most of these vessels were broken and spread across the top of the mound, which suggests they are group or communal offerings, not necessarily specific to one person,” Wallis said. “It all came together, I think, to tell a story.”

Editors: Story can end here.

Wallis’ research began in 2004 with analysis of a sherd, or piece of a vessel, from the Mayport Mound in Jacksonville. He compared the vessel’s size and thickness to sherds from other Swift Creek culture sites.

In 2007, Wallis received National Science Foundation funding to conduct Neutron Activation Analysis and petrography analysis on the samples to identify their mineral and elemental composition. The analysis was performed at the University of Missouri Research Reactor. Florida Museum of Natural History scientist Ann Cordell also conducted petrographic analyses of the samples.

“I think many archaeologists have realized this [Swift Creek] pottery has this great potential, but nobody had approached this research in such a systematic and comprehensive manner,” Pluckhahn said. “Wallis has done a good job of exploring that potential.”

The University of Alabama Press released “The Swift Creek Gift: Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast” Friday (Jan. 28). The 264-page book is available in hardcover and paperback editions.

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Source: Neill Wallis, office: 352-273-1920, cell: 352-745-6888, nwallis@flmnh.ufl.edu
Writer: Danielle Torrent, dtorrent@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

Milanich is among 229 new fellows who join one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and a center for independent policy research. The scholars, scientists, jurists, writers, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders represent universities, museums, national laboratories, private research institutes, businesses and foundations.

Milanich’s areas of research interest include the archaeology of pre-Columbian peoples in the southeastern United States and the impact of Spanish colonization on the Native Americans of that region. Recent research has focused on the use of journalism as historical record during the last three decades of the 19th century (in Florida and the American West) and on the Seminole Indians of Florida in the early 20th century. He is a previous recipient of grants and scholarships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and others.

Milanich received his bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Florida. He later held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution.

Other 2010 inductees include actors John Lithgow, Steve Martin and Denzel Washington; film director Francis Ford Coppola; Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; journalist Christiane Amanpour; David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States; James Leach, National Endowment for the Humanities chairman; and G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

Since its founding by John Adams, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the Academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 9 at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, visit http://www.amacad.org/news/new2010.aspx

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Source: Jerald Milanich, 607-326-6071, 352-256-6585 (cell); jtm@flmnh.ufl.edu
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Small islands dwarf large ones in archaeological importance, says a University of Florida researcher, who found that people who settled the Caribbean before Christopher Columbus preferred more minute pieces of land because they relied heavily on the sea.

“We’ve written history based on the bigger islands,” said Bill Keegan, a University of Florida archaeologist whose study is published online in the journal Human Ecology. “Yet not only are we now seeing people earlier on smaller islands, but we’re seeing them move into territories where we didn’t expect them to at the time that they arrived.”

Early Ceramic Age settlements have been found in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Montserrat, for example, but are absent from all of the larger islands in the Lesser Antilles, Keegan said. And all of the small islands along the windward east coast of St. Lucia have substantial ceramic artifacts — evidence of settlement — despite being less than one kilometer, or .62 mile, long, said Keegan, who is curator of Caribbean archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus.

It was thought that people preferred larger islands because the land mass of bigger islands could support a more diverse range of habitats and greater numbers of animal species for humans to subsist on, Keegan said. In addition, the focus of long-term evolutionary patterns has favored large islands.

But small islands had coastlines rich with fish, and the absence of dense woodlands made them more suited to farming and hunting small prey such as iguanas, tortoises and hutias, a cat-sized rodent, he said.

“In the short term, small islands often are superior to larger islands, and for a variety of reasons, they were actually people’s first choice,” Keegan said. “They had better wind flow, fewer mosquitoes and more plentiful marine resources. With sufficient water and a relatively small amount of land to grow certain kinds of crops, they had everything one would need.”

Because prehistoric people were drawn to these small islands, they may tell scientists more than settlements on larger islands about early patterns of life, Keegan said. To date, most archaeological excavations have taken place on bigger islands in such countries as Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Much of Keegan’s research focused on Grand Turk, Middle Caicos and very small cays in the Turks and Caicos Islands, along with Carriacou in the Grenadine Islands.

Pottery remains he found that were analyzed at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s ceramic technology lab shows that humans often left large islands for small ones, probably initially to take advantage of abundant marine resources along the coastline.

Ceramic pottery sherds recovered from the smaller Turks and Caicos islands, for example, were actually found to have come from Haiti, he said. “Traveling to the Turks and Caicos gave these people an opportunity to get sources of food that weren’t locally available to them,” he added.

In another case, pottery remains were found on an extremely tiny island in the Turks and Caicos that had little soil and was accessible only by a sand spit, Keegan said

“The island looks just like a rock,” he said. “To think that anyone would have any reason to be out there is just beyond believability. But the island is named Pelican Cay, so people may have gone there to capture sea birds and their eggs.”

People were drawn by the large varieties of fish, tortoises, iguanas and sea turtles that were in much greater supply on Grand Turk than the island of Hispaniola at the time, Keegan said. Remains from loggerhead turtles as big as 1,000 pounds were excavated from Grand Turk, although sea turtle sizes eventually declined to 60 pounds with overexploitation, he said.

“The high rates of return from capturing these animals far outweighed the costs of getting to Grand Turk,” he said. “Such human migration patterns made good economic sense.”

It was probably easier to sail to other islands than traverse from one end of an island to the other through the overgrown vegetation of tropical woodlands, he said.

“Most island archaeologists today, including those in the Caribbean, recognize that the sea was their ancient highway,” he said.

And the smaller the island, the better. “Based on our work, it is clear that marine resources on smaller islands in the Caribbean were abundant, heavily exploited and even sought after by the native peoples,” Keegan said. “You could say that ‘small is beautiful’ or ‘size doesn’t matter.’”

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Source: William Keegan, 352-226-5853, keegan@flmnh.ufl.edu
Writer: Cathy Keen, 352-392-0186, ckeen@ufl.edu
Media contact: Paul Ramey, 352-273-2054, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida study is the first to document ancient hunting effects on large-game species in the Maya lowlands of Central America, and shows political and social demands near important cities likely contributed to their population decline, especially white-tailed deer.

Additional evidence from Maya culture and social structure at the end of the Classic period (approximately 250 to 800 A.D) strongly supports this assertion. The study by Florida Museum of Natural History Assistant Curator of Environmental Archaeology Kitty Emery appears in the Oct. 31 issue of the Journal for Nature Conservation.

“We’re finding declines specifically in large-game species, and particularly in the species that were politically and socially important to the Maya,” Emery said. “The politically powerful elite Maya had preferential access to large game, and white-tailed deer were especially important to the Maya as food and for their symbolic power.”

Emery tracked the proportion of large-game animals to all vertebrate species over time, using 78,928 animal bones found at 25 Maya archaeological sites. To tease apart specific hunting effects, she also tracked the proportion of white-tailed deer to all vertebrates. Her samples spanned 2,500 years, from about 1000 B.C. to 1500 A.D.

This period includes the collapse of the lowland Maya political and social order and the final period of Spanish colonization. Her study, funded by the National Science Foundation, is the first regional analysis of this area to interpret how humans impacted animal populations based on archaeological data of animal use by humans. She used both her own original data and existing published data.

“The data suggests the game decline was caused primarily by hunting pressure since the reduction in numbers was recorded for large vertebrates as opposed to just animals sensitive to the disappearance of forest cover or those sensitive to climate changes,” Emery said. “But the effects of hunting pressure were undoubtedly exacerbated by deforestation and climate change since there is also documented evidence for these changes at the same time.”

Emery said not all sites showed large-game declines despite high human population, and that the declines were most noticeable at regional capitals and large cities.

“The capital cities were home to a large and top-heavy ruling class who demanded that the regions’ hunters provide them with large quantities of the best cuts of favorite meats from large game, and particularly the white-tailed deer,” Emery said. “They also demanded large numbers of symbolically important species such as white-tailed deer and large wild cats like jaguar and puma, since these species were used as symbolic displays of their wealth and power, and were used in ritual interactions with the deities.”

Deer also were important theatrically because actors wore costumes to portray the predator-prey relationship.

The power of the noble classes and the king was based on their perceived abilities to control ecology, but Emery said several negative environmental situations converged simultaneously, likely contributing to the collapse of Maya political stability starting around 1,200 years ago. According to current Maya archaeological theory, Maya demand for wood used in building finishes such as lime plaster combined with an exploding population base that cleared more and more land for agriculture — resulting in deforestation. Concurrent climate change resulted in a 200-year drought which further curtailed forest regrowth.

“The rulers’ response to the environmental degradation may have been to demand more large game and more deer to use in feasts and rituals where they appealed to deities for help and also to prove their status,” Emery said. “As the valued resources became more scarce, they made more demands to obtain them to prove and reinforce their power.”

Their demand for large game was not extreme enough to cause extinction or local exterminations, an important finding. Emery said this indicates that over the 2,500 years of this study, the ancient Maya were generally careful of their animal resources.

Brown University ancient Maya scholar Stephen Houston said Emery’s “breadth of expertise” allowed her to tackle such an important review of Maya animal use.

“The lack of extinctions shows that the Maya impact on parts of their environment was not as profound as some have thought,” Houston said. “That is, we don’t see utter devastation to the extent that species disappeared entirely. But Emery also confirms that the Maya went after high-value, prestigious meats like deer and, through vigorous hunting, that they found such game harder and harder to find.”

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media Contact: Paul Ramey, 352-846-2000, ext. 218, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu
Source: Kitty Emery, 352-392-1721, ext. 237, kemery@flmnh.ufl.edu

The Calusa artifacts and specimens — from fish otoliths and Spanish glass beads to shavings left over from working with wood, shell and stone — are unique because they comprise the only large, systematic collection from a major town site of this people group.

The Calusa occupied Pineland, located west of Fort Myers on the shore of Pine Island, for 15 centuries. Florida Museum archaeologists William Marquardt and Karen Walker and hundreds of volunteers excavated the site, now part of the Florida Museum’s Randell Research Center, between 1988 and 1995. The scientists now face the challenge of conserving and preserving the more than 141,000 specimens, which they say are extremely valuable for education and research.

“Pineland’s long period of occupation and the collection’s broad range of extensively documented materials mean that even its smallest elements are in great demand by researchers,” Marquardt said.

“When we look at the larger picture and the human artifacts in the context of the human-environmental specimens, we start to see patterns that speak to us about the cultural and environmental changes that took place. It’s important to keep these materials in good condition so they can keep telling these stories and reveal new stories into the future.”

Walker said much of the collection remains unanalyzed.

“There are many possible theses and dissertations waiting to be discovered in this collection,” she said. “Its rehabilitation will greatly facilitate both its research and educational uses.”

The Calusa were once the most powerful people in South Florida until they vanished in the early 1700s. They built extensive mounds and canals, engaged in long-distance trade, collected taxes from dozens of towns and developed elaborate belief systems and arts–remarkably, without reliance on staple-crop agriculture.

Marquardt said the longevity and utility of the Calusa collection is threatened by current storage and organization methods. Researchers will rehabilitate the collection by rehousing artifacts, specimens and samples using an archival bagging and boxing method that will maintain physical order by catalog number and detailed location.

“The collection suffers from incomplete curation and a high level of past use for research and education,” Marquardt said. “In addition, the artifacts are overcrowded as a result of expansion due to intensive ceramic analyses.”

Curation is the process of caring for a scientific collection. It requires meticulous hours of conservation, preservation, repair, systematic organization and detailed record keeping.

The Florida Museum’s Calusa collection is largely comprised of artifacts, human-environmental specimens and associated archaeological records. (Artifacts, in the archaeological sense, are objects created or modified by humans.) Artifacts from the Calusa collection include Spanish-derived glass and ceramic objects; Native American pottery sherds; objects made of shell, bone and stone; and waterlogged wood, seeds and other organic materials.

Florida Museum archaeobotanist Donna Ruhl cares for hundreds of specimens collected from a waterlogged area of the Pineland site, and is experimenting with different methods of wet storage. The specimens can’t be allowed to dry due to the threat of extreme shrinking and degradation.

“The primary goal behind long-term curation is preserving the material for future research,” Ruhl said. “For example, we have to consider the potential hazards of storing wet specimens with fungicide or herbicide additives meant to prevent algal blooms, bacteria, or other microbial growth because that additive might inadvertently impact future DNA extractions or other avenues of research.”

Oxygen-free waterlogged areas of the Pineland site preserved the only known prehistoric papaya seeds to be found in North America, as well as the only prehistoric chili peppers in the eastern United States. Marquardt said the type of preservation indicated that a rise in sea level buried the seeds and kept them under water continuously. Scientists also have found bits of twisted cordage, wood and fibers that provide additional clues to how the Calusa interacted with their environment.

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The Florida Museum of Natural History is Florida’s state natural history museum, dedicated to understanding, preserving and interpreting biological diversity and cultural heritage. It is located near the intersection of Southwest 34th Street and Hull Road in the University of Florida Cultural Plaza in Gainesville. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Butterfly Rainforest admission is $8.50 for adults ($7.50 Fla. residents) and $4.50 for children ages 3-12. Prices subject to change. For more information, including directions and parking, call (352) 846-2000, or visit www.flmnh.ufl.edu.

Sources:

Bill Marquardt: bilmarq@flmnh.ufl.edu, cell: (352) 215-2633; office: (352) 392-1721, ext. 492

Karen Walker: kwalker@flmnh.ufl.edu, (352) 392-1721, ext. 244

Donna Ruhl: ruhl@flmnh.ufl.edu, (352) 392-1721, ext. 487 and 493

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

Event organizer and Florida Museum Archaeology Curator Archaeology Bill Keegan said speakers will touch on topics highlighting the multicultural diversity of the Caribbean and historical interconnections between the islands.

“People think of history as an old, dead subject,” said Keegan, who heads the Florida Museum’s Caribbean Archaeology Program. “But two presenters, both of whom are from the Caribbean, are talking about the influence of the pre-European path in modern society. To my mind this shows that the path is still alive today.”

Time periods under discussion range from 1,000 A.D. to present. Symposium speakers include Florida Museum staff, academic faculty, students and former students.

“One of the best things about the Caribbean Archaeology Program at the Florida Museum is that we’ve been attracting so many students from the Caribbean,” Keegan said. In addition to research, the program trains UF students.

The symposium is named after Ripley Bullen, the Florida Museum’s first curator of social sciences and a pioneer in his field who collected extensive archaeological material throughout Florida and the Caribbean. This year marks the 30th anniversary of his death, and the 20th anniversary of the death of his wife, Adelaide, with whom Bullen worked closely throughout his life.

“Because of Bullen’s pioneering work, the Florida Museum has the second-largest systematic collection of Caribbean archaeology in North America,” Keegan said. “So it seemed fitting that we honor him by naming this symposium after him.”

For more information on the Florida Museum Caribbean Archaeology Program, visit: www.flmnh.ufl.edu/caribarch.

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

Keegan began investigating Caribbean prehistory nearly 30 years ago, and he infuses his accumulated knowledge about the Taíno, an indigenous pre-Columbian people, with archaeological theory to explain how myths and beliefs not only affect cultures but may also be used thousands of years later by archaeologists interpreting culture.

“Historical events have multiple meanings that are dependent on the different perspectives of the different observers,” Keegan said. “What I have tried to do is sort through a diversity of opinions to gain a clearer perspective on how people of the past and present interact in the creation of history.”

Keegan said many cultures around the globe have a tale that is one version or another of the “stranger king,” but the basic story line typically involves a foreigner who comes from across the water, weds the ruler’s daughter and deposes the ruler. In his book, Keegan examines the myth of the “stranger king” and its multiple meanings to interpret events surrounding the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the island of Hispaniola in the 15th century, where the most important Taíno chief was a man named Caonabó.

Keegan uses evidence from Spanish colonial documents along with evidence from the archaeological record to create a new interpretation on the legendary encounter of these two leaders. He also offers a new theoretical framework in which oral myths, primary source texts and archaeological studies work synergistically to reconstruct a detailed and holistic view of the past.

“A path-breaking work, rich and mature, complex but readily accessible,” said Geoffrey W. Conrad, of the William Hammond Mathers Museum at Indiana University. “It unites the many facets of 25 years of innovative research and leads us out of the once-irresolvable dilemmas of contemporary archaeology.”

The book may be ordered from the University Press of Florida, www.upf.com, where it can be found under the “Anthropology and Archaeology” category. The 6-by-9 book, ISBN number 9780813030388, is 256 pages and sells for $39.95

Writer: DeLene Beeland
Media contact: Paul Ramey, pramey@flmnh.ufl.edu

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