Rediscovering Pensacola’s Lost Spanish Missions (original) (raw)
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The Last Mission of Northwest Florida
After the collapse of the last missions in Northwest Florida the small remaining Apalachee and Yamasee populations of these missions coalesced into an area near the Spanish Fort of San Miguel in modern Pensacola, Fl. Depicted on George Gauld’s 1764 map as Indian Town, this small community settled along the edge of the bay just to the east of the Fort. Excavations by the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute on the Lee House lot in 2007 revealed structural and material cultural evidence of this small settlement.
Spanish Florida's eighteenth-century presidios and the tale of their ceramics
Southeastern Archaeology, 2021
At the turn of the eighteenth century, two military presidios-West Florida and San Agustínanchored the shrinking and besieged colony of Spanish Florida. Unlike San Agustín that stayed in one place, the West Florida presidio was relocated three times, creating four geographically separate and chronologically sequential sites of the same community and enabling fine-grained temporal analyses. Here, I analyze ceramic trends that reveal three Mexican majolica types, Olive Jar, and the tempering agents of Native American ceramics that are temporally sensitive. However, these ceramic trends are a cautionary tale as they may be specific only to the West Florida Hispanic and Native American settlements in this region. When comparing the ceramics from West Florida and San Agustín, the main difference is a much higher proportion of Native American ceramics in San Agustín, which I attribute to the presence of many Indian and local mestizo women in their households. This demographic was not as substantial in West Florida. The differences in the two eighteenth-century Spanish Florida presidios reflects flexibility at the local level in implementing a highly regulated Spanish imperial system that enabled their colonial empire to include innumerable indigenous cultures in a variety of historic circumstances.
Colono ware, low-fired earthenware in European form, has long presented a challenge to the archaeologist. The existing typology of colono ware has led to confusion and misunderstanding of these wares. Proposed here is a new, more consistent typology. Archaeological work at three Spanish presidios in Pensacola, Florida, recovered a number of fragments from colono ware and Mission Red Filmed ceramic vessels. The chronological and spatial separation of the three presidios afforded the opportunity to study how these ceramics and their usage changed through time. A study of these changes, along with the distribution of colono wares at two of the three presidios, has presented the opportunity to determine whether these ceramics can be used to answer questions about status and acculturation on the multi-ethnic Spanish colonial frontier.
Apalachee agency on the Gulf Coast frontier
MA Thesis University of West Florida, 2012
After 1704 attacks by the British and their Native American allies, some Apalachee fled their homeland to French Mobile, Spanish Pensacola, and Creek areas. Primary research indicates that those Apalachee who chose to ally politically with either the French or Spanish maintained social connections with both nations as well as the Lower Creek, and through the Creek enjoyed an economic connection with the British. At the same time, by consistently referring to the groups as Apalachee, documents imply some maintenance of Apalachee tradition during the eighteenth century. Comparisons of ten tightly-dated ceramic assemblages quantify material shifts through time and space and augment the historical record. This synthesis illustrates that Apalachee refugees had sufficient resources to play Europeans against each other yet adopted new ceramic traditions. Political and material maneuvering thus allowed them to maintain their social identity.
The Apalachee After San Luis: Exploring Cultural Hybridization Through Ceramic Practice
2015
After the destruction of their homeland in 1704, the Southeastern Apalachee dispersed across the Southeast, with two communities eventually settling along the Central Gulf Coast within 50 miles of each other. Residing in a complex cultural borderland created by constant Native American migrations and European power struggles, the Apalachee experienced rapid culture change in the 18th century, as evidenced by their material remains at the archaeological sites of Mission San Joseph de Escambe in Northwestern Florida and Blakeley Park in Southern Alabama. This thesis explores the nature of the cultural evolution the Apalachee experienced through a highly detailed ceramic analysis and includes a comparative analysis of both 18th century Apalachee settlements, as well as the sites of 17th century Apalachee Mission San Luis de Talimali and the late 18th century Creek village Fusihatchee. Making use of the theoretical perspectives of creolization, hybridity, and practice theory, it can be argued that 18th century Apalachee ceramics reflect a hybridized ceramic practice, influenced by cultural history, geographic location, and social networks.
The departure of the missionized Native American population with the Spanish in 1763 emptied Pensacola of the last of its local, resident, Native Population. Various later Creek and Choctaw groups are documented in the region, and we know that both the British colonial government and the subsequent Spanish government both attempted to attract Native Americans to the area. Native American ceramics recovered from features dating to the late colonial periods give us a chance to study what the Native ceramics of this period looked like and to compare them to other late Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw assemblages.
2019
Site 8ES1340 is located in downtown Pensacola, Florida, and represents a landscape that functioned as a jail site from the British occupation through the antebellum period. This thesis was designed to use a curational research approach to reanalyze archaeologically produced data to place the site within Pensacola’s colonial and antebellum periods and define its multi-jail function. Through the curational research approach, the cultural materials associated with the 1986 investigation of the site were organized and reprocessed to restore the utility of the collection for contextual reconstruction and broad intrasite analysis. The results confirmed the presence of colonial and antebellum cultural components at the site and the functional life-spans of the two respective jail episodes.