From Beneath the Urban Landscape: 1781 Siege of Pensacola Archaeological Sites (original) (raw)
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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.
While reanalyzing collections rather than conducting new excavations is generally considered “unsexy” in archaeology, the collections crisis the discipline is facing dictates that older collections be used more frequently for new research. Difficulties in reestablishing collections’ contexts can be formidable obstacles, but the results can be incredibly rewarding. New studies can reinvigorate old research and produce insightful information for different historical contexts that were not previously examined. For instance terrestrial archaeology in Pensacola, Florida has almost exclusively focused on the city’s rich colonial past, while the city’s more recent American history remains largely unstudied by archaeologists. This paper will focus on the on-going reanalysis of collections of Pensacola’s red light district, and the titillating insights that are emerging from part of the city’s overlooked past.