Weeden Island Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025

Whitebelt 2 was a Belle Glade site on the northeastern edge of the Everglades founded in 500 BCE using the Whitebelt Triangle seen at Whitebelt 1; A north-south cardinal, a rising of Gacrux , and a major lunar standstill. In 0 BCE it added the linear embankment aligned to the 17º azimuth the rising of Alkaid of the Big Dipper. Mounds on the embankment allowed other observations.

2025

A Belle Glade site on the northeastern edge of the Everglades in Florida founded in 500 BCE. A circle ditch that displayed the Whitebelt Triangle; A north-south cardinal, a rising of Gacrux of the Southern Cross and a major lunar... more

A Belle Glade site on the northeastern edge of the Everglades in Florida founded in 500 BCE. A circle ditch that displayed the Whitebelt Triangle;
A north-south cardinal, a rising of Gacrux of the Southern Cross and a major lunar standstill northern rise. This is repeated at the nearby Whitebelt 2 site.

2025, The Florida Anthropologist

This paper presents an unusual artifact, a Florida
Mississippi period (ca. A.D. 1000 to 1500) human effigy
ceramic vessel attributed to a site (8LL8) in Lee County,
southwest Florida. It is in the collection of the Historical
Museum of Southern Florida (HMSF), now called
HistoryMiami Museum. At first glance, it appears to be a
“hunchback,” a common motif for Mississippian human
effigy bottles, which variously depict female, male, and
gender ambiguous people (e.g., Fundaburk and Foreman
1957:Plates 119, 120; Hudson 1976:Figure 87; Schnell et
al. 1981:Plate 2.11).
Upon closer inspection, it seems the Lee County
vessel1 is certainly not only a “hunchback.” Instead, I
assert, the effigy depicts a full-term pregnant woman in a
kneeling birthing position (Figure 1). I interpret it to be
shamanic (religio-medical) and educational paraphernalia,
akin to medical models used in obstetrics today (Figure
2). I argue that the vessel’s function was likely to
instruct girls, women, and medical practitioners (shaman-midwives)
about pregnancy, birth, and care management,
as complications (miscarriage, breach, stillbirth, maternal
injury or death, etc.) commonly occur. It is possible that
a small doll, placed inside the vessel, was used to teach
about various birthing scenarios.

2025

Crystal River was created as a solar, lunar and stellar observatory to serve as cosmograms in a ritual performance landscape. The observations of the star Gacrux, and the major lunar standstill northern rise were the armature of the site.... more

2025

This is a downsized presentation that I am giving at the May 2025 Florida Anthropology Society meeting in Gainesville FL
The Weeden Island Cosmology consisted of observing three stars: Canopus, Alkaid and Gacrux and their interactions with the Moon on the major lunar standstill northern rise. We will examine four sites looking at the mound morphology, site layouts, and the night skies.

2025

The Weeden Island Cosmology consisted of observing three stars: Canopus, Alkaid and Gacrux and their interactions with the Moon on the major lunar standstill northern rise. We will examine four sites looking at the mound morphology, site... more

2024, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

This paper disseminates results of recent compositional analyses highlighting fundamental changes to the organization of pottery production in precontact southeastern North America. Previous research has indicated that changes to a given potting network alter the pacing and tempo of interactions between experts and apprentices, effectively restructuring intergenerational relationships within a community. For this reason, experienced potters may intentionally resist new technologies to keep active the social bonds that depend on a specific organization of production. This study combines technofunctional, petrographic, and chemical analyses to investigate the social implications of shifting from coiled to molded pottery production during the Mississippian (ca. AD 1050) transition in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA. The primary empirical observations of this research are: 1) certain optical patterns in thin section identify a form of pottery production predicated on the use of concave molds, and 2) the lack of variation in vessel form was related to the shift to molding, and 3) the presence of chromium-enriched clays in domestic pottery after AD 1050 signaled increasing reliance on a restricted range of clay resources. We ultimately argue that molding developed as an expedient technique that broadened participation in domestic potting and eliminated steps in the socialization process as population flourished in Tampa Bay during the Mississippian transition.

2024

Kolomoki, a Weeden Island site in Georgia had five stellar alignments with the stars Canopus and Alkaid which set the time of year to observe major lunar standstills at the winter solstice and minor lunar standstills at the fall equinox.

2024

the Scenic Highway corridor that would beautify it, conserve it, and make it an asset to their community and an attraction for out-of-town visitors. The Pensacola Scenic High-way runs along the Escambia Bay Bluffs over the Escambia Bay. The project team made an initial site visit to Pensacola in May 2011 to assess the site and meet the client, then did site analysis and drafted conceptual designs for the corridor, its major entrance points, and the roadside City-owned properties Mallory Heights, Bay Bluffs Park, and Chimney Park. These designs were presented to the City in October 2011, along with preliminary research on mitigating ecological problems in the highway corridor, specifi-cally invasive species outgrowth and erosion. Final designs based on stakeholder feedback from the October 2011 presentation were prepared for the client and presented in April 2012. The overarching theme of these designs was to build a visual identity for the highway that would resonate with motor-ists...

2024

The Letchworth mounds were influenced by Hopewell culture. Mound one was a bird effigy mound used for solar, lunar and stellar observations. The site was laid out with the Hopewell Measurement Unit (321.3 m) and was designed and used for... more

2024, ProQuest

The study of northwest Florida’s past Indigenous populations is often challenging as they frequently do not fit the anticipated models constructed by researchers whose gazes have been fixed on cultural shifts of the interior.... more

2024, Index of Texas Archaeology Open Access Grey Literature from the Lone Star State

2023, Southeastern Archaeology

The American Southeast saw the development of large ceremonial village centers, the coalescence of households, and monumental architecture integrated into village layout during the Middle Woodland period (ca. AD 1-600). These shifts toward more sedentary lifeways occurred independently of, and prior to, the domestication of plants across the Southeast. This paper examines the seasonality of monumental construction at the Garden Patch site located on the central Gulf Coast of Florida. This site contains evidence for rapid mound construction that followed a predetermined site plan. Here, we present oxygen isotope analyses of archaeological mollusk shells (Crassostrea virginica) to evaluate the seasonality and periodicity of monument construction. We conclude that mound construction occurred during the cooler months of the year. Ultimately, this contributes to an anthropological understanding of the development of these early ceremonial centers in the Southeast.

2023

In 2017, the University of West Florida investigated a shell midden on the East Pensacola Heights (8ES1) site, overlooking Pensacola Bay. While the ceramic assemblage suggested the midden was deposited during a transitional phase between the Late Woodland and Early Mississippian periods, radiocarbon analyses reveal a complex chronology. In short, coastal Woodland traditions persisted beyond the traditional “beginning” of the Mississippian period. This paper discusses how and why coastal communities appear to diverge from the practices of their inland contemporaries, and the impact of maritime cultural landscapes in a response to Mississippianization along the northern Gulf Coast.

2022, Northwest Anthropological Conference Proceedings 2022

With a few notable exceptions, lithic studies have focused broadly on artifact typologies and methods for manufacture and use while lesser informative value is placed on the individuals and groups who produced and utilized them. Great work has been done over the past fifty years in Columbia Plateau archaeology, yet much of this archaeology continues to be tied to functionalist perspectives. Using a 2019 dataset from my analysis of net sinkers at sites along the Lower Snake and Clearwater rivers as well as several archaeological experiments performed to identify manufacturing techniques for notched, perforated, and grooved stone sinkers, I look at ways in which identity may have been created and maintained through the manufacturing processes of these tool types. Further, I identify three theoretical frameworks employed in other regions to interpret lithic, and subsequent social, production and reproduction. This approach highlights human-centered methods of analysis that can significantly contribute to our understanding of historic life in the Columbia Plateau.

2022, People in a Changing Land The Archaeology and History of the Ballona in Los Angeles

This volume of the PVAHP series presents the methodology and approach to large data recovery at complex sites in an alluvial context, the results of the chronostratigraphic reconstruction, and the descriptive results of the data recovery, with emphasis on midden-constituent analysis and feature typology. The long-term occupation in the Ballona, from 8,000 years ago through the Mission and early Historical periods, has been well documented through these excavations. The large-scale excavations yielded large data sets with complex temporal and spatial contexts that are discussed in detail in this volume. This project is among the very large-scale and rigorous studies of Native American adaptations in the southern California coastal region, especially for the Mission period Gabrielino/Tongva territory. The data presented here illustrate both stability and change in cultural systems extending back 8,000 years, including denser occupations during the Protohistoric and Mission periods. The most-pronounced changes occurred at the beginning and end of the Intermediate period and at the start of the Protohistoric and Mission periods.

2022

This research presents a synthesis of the zooarchaeology and site seasonality data for the northern Gulf of Mexico from the Late Archaic through Woodland periods (ca. 5000 B.C. to A.D. 1100). Three questions are addressed: (1) Was the coast occupied on a seasonal basis? (2) Were there one or many coastal subsistence strategies? (3) Were coastal economies and ecosystems stable over the scale of millennia? Archaeological data suggest the coastal zone was not wholly abandoned during any season of the year, although sites varied throughout the year in terms of population density, intensity of site use, or intensity of fishing and shellfishing efforts. There were at least three patterns of animal exploitation on the Gulf Coast: specialized estuarine shellfishing, generalized estuarine fishing, and generalized marine shellfishing. Specialized estuarine shellfishing, a pattern focused on intensive exploitation of oysters, was an early and long-lived adaptation to highly productive salt marsh habitats. Subsistence strategies diversified during the Woodland period, shifting from intensive exploitation of salt marshes to extensive exploitation of an array of estuarine and marine habitats. Marked variability among contemporaneous sites over small geographic scales suggests that coastal dwellers had access to different resources by virtue of their proximity to habitats and resource patches, perhaps reflecting cultural attitudes towards access rights, ownership, and territoriality. Different resources also required different procurement techniques and technologies, and had different potential uses. These distinctions likely influenced the formation of place-based social identities, as well as involvements in local and regional exchange networks. Pre-European fisheries exhibited mild symptoms of decline, but persisted for thousands of years nonetheless. People were potentially impacting Gulf Coast fisheries from the beginning of human history in that area. this study, and in the end included only 12. Thanks to the many researchers who made their datasets available to me, whether or not I included them, and whether or not they knew it! A

2022, Ageing International

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2022

Florida Gulf Coast marshes along the Big Bend are experiencing sea-level rise and an insufficient sediment supply to maintain the marshes surface elevation. Local mean sea level is rising at an approximate rate of 1.5 to 2.4 millimeters (mm) per year and the spring-fed or controlled (dammed) rivers of the Florida Gulf Coast do not provide sufficient sediments to maintain long-term health of the marshes. Marsh health is determined by several factors; sediment supply, sea-level rise, storm events, erosion rate of waves and marsh subsidence. The Florida Geological Survey's Coastal Research Group installed Sediment Elevation Tables (SET) at a number of sites along the Florida Gulf Coast (St. Joe Bay, Apalachicola River, Ochlockonee River, St. Marks River, Aucilla River, Rocky Creek, Cedar Key area and Waccasassa River area) to measure elevation changes of the marsh surface. SET measurements were combined with feldspar marker horizon measurements to quantify changes in marsh topograp...

2021, Journal of Archaeological Research

A renewed adoption of relational perspectives by archaeologists working in eastern North America has created an opportunity to move beyond categorical approaches, those reliant on the top-down implementation of essentialist models or "types." Instead, emerging approaches, concerned with highlighting the agential power of relationships between individuals, communities, and institutions, and, more generally , with simply moving beyond categories, are allowing archaeologists to move from the bottom-up, focusing instead on the relationships that underlie, and indeed constitute, social, political, and economic phenomena. In this paper, I synthesize recent archaeological work from across eastern North America in which archaeologists have productively moved beyond a reliance on categorical perspectives. I explicitly focus on the potential for relational perspectives to recalibrate our social and temporal referents in crafting archaeological narratives.

2020, Native Peoples Magazine

2020, The Florida Anthropologist

This paper presents the results of an analysis of a large sample of siliceous (chert, silicified coral) and non-siliceous (limestone, sandstone, fossil bone) lithic materials recovered during profiling, excavation, and salvage at Big Mound Key (8CH10) from 2007 to 2010. The sample also includes stone artifacts collected during excavations and salvage in 1982 and 1985. The siliceous stone assemblage, though small, provides information on acquisition and use of non-local chert sources, while the non-siliceous stone demonstrates acquisition and use of local raw materials for a variety of uses for which chert, shell, and bone were unsuitable.

2020, Native American Landscapes of St. Catherines Island, Georgia Part 1: The Theoretical Framework

2019

Although a lot of undocumented archaeology has been undertaken in the Big Bend area in the past, the most significant early work (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) was carried out by three men: Clarence B. Moore, Elias H. Sellards, and J. Clarence Simpson. These researchers brought some professionalism to the work, and made efforts to disseminate the results of their excavations and other studies. They also ensured that archaeological collections were deposited in museum collections where they would be curated and available for study by other researchers. None of them had professional training in archaeology, but they nevertheless made lasting contributions to our knowledge of the region.

2018, The Florida Anthropologist

2017

Over the past decade, archaeology has expanded its analytical toolkit by utilizing organic residue techniques. This methodology has greatly increased our ability to determine the nature and origins of organic remains and, in turn, bolster our understanding of prehistoric lifeways. As a subfield of biomolecular archaeology, organic residue analysis has advanced considerably, with improvements in spectroscopic and chromatographic instrumentation, along with associated methods of sample preparation. New developments in metabolomics complement these advances and increase the power of analysis and identification of organic compounds preserved due to past human activities. We at the Departments of Anthropology and Geological Sciences as well as Florida Museum of Natural History are seeking to further expand the efficacy of organic residue analyses by combining metabolomic approaches available at the Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics with other techniques of residue analysis of organic extracts derived from archaeological materials conventionally being done at the University of Florida. Hence, this poster presents the results of the metabolomic analysis using ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry of organic residues on archaeological pottery from four different geographic areas, namely, Central America, South America, Southeastern United States, and Southeast Asia. These results demonstrate how metabolomics can be useful for the chemical analysis of organic residues on archaeological materials.

2017

In southeastern North America, the Woodland period (ca. 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1050) was arguably witness to the first early village societies, and Kolomoki—located in southwestern Georgia—is among the largest villages during this interval. Though archaeologists recognize these communities as seminal developments in the course of human history, little attention has been paid to how they develop and vary internally. This thesis seeks to address these issues by focusing on the development and social construction of the early village community at Kolomoki. The results of an excavation program carried out within Kolomoki’s South Village affords a clearer picture of this understudied area, and provides supplemental collections to previous work at the site. New radiocarbon dates suggest a dynamic developmental sequence of Kolomoki’s village, starting as a relatively compact village sometime around the second century A.D., and growing to a massive scale around the seventh or eighth century A.D. Comparisons of various classes of material cultural provide evidence for contrasts between occupation along Kolomoki’s northern and southern enclosures, interpreted as differing uses of space by an internally differentiated community.

2017

Conceptions of Middle Woodland ceremonial centers focus on monumentality as an act of communal ritual, though interpretations of the meanings of such ritual practices are often neglected. In contrast, we regard the monumental landscape of... more

2016

Low-gradient coastlines are susceptible to inundation by rising water, but they also promote marsh aggradation that has the potential to keep pace with sea-level rise. Synergies among hydrodynamics, coastal geomorphology, and marsh ecology preclude a simple linear relationship between higher water and shoreline transgression. As an archive of human use of low-gradient coastlines, archaeological data introduce additional mitigating factors, such as landscape alteration, resource extraction, and the cultural value of place. The Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey (LSAS) is an ongoing effort to document the history of coastal dwelling since the mid-Holocene, when the rate and magnitude of sea-level rise diminished and the northern Gulf coast of Florida transitioned into an aggradational regime. Results of the first six years of the LSAS suggest that multicentury periods of relative stability were punctuated by site abandonment and relocation. Subsistence economies involving the exploitation of oyster and fish, however, were largely unaffected as communities redistributed themselves with changes in shoreline position and estuarine ecology. After A.D. 200, civic-ceremonial centers were established at several locations along the northern Gulf coast, fixing in place not only the infrastructure of daily living (villages), but also that of religious practice, notably cemeteries and ceremonial mounds. Intensified use of coastal resources at this time can be traced to a ritual economy involving large gatherings of people, terraforming, feasting, and the circulation of socially-valued goods. To the extent that religious practices buffered the risks of coastal living, large civic-ceremonial centers, like aggrading marshes, afforded opportunities to “outpace” sea-level rise. On the other hand, centers introduced a permanence to coastal land-use that proved unsustainable in the long term.

2016

One condition to perform seismic hazard analysis is knowledge about seismogenic zones that is an invaluable source of information and play an important role because it is fundamental know the processes and properties that control the seismogenic zone. The aim of this work is distinguishing seismogenic zones in the Azores region applying different parameters such as the earthquake density, b-values, focal mechanism, historical seismicity and all of these conjugated within the geodynamic framework of the Azores. We identified 10 seismogenic zones plus the well known Mid Atlantic Ridge. The 10 zones we identified are over the major tectonic structures of the Archipelago, namely Terceira Rift and Linear Volcanic Ridges.

2016

2015

Social status was an integral part of the social structure of Northwest Coast societies. The presence of ranked social structures and household space based on rank is reported in the ethnographic literature. Archaeologists have long... more

2015, Southeastern Archaeology

Bayshore Homes (8PI41) is a large mound and midden complex on Florida’s west central Gulf coast that was investigated originally by William Sears in the 1950s. From 1999 to 2009, the authors conducted survey, test excavations, and soil coring to address questions regarding site formation, chronology, and cultural affiliation. Radiocarbon dates and ceramic analysis indicate two separate occupations during the Woodland and Mississippi periods: cal A.D. 140-565 and cal A.D. 890-1390. The earlier occupation is associated with the Manasota archaeological culture, sand-tempered plain pottery, and burials in midden deposits, and interments in a sand mound accompanied by Weeden Island-related mortuary ceramics. The later occupation is associated with Weeden Island-related decorated and Pinellas Plain ceramics in midden deposits and represents the transition from terminal Weeden Island to the Englewood Phase of early Safety Harbor. A large burial mound and a platform mound are associated with this period of site use. Our results also indicate that the unusual ceramic sequence identified by Sears in the site’s large shoreline shell midden is the result of redeposition which occurred sometime after cal A.D. 1220. Possible explanations for the redeposition event include monumental mound construction or the elevation of the midden ridge to serve as a foundation for structures to protect them from rising sea levels or storm surges.

2014

Houtaomuga site is located on the side of the Xinhuang lake in Da'an city, in Northeast China. In 2011 and 2012, more than 100 burials, 300 pits, 30 ditches and 10 houses have been excavated. These remains can be attributed from the Early Neolithic to the Iron Age. The present article sums up the findings attributed to the Neolithic period, presenting the earliest Neolithic pottery remains ever found in the Song and Nen Rivers Valley.

2011, Trends in Ecology & Evolution