"Raiders of Lost Florida: The Strange Saga of Florida’s Lost Cultural Treasures"

     Soon after the Civil War, archaeologists, scientists, adventurers, and naturalists began traveling to Florida, lured by the thrill of discovery in this still little explored subtropical wilderness. Some came for their health, some for the sport, others in the quest of archaeological. But all had one thing in common. They took something with them, a piece of Florida’s natural or cultural heritage. By the last decades of the century, organized expeditions were being sent from prominent northern institutions to dig up Florida’s mounds and ancient Indian sites. Objects from sites like Florida’s famous Crystal River mounds vanished into vaults and museum drawers thousands of miles away, locked away from public view and accessible only to serious scholars.  Where are these “lost treasures” now? Will they or should they return to Florida, and if so, to whom?

Sponsored by Crystal River Archaeological State Park.

"Tocabaga and Menendez: The Archaeology and History of Safety Harbor"

     The Safety Harbor site, located in what is now Philippe Park, is a time capsule of Florida history. In the 1500s, it was a thriving Native American village that had been occupied for several centuries. It was the principal town of a powerful chief name Tocobaga. Tocobaga ruled over much of the area around Tampa Bay and was involved in an ongoing power struggle with the Calusa Indians to the south. Into this volatile situation came Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the first Spanish governor of colonial Florida. Menendez wanted to expand Spanish influence from his base in St. Augustine to the Gulf coast, and he saw Tocabaga as an important ally. Menendez’s efforts to court Tocobaga and to establish a Spanish garrison at Safety Harbor ultimately failed, but also contributed to the demise of the Tampa Bay natives. Twentieth century excavations at Safety Harbor and surrounding sites yielded artifacts and other physical evidence of these interactions, a microcosm of Spanish/Indian relations in all of Florida.

Sponsored by Safety Harbor Museum of Regional History

"The Calusa-People of the Shell Coast"

     Pine Island is located west of Fort Myers in southwest Florida. The Pineland Site, on the northwestern coast of Pine Island, was occupied as early as 2000 years ago by the Calusa Indians, who fished in the rich estuary of Charlotte Harbor. They built mounds, engineered canals, and ultimately became a powerful, socially complex, and artistic society. By the time the Spaniards arrived in the 1500s, the Calusa controlled all of South Florida. Pineland, with its major canal and paired high mounds, may have been an early capital town of the Calusa.

Sponsored by Randell Research Center, Florida Museum of Natural History

"The Calusa and Their Environment"

     The rich ecological setting of the Calusa homeland was an important part of their success.  The subtropical coastal environment of southwest Florida provided a diversity of fish in fantastic quantities. Game was plentiful, and many plants were used for foods, medicines, and materials for making canoes, mats, nets, and fishing tackle. The Pineland site provides a key to understanding not only the ancient Calusa Indians and their way of life, but gives us a valuable historical environmental perspective.

Sponsored by Randell Research Center, Florida Museum of Natural History

"The Natives of Tampa Bay at the Time of First Contact"

     The last natives of Tampa Bay, “the people in between”, were neither Timucua nor Calusa, but shared aspects of both. Interchangeable Spanish use of a supposed chief’s name with that of a group or village (and variable spellings) have resulted in confusion over early historic native identities. In 1528-39, the Tampa Bay area included the Tocabaga, Usita, Neguarete, Capaloey, Orriygua, and Mocosco. In 1675-79, this region was occupied by Pojoy, Pinero, Elafay, and Tocopaca, and by 1679, the area was under Calusa control. By 1704, the last remnant Tocobaga lived near St. Marks, and Pooy and Alafaes were near St. Augustine.

Sponsored by DeSoto National Memorial

"Charnel Knowledge: Weeden Island Sixty Years after Willey and Woodbury"

     In 1942 Gordon Willey and Richard Woodbury published their first paper on the Weeden Island culture (AD 200/300-1000). Since then research has fleshed out our knowledge of the Weeden Island culture and its regional variations in southeast Alabama, southern Georgia, northern Florida, and the Florida Gulf coast as far south as manatee and Sarasota counties. In the late 1980s excavations at the McKeithen site in north Florida and surveys and excavations in the surrounding region allowed archaeologists to model Weeden Island social, political, and settlement systems. Early Weeden Island societies are best viewed as having a “big-man”system with some sites becoming major centers of mortuary activities. The importance of such centers and their dominating lineages rose and fell over time. After ca. AD 750 as agriculture became more important inland Weeden Island settlements became less nucleated and small, farmsteads and groups of farmsteads were common. Burial mounds show little elaborations. Still late some late Weeden Island cultures again developed nucleated settlement and political systems, developing into Mississippian societies.

Sponsored by Time Sifters, a Chapter of the Florida Anthropological Society

"The Calusa in the Colonial Era"

   Beginning in the 16^th Century, the fate of the Calusa and other Florida Indians became linked to the emerging Spanish colonial empire. Even as other groups to the north were assimilated into the Franciscan mission system based in St. Augustine, the Calusa remained largely isolated, experiencing only sporadic contacts by ships and missionaries. Nevertheless, as was the case throughout Spanish Florida, European diseases only prefaced the juggernaut of English-sponsored slave raiding, and during the early 18^th century armed Creek and Yamassee Indians pushed the Calusa remnants to the keys. The handful of survivors later fled to Cuba with the Spanish.

Sponsored by Randell Research Center, Florida Museum of Natural History