WMSLSSAS

FLORIDA ICE AGE (PLEISTOCENE) MAMMALS

The sedimentary sequence in Florida began in the Eocene during the Cenozoic period, which is Earth’s current geological era. The Pleistocene era, commonly known as “The Ice Age,” began approximately 2.6 million years ago and lasted until approximately 12,000 years ago, with megafauna, described as those species over 100 lbs., existing across the peninsula. Prior to the Pleistocene, volcanic activity created a series of islands between North and South America, which eventually coalesced to form the Isthmus of Panama, enabling travel between the continents during what has been termed the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI).

Fossils of South American immigrants, such as giant ground sloth, glyptodonts, and giant armadillos can be found across much of Florida, including within our own local springs and rivers. Native megafauna such as horses, camels, llamas, zebras, saber-tooth cats, dire wolves, and mastodons roamed the plains of Florida at the beginning of the Pleistocene. In the areas where one can find fossils of tapirs and deer, the local environment is interpreted to have been heavily forested. Swampy areas contained alligators, as is the case in the present-day.

However, as the Pleistocene progressed, the types of megafauna began to diversify as new immigrants to North America, such as the Columbian mammoth arrived from Asia and Africa via the Bering land bridge, which allowed access to new territory approximately 1.8 mya. There are three theories of megafaunal extinction: climate cycles and failed adaptation, resource competition and selection, and the overkill hypothesis. Changing climate cycles could have resulted in the loss of vegetation upon which massive herbivores depended. Pressures on herbivores would, in turn, affect the viability of the carnivore population.

Mastodons and mammoths successfully coexisted across Florida, as their teeth were different, allowing the mammoths to graze on more grassy vegetation and the mastodons to browse on more shrubby vegetation. Once bison arrived approximately 500,000 years ago, and spread out across much of North America, stable isotope studies indicate that several types of grazers at that time, mammoths, horses, zebras, and bison, competed for the same resources--grass. A bison skull from the Wacissa River, with a projectile point embedded in its forehead, dated to approximately 13000 years ago, demonstrates direct interaction between megafauna and humans in Florida. A cast of this skull is on display at the Florida Museum. These topics and much more will be discussed and we hope you’ll join us either in person or by Zoom.

Dr. MacFadden is a distinguished professor at the Florida Museum, is director of the University of Florida Thompson Earth Systems Institute, and is a leading researcher in the fields of vertebrate paleontology and evolution. He received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in geology from Columbia University, with a specialization in paleontology.

Tuesday, May 10, 2022, 7 pm – 8 pm Eastern Time  IN PERSON: North Port Community United Church of Christ 3450 South Biscayne Boulevard. Our guest speaker, Dr. McFadden, cannot attend in person, but we still plan to meet live and have the presentation projected on the screen for a hybrid/Zoom Live meeting.

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Meeting ID: 811 9459 4386  Passcode: 948873

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Image: Early Florida hunter stalking a bison, courtesy of The Bishop Museum of Science and Nature

EMERGENCE OF THE CALUSA KINGDOM

When Spaniards first arrived, the Calusa, a fishing people, were the most powerful native society in Florida. We now have evidence from Mound Key of mound-building, monumental architecture, large-scale food processing, watercourt use and construction, and the sixteenth-century Spanish fort and mission of San Antón de Carlos. These new findings allow us to refine our understanding of Calusa history and describe how their complex society developed. During A.D.500-1500, periods of overall prosperity were dampened by times of uncertainty when short-term climate changes diminished resources in the shallow estuaries and bays on which the Calusa depended. Involvement in long-distance trade, and competition with the Tocobaga, were factors in Calusa political developments. The Spanish invasion in the early 1500s stimulated further adjustments in Calusa political economy, leading them to become a tribute-based state.

Dr. Marquardt holds the Ph.D. degree from Washington University, St. Louis. He has done archaeological research in New Mexico, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Burgundy (France). He is co-founder of the Randell Research Center at Pineland and from 1985, until his retirement in 2018, was director of the Southwest Florida Project, focused on the ancient domain of the Calusa Indians (present-day Charlotte, Lee, and Collier counties). He is the author of books and articles about the archaeology and history of southwest Florida, including Culture and Environment in the Domain of the Calusa, The Archaeology of Useppa Island, and The Archaeology of Pineland (with co-author and co-editor Karen Walker). He is co-author (with Darcie MacMahon) of The Calusa and Their Legacy. He was the curator of the 6,000-square-foot Hall of South Florida People and Environments in the Florida Museum of Natural History’s exhibit facility in Gainesville.

A PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD OF HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT SITES ON SAN SALVADOR ISLAND, BAHAMAS

Students from the University of the Bahamas involved in the photo documentation project on San Salvador (Lucayan Guanahani) include (from left to right above), Sanchin Lewis, UB Student, Durnique Bostwick, UB Student; Savanna Dean- Architect with Antiquity Museums & Monuments Corp.; Ebyan Munroe, UB Student; Natecia Taylor, UB Student; Ayoka Seymour, UB Student; and Didacus Uba, UB Student.

With funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a heritage tourism development project originally scheduled for 2020, was put on hold due to the Covid pandemic. However, with the possibility of funding being withdrawn, six students from the University of The Bahamas rushed to San Salvador in early January of 2022 to undertake recording as many buildings as possible on two plantation sites on the island.

These plantations were studied by Kathy Gerace in the 1970’s, but over the last 50 years, most of the buildings have deteriorated further, and a detailed record of what is there presently was desperately needed to plan for future tourism development on this historically significant island. Besides being the landfall site of Columbus’s 1492 voyage, the island is the site of several large cotton-growing plantations developed by British Loyalists from the southern states after the American Revolution. With the IDB funding, the clearing of nearly 50 years of overgrowth was undertaken, allowing access to two of these plantations, and the ability to obtain a photographic record of the buildings as they are today. The Bahamian students, who resided at the Gerace Research Centre during their stay, will present the result of their one-week work, with photographs of all the buildings, some with video, and others with 3D images. The presentation will also include their suggestions on how these sites can become major heritage attractions for visitors to the island in the future.

UTILIZATION AND SOURCING OF WHELK ARTIFACTS IN NORTH AMERICA

The lightning whelk is a sinistral (left)-coiling mollusk which can be found along the North American continental shelf from Cape Cod to the Yucatan peninsula. Whelk have morphological differences in their shells depending on their region of origin: Yucatan, the western Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Gulf coast, and the Atlantic. These differences and their implications on sourcing methods will be discussed.

Pre-Contact cultures utilized and traded the whelk’s shells throughout the eastern 2/3 of the United States, Mexico, and southern Canada. The whelk’s sinistral coils held a spiritual significance for many of these cultures, as movement to the left is seen as bringing the world into balance.

Michelle is a 2021 graduate of New College of Florida, who presented her undergraduate thesis research on the gastropod and columella tools from Snake Island, Florida, at our September 2020 meeting. She is now an independent researcher and has expanded her interests to studying the extent of whelk shell utilization throughout North America prior to Contact, and the sourcing of whelk artifact types. 

THE HISTORY AND USE OF THE FLORIDA CABBAGE PALM

FRANK HAMILTON CUSHING AND THE KEY MARCO ATLATLS