April 8, 2025

PALEO RECONSTRUCTION OF FLORIDA

Robin Speidel

This project entails a comprehensive paleo reconstruction of Florida spanning an incredible 200 million years. Through meticulous research, advanced mapping techniques, along with a passion for geology, we will embark on a visual journey through Florida’s geological past while highlighting the geologic framework which modern-day Florida has been built upon. Utilizing aerial imagery, GIS, and Photoshop, a vivid depiction of how Florida’s landscape has evolved over millennia comes to life. From ancient oceans to arid deserts, each layer of our state’s geological history unveils a fascinating narrative of change and adaptation.

Robin Speidel is the Professional Geologist for the Water Quality Monitoring Program at the Southwest Florida Water Management District. He oversees the groundwater and springs water quality monitoring networks at the District which consist of more than 800 sites throughout 16 counties. Born and raised in Sarasota, he grew up with a rich understanding and appreciation for the local environment. He is also the Chair of the University of South Florida Geology Alumni Society where he mentors students as they prepare to graduate and enter the workforce.

March 11, 2025

BEYOND THE EXCAVATION: INTERPRETING ANGOLA

Jean L. Lammie

Where enslavement exists, so too does the desire for freedom. Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, many enslaved individuals ran from their enslavement seeking freedom. Some ran north along the now well-known routes of the Underground Railroad to Canada. Others ran south and sought freedom in Spanish Florida. Some of these people joined the Spanish forces at St. Augustine, some chose to settle near Seminole allies, and others continued south. One such group of several hundred people made their freedom refuge on the south bank of the Manatee River at the mineral spring near present-day Bradenton. The community of ‘Angola’ lasted approximately 30 years (about 1790 to 1821) before it was destroyed by allies of Andrew Jackson. By the time the Armed Occupation Act, homesteaders began to settle in Bradenton after 1842, the freedom seekers of Angola were long forgotten, and the evidence of the community was hidden beneath the sands. After more than 10 years of community-oriented research, Reflections of Manatee secured funding for a large, multi-organization excavation of the mineral spring park, home of the Angola Freedom Seekers, in 2020. This presentation explores the excavation, analysis, and interpretation of the materials recovered.

Dr. Jean Louise Lammie, Ph.D, RPA is the Executive Director of Reflections of Manatee and a Project Archaeologist with Archaeological Consultants, Inc., of Sarasota. She has extensive experience developing interpretive content, displays, and tours for a variety of audiences. Jean’s academic research focuses on Seminoles, soldiers, and maroons in Territorial Florida with an emphasis on the period of the Second Seminole War. She is particularly interested in the ways that social groups use expressions of identity to confirm or contest colonial power structures.

February 11, 2025

WHAT ARTIFACTS?: EXPLORING HOW GEOARCHAEOLOGISTS INFER PAST HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Dr. Anthony Tricarico

Archaeology is the study of past human activity through the artifacts left behind. But how can archaeologists study and infer past human behavior without the recovery of material culture?

Geoarchaeology is an interdisciplinary field combining the methods of geosciences and archaeology. This presentation explores how geoarchaeologists play a key role in enhancing our understanding of past human-environmental interaction and its role in shaping contemporary landscape dynamics. We will use recent research in Antigua, West Indies as a case study to explore the impact of past human behavior on the contemporary ecology of the island and socio-economic livelihoods of farmers within the Ayer’s Creek and Indian Creek Basins. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the entire island was dedicated to the production of sugarcane, forming what has been dubbed a “commercial revolution,” that invariably transformed global livelihoods. Today, the legacy of sugarcane monoculture across the island has contributed to increased rates of landscape instability and soil quality loss. The application of methods allows us to explore how historical actions are often intertwined with contemporary socio-ecological systems.

Dr. Anthony Tricarico, Ph.D., RPA is a Senior Archaeologist and a cultural resource lead for the Ardurra Cultural Resource Management (CRM) Group. He has over 10 years of experience managing and delivering archaeological projects across North America, the Caribbean, and Europe within both CRM and academia. Dr. Tricarico specializes in assisting clients across the preservation, transmission, land development, renewable energy, and transmission sectors navigate federal, state, and local cultural resource laws and regulations. He has managed projects across the country including the following states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas Virginia, and West Virginia.

January 14, 2025

EVIDENCE OF THE 1492 LANDING OF COLUMBUS IN THE AMERICAS

Kathy Gerace

We are pleased to welcome WMS/LSSAS president, Kathy Gerace, to our January 14 meeting to present an update of her October 2017 presentation.
Kathy will be presenting via Zoom from The Bahamas, in San Salvador, at the Gerace Research Centre. Continuing research on San Salvador has found evidence for the landing place of the man who is known to history, most famously, as Christopher Columbus. For nearly 500 years, there has been controversy among scholars and lay people over the exact location of Columbus’ first landfall, on his maiden voyage in 1492. A review of historic documents, maps, and descriptive photos show why there were numerous theories, but by the 500th anniversary of the landing, in 1992, some undeniable evidence came to light through archaeological research and excavation. During the 1980’s, under the direction of Dr. Charles Hoffman of Northern Arizona State University, excavations of a Lucayan Indian site on the western side of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, unearthed numerous European artifacts were of Spanish origin and dated from the very late 1400’s. The significance of these finds cannot be overstated, as it provides further proof that the island of San Salvador was the location of Columbus’ first landfall in the New World.

Kathy Gerace holds a M.S. degree in Anthropology/Archaeology from Michigan State University. In 1971, she was teaching at Elmira College, in Elmira, NY, when she asked to teach a four-week field course in Historic Archaeology on the island of San Salvador in The Bahamas. Meeting the Executive Director of the field station, Dr. Donald Gerace, led to their marriage, and Kathy became the Assistant Director of the field station which had been founded on an abandoned U.S. military base. Over the years, the field station grew to provide a venue for scientific studies and research for over 100 colleges and universities from the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In 1988, the Geraces formed a Bahamian, non-profit corporation named the Bahamian Field Stations (BFS). The Geraces gave the BFS to the College of The Bahamas (COB) in 2003, and it was renamed the Gerace Research Centre (GRC). When the COB became the University of The Bahamas (UB), the GRC became one of their campuses, and it continues to provide accommodations, lab and field equipment, and all types of logistical support for professors, students, and scientific researchers in the disciplines of archaeology, biology, geology, and the marine sciences.

December 10, 2024 

COASTAL MIGRATIONS AND INTERREGIONAL EXCHANGE: COONTIE ISLAND AND THE ORIGINS OF THE THORNHILL LAKE PHASE

Dr. Jon Endonino

Analysis of Archaic chipped and groundstone artifacts from Coontie Island has enhanced our understanding of interregional exchange between Florida and the greater southeastern coastal plain. Beads, bannerstones, and bifaces signal connections between Atlantic coastal Thornhill Lake phase groups and their contemporaries in north and central Florida, bead-makers in Mississippi, and bannerstone crafting communities in the Savannah River Valley. Non-local ground and polished stone objects were an important element of Thornhill Lake phase rituals and mound construction. Similarities between mound-building communities in Mississippi and northeast Florida warrant a reassessment of the role of interregional connections and migration in the development of the Thornhill Lake phase.

Jon Endonino is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Eastern Kentucky University. His primary research interests are social and ecological conditions associated with mortuary monument construction by Thornhill Lake phase groups of the late Mount Taylor culture who inhabited the middle St. Johns River Valley and Atlantic coast of northeast Florida. In addition, Dr. Endonino also has long-standing research interests in lithic technology and determining the sources of stone used in tool production in Florida. When not teaching or conducting research, Jon can be found restoring his turn-of-the-century Victorian home, collecting records, working in his yard and garden, and kayaking. 

November 12, 2024 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FORGOTTEN COLONY

Stephen Valdes

Florida was the first colony to have its own militia, by 1567, during its time as a territory of Spain. Tensions between England and Spain played out across East and West Florida over the next 200 years. British West Florida was an English colony, which included parts of what is now Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama, from 1763 until 1783, until the Peace of Paris declared an end to the First British Empire and the hostilities between England and Spain. Florida had been asked to join the Revolution in 1774 by the Continental Congress, but the offer was refused. The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 ceded Florida to the United States, but was not in effect long as Mexican independence was soon declared, leading to a final treaty between Mexico and the United States which recognized the border of the Adams-Onís Treaty. Florida became a safer haven for Native Americans who were being pushed south from the expanding northern colonies, as well as for runaway slaves escaping servitude, which led to the Seminole Wars. On January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to secede and join the Confederacy. However, until Dr. John Gorrie’s invention of air conditioning, in Apalachicola, Florida was forgotten.

Stephen Valdes is a retired director for Johnson & Johnson International who joined the Military Heritage Museum in Punta Gorda six years ago and acts as the museum’s Media Historian. He spent twelve years in the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Alabama, in the education department. Mr. Valdes served as an instructor for the United States Army on Soviet Studies and related military doctrine, developing the core curriculum for Soviet practices and theory for the Fort Jackson Military Police School. For the past twelve years, he has been an Adjunct Professor of business and economics at Polytechnic University, a civil engineering university. His family has deep ties to Florida, as he is a fourth-generation Floridian and his wife’s family first settled here in 1825.

Greetings WMS/LSSAS members and friends!
JOIN OR RENEW ONLINE ON OUR MEMBERSHIP PAGE 
Many 501(c3) educational organizations have certainly had some challenges since Covid in 2020, and the WMS/LSSAS is no exception. Declining membership and meeting attendance are two of the challenges which we have faced. We have had an excellent speaker series and fantastic events this past year, namely our field trip to Historic Spanish Point and North Port’s Myakkahatchee Park picnic and mammoth hunt (with a presentation on Myakkahatchee Creek by archaeologist Steve Koski). 

However, we found that our expenses for 2023 and our expectations for 2024 have exceeded our income by several hundred dollars. At the November 1 WMSLSSAS Board meeting, officers and directors discussed ways to increase membership, programming attendance, and our financial sustainability for 2025 and the coming years. Having been founded as an organization in 1990, we believe we provide value to the community and hope that our upcoming events and speakers will allow us to continue to do so.

After more than 15 years at the previous structure, we found it necessary to increase our membership dues (a modest amount) to keep pace with rising costs. The new membership structure is: Student $5, Individual $25, Family $35, Patron $50, Non-Profit $35, Business $100, Life $250, Benefactor $1,000.

We are grateful for everyone’s continued support of our organization and hope you will choose to join us for our upcoming meetings and events, free and open to the public. We couldn’t do it without you!