OUR MEETINGS
We meet the second Tuesday of the month (except June-August) at 7:00pm, currently via ZOOM. All meetings are open to the public.
FIELD TRIPS & EVENTS
We often take trips to regional historic or archaeological sites, as well as Florida museums, to learn and have fun. These trips may include bus rides or carpooling, sometimes walking and hiking, and usually a lunch or other snacks. Costs will vary, and most trips are open to the public.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
We inform members when volunteer opportunities are available on professionally supervised excavations and encourage participation. We work with city and county governments on local preservation projects. Volunteer experience level can vary. It's a great way to learn archaeological techniques.
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.
December meeting link HERE
ID: 875 9116 9750 Passcode: 049553
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.
November meeting link HERE
ID: 875 9116 9750 Passcode: 049553
October 9, 2024 (rescheduled to April 8, 2025)
EVIDENCE OF THE 1492 LANDING OF COLUMBUS IN THE AMERICAS
Kathy Gerace
We are pleased to welcome back WMSLSSAS president Kathy Gerace, co-founder of the Gerace Research Center with her late husband, Donald Gerace, for a topic most appropriate for October, the landing place of Columbus. She kindly presented this topic at the October 2017 meeting and has some additional information to share.
For nearly 500 years, there was 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. Analysis of these artifacts revealed they 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.
We acknowledge the devastating effects inflicted on the Indigenous peoples on the Lucayan Archipelago (Bahamas), Caribbean Islands and all of North and South America as a result of European contact, and value and respect their feelings regarding this October federal holiday, also federally recognized as Indigenous Peoples Day, to honor and commemorate Indigenous cultures and people.
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 was 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. 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 Station (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.
September 10, 2024
ANCIENT HIGHWAYS: TRAILS AND WATERWAYS
Steven H. Koski
When Europeans “discovered” the “New World,” it was not new at all to the Indigenous inhabitants of North and South America, who purportedly entered the continent from Asia, ca. 14,000 to 20,000 years ago, or more. Over those many millennia, Indigenous Peoples developed overland transportation trails to far-flung locations and plied navigation routes along the coast, bays and estuaries, slough ways and creeks, and rivers and lakes by various types of water craft. In Florida, the primary mode of travel was the dugout canoe. Transportation routes extended over hundreds of kilometers within the state, and thousands of kilometers throughout the southeast and north to Canada, in an interconnected network covering multiple states and provinces. Where were these transportation routes? What evidence do we have of their locations? What happened to them? Do any still remain? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this presentation.
Steven H. Koski recently retired after nine years as County Archaeologist for the Sarasota County Division of Historical Resources. There, he served as an administrator of the County’s Historic Preservation ordinance, Chapter 66. He reviewed all development applications in unincorporated Sarasota County to identify and determine potential adverse effects on historic resources and archaeological sites to ensure the protection of those which have been determined to be significant under national and local criteria. Prior to his county position, Koski served as a research associate and resident underwater archaeologist at the University of Miami-owned Little Salt Spring Research Facility, working with the late Dr. John A. Gifford between 2004 and 2013. Koski had participated in research there since 1992. He has a B.A. in Anthropology with a certificate in prehistoric archaeology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and completed his coursework and exams in an M.A. program at Arizona State University.