WHAT SITES DO WE SAVE? A CASE STUDY ON PRIORITIZING CULTURAL SITES FROM COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA
This presentation will cover a project in Collier County, FL that devised a system for prioritizing cultural sites based on when they are likely to flood due to sea level rise, how vulnerable they are to flooding, and the consequences if the sites are lost. Hopefully this project will start more discussions about how sites should be prioritized and what matters when it comes to deciding where to invest limited resources.
Rachael Kangas, M.A., RPA is the Director, West Central & Central Regions Florida Public Archaeology Network. Rachael is the Region Director for the West Central and Central Regions of the Florida Public Archaeology Network, and she conducts public archaeology and outreach in the regions. She earned her M.A. from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in 2015 and is certified as a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA).
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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).
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. 
Although rare, fossil shark teeth from outside of Ohio have been recovered from Ohio archaeological sites and as surface finds throughout much of the state. The source of these fossil shark teeth has been the subject of debate since first published by Squier and Davis in 1848. This debate has centered on the Hopewell culture and its acquisition of shark teeth as “exotic” mortuary items. Through a combination of age, species distribution, frequency of occurrence, and preservation characteristics, southwestern Florida is believed to be the source of most of the Ohio Hopewell teeth, including those from the well-known Scioto River valley Hopewell sites. Recent data indicate that fossil shark teeth were utilized in Ohio prior to and after the Hopewell time frame and from sites outside of the large Ohio Hopewell centers. For these sites, multiple sources of fossil shark teeth appear to have been utilized.
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.
Miller's topic will follow the title of his new book, The Palmetto, Histories and Mysteries of the Cabbage Palm. In his discussion, Jono will address some basic questions about our state tree, basically, everything you always wanted to know about our state tree, such as: Are cabbage palm trees? How long do they live? What is their natural range? How did early Europeans use the cabbage palm and how did Florida Indians and other Southeast Native American groups use cabbage palm? A charred cabbage frond fragment was found on the 27 m ledge at Little Salt Spring in 2008, which dated to 12,300 rcybp, which is almost 14,000 years old! And they go back tens, if not hundreds of millennia.
Florida excavations in 1895 by a pioneering archaeologist produced famous finds of prehistoric art, and an early recognition of a forgotten weapon, the atlatl or spear thrower. We know a lot more about atlatls today, and re-examining Cushing's finds shows some of the problems and promises of reconstruction and experimental archaeology. John Whittaker teaches anthropology and archaeology at Grinnell College in Iowa. Much of his work has been in the American Southwest, but experiments with prehistoric technology are a favorite source of archaeological information, contact with the public, and fun. He is the author of two books on making and understanding stone tools and modern flintknappers, and coaches the Grinnell College Raging Cows, the world's first collegiate atlatl team. 
Archaeologists are depicted as searching for lost cities and mystical artifacts in news reports, television, video games, and in movies like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. This fantastical image has little to do with day-to-day science, yet it is deeply connected to why people are fascinated by the ancient past. Exploring the development of archaeology helps us understand what archaeology is and why it matters. The trail of clues leading us into spooky territory includes famous archaeologists, self- proclaimed explorers, haunted museums, mysterious hieroglyphic inscriptions, of a lost continent that never existed, the origin of ideas about ancient extraterrestrials, and even a Scotland Yard investigation into magic, murder, and witchcraft.
We welcome Dr. Thompson, to our September 14 Zoom meeting. His topic is of local and familiar interest, the Calusa of Mound Key, Charlotte Harbor, and the bays and estuaries of southwest Florida. 
Rosewood was a prosperous African American community hard-won from the swampy hammocks of north Florida. Although the town was destroyed in 1923, the community continued, scattered across the state of Florida and beyond. Now, nearly 100 years after this tragic event the story of Rosewood remains shrouded from public view. Those who have heard of Rosewood are rarely aware of the community’s deeper history, or its relation to other places across the state. Dr. González-Tennant will discuss the role of archaeology and geospatial sciences in unearthing Rosewood’s complex history. In addition to describing how digital technologies aid traditional archaeological methods, he’ll discuss the importance of outreach and its ability to support a public conversation on racial reconciliation.
Recent archaeological work in downtown Tampa focused on parts of former Fort Brooke, an important military installation from the Period of Indian Removal in early American Florida. The work uncovered the location of the fort’s lost cemetery, buried under a tangle of city streets and utilities in the shadow of the hockey arena. Excavations unintentionally unearthed a glass swing-top jar stuffed full of love letters written in 1916. The letters were written to the captain of Clarence Bloomfield Moore’s archaeological research vessel, the steamer Gopher. This presentation will discuss the letters, their author, and their recipient, who was a long-time resident and amateur scientist of early Tampa, as well as some findings from other excavations at Fort Brooke.
New College of Florida undergraduate student and WMS/LSSAS member Michelle Calhoun will be the speaker at our April 14 meeting. Her topic, “A Preliminary Analysis of Columella Tools and Gastropod Hammers from Snake Island, Sarasota County, Florida (8So2336).
Few newcomers to Sarasota County would know that the Rosemary District in Sarasota was once known as Overtown and part of the original plat of the Town of Sarasota in 1885. Beginning in the 1890’s African Americans settled there. It was north just north of downtown Sarasota and known as “Black Bottom,” later to be change to Overtown in the mid-1920s. It was a vibrant community with a rich history to many of its residents and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District in 2003. It became officially named the Rosemary District in honor of the Rosemary Cemetery, established in 1886 and a historic marker was first dedicated there in 1985.
Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) Assistant Professor, William Locascio, will be the speaker at our February 11 meeting. His topic will cover recent excavations by his FGCU students in the Everglades Agricultural Area. He has shown that the Everglades was inhabited for thousands of years in the Archaic Period and was not a sterile, uninhabited area as many have postulated. His work there is changing how we view the prehistoric populations and their subsistence base. He views his research as a way to teach the next generation of archaeologists and advance archaeological knowledge of this region, which reveals remains of life among the people that settled the region over three thousand years ago.
Upon retiring to Charlotte County in 2016, author Ted Ehmann was curious why after over twenty-five years of researching and visiting the Indian mounds of the Hopewell and Mississippian cultures of North America, there was not one mention of the Calusa and the mound building cultures in Charlotte Harbor and the entire south Florida Region. He claims, the Calusa and their neighbors have received very little archaeological investigations. Ehmann argues that the evidence reveals that the mound-building epoch in south Florida and the hunter-gathering societies responsible constitute a unique cultural epoch spanning twenty-five centuries, and is of global importance. Ehmann applies new models and connects the archaeological record to an earlier epoch in Louisiana, the latter epochs of the Hopewell and Mississippian mound builders, and the research by archaeologists outside of Florida.
The resurgence of interest in traditional tattooing, as well as concern about the safety of commercial inks, has led to a search for “natural,” “traditional,” products for tattoos. Scientific techniques for visualizing and analyzing ancient tattoos preserved on mummified human remains have been able to identify minerals and “pyrolized plant particles” (soot) in ancient tattoos, but not the plant taxa themselves. Ethnographic studies of traditional tattooing have focused largely on tattoo motifs, meaning and tool technology, with less emphasis on the botanical materials involved. While it is true that “soot” from burned plant material is the most common tattoo pigment, a variety of other plants were traditionally used to produce tattoos by either injecting colors under the skin or via the activity of irritant chemicals that produced tattoo-like marks. Indigenous peoples around the world have used a variety of plant substances to produce tattoos for therapeutic, decorative, commemorative or ritual reasons; the rarity of the tattooing plant itself sometimes also lent extra meaning and significance to the tattoo. This paper looks at tattooing plants cross-culturally, with a focus on Oceania and North America.