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.
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