Digging for Clues in Mystery of 16th Century Calusa People (Florida)
In the cool, buggy shade of a huge royal poinciana, archaeologist Michael Wylde dragged his trowel 1,200 years into the past.
Wylde, manager of the Randell Research Center at Pineland, was renewing an excavation begun last winter of a Calusa Indian site known as Mound 5 of Brown's Mound Complex...
... "Brown's Mound Complex is a site we know about extensively but not intensively," said Bill Marquardt, curator in archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. "In other words, we sort of know where everything is on the site, but we don't know what all of the parts of the site have to tell us. We've never had the chance to know the function of Mound 5, whether it was a garbage pile or a special-purpose mound or something else. This is a good opportunity to find out."
When the Spanish arrived on the Gulf coast in 1513, the Calusa were the dominant people of South Florida, demanding tribute from as far away as the Keys and Cape Canaveral.
Work at Mound 5 might produce clues as to how and when the Calusa became so powerful...
Read entire article at The News-Press
Wylde, manager of the Randell Research Center at Pineland, was renewing an excavation begun last winter of a Calusa Indian site known as Mound 5 of Brown's Mound Complex...
... "Brown's Mound Complex is a site we know about extensively but not intensively," said Bill Marquardt, curator in archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. "In other words, we sort of know where everything is on the site, but we don't know what all of the parts of the site have to tell us. We've never had the chance to know the function of Mound 5, whether it was a garbage pile or a special-purpose mound or something else. This is a good opportunity to find out."
When the Spanish arrived on the Gulf coast in 1513, the Calusa were the dominant people of South Florida, demanding tribute from as far away as the Keys and Cape Canaveral.
Work at Mound 5 might produce clues as to how and when the Calusa became so powerful...