INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

What might you expect to find at Florida Archaic
sites? In much of the eastern U.S., the Archaic is
marked by the switch from lanceolate points to
stemmed and notched points as diagnostic artifacts,
and this is true in Florida. We also have here and in all
coastal and riverine areas the emergence of shell
middens, some of them very large and mounded. In
south Florida they were found to contain evidence of
year-round settlement as early as the Middle Archaic,
some 5,000 or more years ago. Fish, shellfish, and
turtles dominate at coastal sites, with deer and turkey
more predominant inland.
One amazing site from the Early Archaic has been
excavated near Cape Canaveral at Titusville. Named
the Windover site, it was discovered during
construction of a housing development when workers
hit skeletons in a pond they were trying to drain. The
developer halted operations and even gave money for
excavation. This was astounding because the
development was too small to require any prior archaeology. A book will be out on this soon; the
work was done by archaeologist Glen Doran and others. The developer was given a Stewards of
Heritage Award by the Florida Archaeological Council during Preservation Week. The site was a
pond in which people buried their dead some 7,000-8,000 years ago. Because everything stayed
wet, organic remains were preserved, including sophisticated basketry and woven grass mats,
wooden and bone artifacts, and even the skeletons of the dead, whose bodies were held down
with wooden stakes and whose brains were still preserved inside the skulls. Working with
communities of other scientists and medical professionals, Native Americans, developers and
planners, and other interested parties, the archaeologists drained the pond and excavated part of
the cemetery, then let the water come back in to preserve the rest. All kinds of interesting studies
are going on with these materials, including DNA work. Meanwhile, the stone tool assemblage
of the site consisted of just a few items. If it had not preserved any organic remains, the few bits
of stone would not even have been enough to deem it
significant and worth saving.
What are the circumstances of food production in the
New World? The movie Corn and the Origins of
Settled Life showed the classic investigation in the
Tehuacan Valley of Mexico by Richard ("Scotty")
MacNeish, who died in 2001 and joined the
archaeological record. His work documented the
yearly seasonal movements of Archaic foragers, into
which changes began to be introduced beginning
around 8000 B.C., such as wild squash giving way to
domesticated versions, and the earliest, tiny, nearly
wild ears of corn appearing. Bone chemistry study is