Archaeology History Fluvial Geomorphology And The Mystery Mounds Of Northwest Florida

Discusses the investigation of two earthen mounds, thought to be Indian burial mounds, located a mile from the banks of the Apalachicola River in northwest Florida. Thanks to George Core, a retired county court clerk and local historian, the researchers found official war records which revealed the mounds were actually two former Confederate gun emplacements, originally located on the banks of the Apalachicola River. Because the Confederates had placed various obstructions in the river to prevent its navigation by Union troops, the river itself was caused to change its course to flow around the obstructions, and the batteries (named Battery Cobb and Battery Gilmer) were abandoned and forgotten by most people in Gulf County.

200, a time marked by initial mound construction and the first intense village occupation at the site, which was preceded only by a very small, pre-Fort Walton, Swift Creek occupation there around A.D. 320. Probable antecedent events at a nearby Fort Walton mound center, Cayson (8Ca3), as well as contact with Rood Mississippian groups to the north are hypothesized as influencing Yon's Middle Fort Walton development and florescence. Evidence indicates that this initial Middle Fort Walton occupation was followed by an occupation of Lamar groups. Regional data and radiocarbon evidence from Yon suggest that this Lamar component likely began during protohistoric times (circa A.D. 1600) and continued into the late seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. It is hypothesized that this Lamar occupation was the result of Lamar groups migrating down the lower Chattahoochee-Apalachicola River in the wake of European contact. As a whole, this study represents the most complete documentation of the occupational history of any Fort Walton mound center to date. As such, it can provide an important foundation for future studies of Fort Walton mound centers and sites in the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee River region.

This comprehensive compilation of Moore's archaeological reports on northwest Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia presents the earliest documented investigations of this region.

Synthesizes the archaeology of the Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia, from 1,300 years ago to recent times

Horace King (1807-1885) built covered bridges over every large river in Georgia, Alabama, and eastern Mississippi. That King, who began life as a slave in Cheraw, South Carolina, received no formal training makes his story all the more remarkable. This is the first major biography of the gifted architect and engineer who used his skills to transcend the limits of slavery and segregation and become a successful entrepreneur and builder. John S. Lupold and Thomas L. French Jr. add considerably to our knowledge of a man whose accomplishments demand wider recognition. As a slave and then as a freedman, King built bridges, courthouses, warehouses, factories, and houses in the three-state area. The authors separate legend from facts as they carefully document King's life in the Chattahoochee Valley on the Georgia-Alabama border. We learn about King's freedom from slavery in 1846, his reluctant support of the Confederacy, and his two terms in Alabama's Reconstruction legislature. In addition, the biography reveals King's relationship with his fellow (white) contractors and investors, especially John Godwin, his master and business partner, and Robert Jemison Jr., the Alabama entrepreneur and legislator who helped secure King's freedom. The story does not end with Horace, however, because he passed his skills on to his three sons, who also became prominent builders and businessmen. In King's world few other blacks had his opportunities to excel. King seized on his chances and became the most celebrated bridge builder in the Deep South. The reader comes away from King's story with respect for the man; insight into the problems of financing, building, and maintaining covered bridges; and a new sense of how essential bridges were to the southern market economy.

This research describes a large, newly-recorded archaeological site in the Upper Apalachicola River valley, northwest Florida, and a private collection of artifacts from it, as well as test excavations, three-dimensional modeling, clay/pottery sourcing through chemical analysis, and direct radiocarbon dating of ceramics to relate the site with regional archaeological chronologies and settlement patterns. A University of South Florida (USF) 2013 field school conducted excavations at the multicomponent midden on the western floodplain of the Apalachicola River called the McKinnie site (8JA1869). Students collaborated with a local collector and family members to learn about the site's history. Data from the collection and excavations show that the site was inhabited through four thousand years of prehistory, serving as a rich seasonal resource base for local people in the area starting in the Middle Archaic Period, and as a small place of occupation during the Woodland Period, until people moved out into the river valley to live in farming villages. We also investigated a series of fascinating features, stored in the private collection and excavated by USF, which may have been intentionally buried at the site up to 5500 years ago. They may be evidence of some ancient ochre processing to obtain pigments, or some other special activity.

Methods, Mounds, and Missions offers innovative ways of looking at existing data, as well as compelling new information, about Florida’s past. Diverse in scale, topic, time, and region, the volume’s contributions span the late Archaic through historic periods and cover much of the state’s panhandle and peninsula, with forays into the larger Southeast and circum-Caribbean area. Subjects explored in this volume include coastal ring middens, chiefly power and social interaction in mound-building societies, pottery design and production, faunal evidence of mollusk harvesting, missions and missionaries, European iron celts or chisels, Hernando de Soto’s sixteenth-century expedition, and an early nineteenth-century Seminole settlement. The essays incorporate previously underexplored markers of culture histories such as clay sources and non-chert lithic tools and address complex issues such as the entanglement of utilitarian artifacts with sociocultural and ritual realms. Experts in their topical specializations, this volume’s contributors build on the research methods and interpretive approaches of influential anthropologist Jerald Milanich. They update current archaeological interpretations of Florida history, developing and demonstrating the use of new and improved tools to answer broader and larger questions. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series