A recent posting on artnetnews, a blog site dedicated to information on art auctions and collecting from around the world, announced that Hurricane Irma had disturbed an ancient indigenous village site on Florida’s Marco Island:
Hundreds of artifacts have been uncovered after Hurricane Irma uprooted trees on a Native American preserve on South Florida’s Marco Island in September . . . Archaeologists have long suspected that the area was rife with historical artifacts, but the excavation of public land is illegal and wouldn’t have been approved by the local government. Now that the items have been unearthed naturally, archaeologists have removed 200 artifacts from the preserve, including tools, glass, pottery, and shells.
The objects have been transported to the Marco Island Historical Museum, where they will be studied and prepared for display or loaned to other institutions.
Most people have not heard of the Calusa, but at one time, their influence was felt across the whole of South Florida. Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History estimate their population to have been in the several thousands, citing Spanish accounts of a Calusa ceremony in 1566:
According to eyewitness accounts, in 1566 over 4,000 people gathered to witness ceremonies in which the Calusa king made an alliance with Spanish governor Menéndez de Avilés. The king entertained the governor in a building so large that 2,000 people could stand inside.
The Calusa were unique in another respect. Unlike most indigenous communities in in Florida, which relied on the production of staple crops for sustenance and trade, the Calusa “raised no corn, beans, or manioc,” and relied on fishing and gathering for their sustenance. They were also skilled mariners, plying the Gulf’s waters from Southwest Florida coastline to Cuba, and it was perhaps this that enabled them to maintain such a large population and widespread influence.
Some local Native community members would like the objects unearthed by Irma to be returned to the land. In this day of three dimensional printing and digital imaging, it might be possible to do so, especially if archaeologists make copies of the originals and then rebury them in Marco Island’s Otter Mound preserve, which is already set up to protect indigenous materials.
Sources:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/sflarch/research/calusa-domain/
Hundreds of Native American Artifacts Unearthed by Hurricane Irma Are Headed to a Florida Museum
