Building on shells: Interdisciplinary study starts unraveling mysteries of Calusa kingdom
Building on shells: Interdisciplinary study starts unraveling mysteries of Calusa kingdom
April 28, 2016 by Stephanie Schupska
Building on shells: Study starts unraveling mysteries of Calusa kingdom
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This LiDAR image shows the central portion of Mound Key, located in Estero Bay adjacent to Fort Myers Beach in Florida along the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Victor Thompson/University of Georgia
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Centuries before modern countries such as Dubai and China started building islands, native peoples in southwest Florida known as the Calusa were piling shells into massive heaps to construct their own water-bound towns.
One island in particular, known as Mound Key, was the capital of the Calusa kingdom when Spanish explorers first set foot in the area. Supported in part by a grant from the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, a new interdisciplinary study led by University of Georgia anthropologist Victor Thompson unearths information on how the composition of Mound Key, located in Estero Bay adjacent to Fort Myers Beach in Florida along the Gulf of Mexico, changed over the centuries in relation to both environmental and social shifts.
The findings were published April 28 in the journal PLOS One.
"This study shows peoples' adaptation to the coastal waters of Florida, that they were able to do it in such a way that supported a large population," said Thompson, an associate professor of anthropology in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Center for Archaeological Sciences. "The Calusa were an incredibly complex group of fisher-gatherer-hunters who had an ability to engineer landscapes. Basically, they were terraforming.
"China creates islands. Dubai creates islands. The Calusa created islands."
Mound Key was primarily constructed of heaps of shells, bones and other discarded objects known as midden. Thompson and his colleagues did intensive research on the island in 2013 and 2014 and used coring, test and block excavations and radiocarbon dating to determine that the midden wasn't uniform from top to bottom.
More:
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-shells-interdisciplinary-unraveling-mysteries-calusa.html
