Archaeologists now commonly associate the Late Woodland-Mississippian transition on the Florida Gulf Coast with the abandonment of prominent civic-ceremonial centers and mortuary complexes. Communities in the region often signaled the “death” of specific locations by placing sand caps atop burial mounds, and by depositing large quantities of Weeden Island mortuary pottery in the eastern peripheries of these structures. While this trend seems widespread, some burial mounds, including Safford Mound (8PI3), were revisited for several centuries after these events took place. We use petrographic data from ceramic vessels to investigate how people’s investment in mortuary practice tied collective memories to specific places. We surmise that the embeddedness of mortuary ritual within the daily lives of Safford’s visitors contributed to the persistence and growth of the mound through times of immense turmoil and social change.

Archaeologists use allometric equations to estimate animal size from measurements of skeletal elements. Size estimates in form on the dietary contribution of particular taxa, the sustainability of exploitation, gear used to capture prey, etc. Currently, many allometric equations are based on generalized, family-level data, leading to gross or inaccurate approximations for particular species. This is often due to the limitations of extant reference collections. This poster presents the stages and results of a multi-faceted project to generate species specific allometric equations for select marine fish, utilizing museum and laboratory collections, and freshly macerated specimens from the Gulf of Mexico.

Reconstructing the settlement patterns and daily practices of prehistoric people are persistent matters encountered in archaeology. One group of people that have left many archaeologists perplexed is the Lucayans, the native inhabitants of The Bahamas. On Long Island, The Bahamas, Lucayan sites have given us a glimpse into the lives of the Lucayan people, but evidence to establish their seasonal activities is nearly nonexistent. The uncovering of a more complete depiction of the Lucayan’s seasonal activities would allow for a more accurate representation of their habitation patterns and mobility patterns. One way that seasonality can be determined is through the observation of the incremental growth bands in the marine bivalve Codakia orbicularis. This bivalve was selected because it occurs in large numbers at Lucayan sites spanning a 400-year period of occupation. Shells collected from different archaeological sites, different time periods, and Atlantic versus lee-shore (Bahamas Banks) locations provide the potential to reconstruct environmental histories in several different contexts. Bivalve mollusks grow by increasing their shells size through the addition of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Earlier research performed by Jones et al. (1996) demonstrated that environmental factors strongly influence this process of accretionary shell growth. Investigating these paleoenvironmental conditions and determining season of capture require the relatively new techniques of sclerochronology to be deployed.