Episodic Habitation in an Eolian Environment, 1350 B.C. - A.D. 900, Useppa Island, Coastal Southwest Florida

Author(s): Karen Walker; Arianne Boileau; William Marquardt; Donna Ruhl; Ann Cordell

Year: 2015

Summary

Excavations (2012) on southwest Florida’s subtropical Useppa Island revealed a stratigraphic sequence of alternating eolian-sand and shell-midden layers, mostly dating from 1350 to 1000 B.C., with the highest midden dating to A.D. 900. Predictably, the Late Archaic artifact assemblages (pottery, shell artifacts, etc.) differ greatly from the younger Caloosahatchee IIB one. However, surprisingly the invertebrate faunal assemblages also differ. And there is a general dearth of fish remains in the five earliest middens. Among the sparse vertebrate remains, scattered within those Late Archaic middens, were 31 specimens (NISP) of domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris, the first record of dog for the Calusa heartland. Findings suggest that much of the sequence represents a record of people who may have faced difficult subsistence conditions in the context of changing environments.

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Cite this Record

Episodic Habitation in an Eolian Environment, 1350 B.C. - A.D. 900, Useppa Island, Coastal Southwest Florida. Karen Walker, William Marquardt, Arianne Boileau, Ann Cordell, Donna Ruhl. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397750)

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Keywords

General
Coastal • Florida • Late Archaic

Geographic Keywords
North America - Southeast

Spatial Coverage

min long: -91.274; min lat: 24.847 ; max long: -72.642; max lat: 36.386 ;