‘Totem’ owls, otters and pelicans: 14C dating central Florida’s prehistoric sculptures

Summary

Florida’s wealth of prehistoric wood sculpture includes three large zoomorphic ‘totems’ dredged in the 1950s and 1970s from the banks of Hontoon Island, along the St Johns River, and a stylistically unusual anthropomorphic figure from the Tomoka River. Some, like the Hontoon owl, have had a long history of museum conservation, display and interpretation. These central Florida sculptures form a unique corpus that can inform on the diversity of artistic expression within a region long dominated by the remarkable wood carvings from the southern sites of Key Marco and Fort Center. Our new study aims to establish their chronologies through AMS 14C dating and to investigate their provenance through strontium isotope analysis, in order to consider how the carvings relate to one another, and more broadly, to determine their position within the wider Floridian context. The paper will provide an overview of some of the recent directions in their study, including historiography, iconography, chronologies and material studies (wood identification and strontium isotope analysis).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Archaeology, Art, and Iconography of Florida’s Watery Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage