Bones, Beads, and Birds: Determining cultural affiliation of skeletal remains and artifacts from Casuarina Mound, Brevard County, FL

Summary

Efforts to repatriate Native American human remains and artifacts are of immediate importance to American archaeology. Excavated in the early 20th century, Casuarina Mound (8-Br-0122) was first dated to the Malabar II period (750-1565CE) by Irving Rouse in his 1951 publication A Survey of Indian River Archaeology, Florida. Historical accounts describe the removal of at least 112 skeletons and numerous funerary objects from three successive interments. A small subset of this material was donated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. Here, we document all human skeletal material and funerary objects from Casuarina Mound present in the collection. Represented mainly by cranial material, the individuals comprise a range of age/sex classes and present indicators of life history, health, and disease associated with cultural biomarkers. The funerary objects, despite being only a fraction of that removed from the mound, are strong indicators of cultural identification. Our documentation of Casuarina Mound human remains and artifacts at the Peabody Museum may reconnect contemporaneous elements and objects housed at disparate institutions. Such analyses contribute to the determination of ancestry and tribal affiliation using replicable and verifiable methods, and connect institutions and indigenous communities through scholarship and consultation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17145