Discovering San Antón de Carlos: the Sixteenth Century Spanish Buildings and Fortifications of Mound Key, Capital of the Calusa
Author(s): Victor Thompson; Amanda D. Roberts Thompson; William Marquardt; Karen J. Walker; Lee A. Newsom
Year: 2018
Summary
In 1566, Pedro de Menéndez de Aviles arrived at the capital of the Calusa kingdom. During that same year Menéndez issued the order to construct fort San Antón de Carlos, which was occupied until 1569. This fort was also the location of the first Jesuit mission (1567) in what is now the United States. We now can confirm, what archaeologists and historians suspected, that the location of the fort and the capital of the Calusa was the site of Mound Key (8LL2), located in Estero Bay in southwestern Florida. In this paper, we present the first archaeological evidence of structures and fortifications associated with the sixteenth century Spanish fort and mission of San Antón de Carlos. We conducted this work, which includes both remote sensing and excavation, in an effort to better document the history of the Calusa capital, up to and including the colonial period.
Cite this Record
Discovering San Antón de Carlos: the Sixteenth Century Spanish Buildings and Fortifications of Mound Key, Capital of the Calusa. Victor Thompson, Amanda D. Roberts Thompson, William Marquardt, Karen J. Walker, Lee A. Newsom. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana. 2018 ( tDAR id: 441625)
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Keywords
General
Calusa
•
Menéndez
•
Spanish Fort
Geographic Keywords
North America
•
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
sixteenth century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 233