Cooperation and Coercion: Geography, Ecology, Climate, and Surplus Production in the Rise of the Calusa Kingdom

Summary

The Calusa of southwest Florida were the most complex and powerful society in Florida during the sixteenth century AD. They relied for protein not on agriculture, but on aquatic resources harvested from shallow-water estuaries. Our interdisciplinary team is exploring the evidence for surplus production and intensification against a background of environmental challenges and opportunities. We focus on Mound Key and Pineland, the two largest Calusa towns. We think that cooperative heterarchical relations among coastal and inland polities gave way to coercive hierarchical relations after ca. AD 1000. Major canals, large midden-mounds, and fish-capture/storage facilities were constructed following a ninth-century hiatus during a challenging period of global cooling known as the Vandal Minimum. The succeeding Medieval Warm Period ameliorated the productivity of the shallow-water estuarine environments around Mound Key and Pineland, providing new opportunities. We think that certain leaders were able to mobilize surplus labor to construct canals, maintain and rebuild structures, procure resources from faraway mainland forests, and coordinate and oversee the engineering of "watercourt" structures that probably functioned as fish traps and/or fish storage areas. We interpret this commitment to place as a way that successive members of a lineage transmitted political and social capital.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22084