Popular Beliefs of Safety in an Age of Rising Sea Levels: Public Archaeology as a Means to Counter Exceptionalism on the Florida Gulf Coast

Summary

Before every hurricane season, the myth and popular belief that Sarasota, a medium-sized city on Florida’s Gulf Coast, is safe from hurricane gets repeated in the local newspaper. Like many folktales, the story that pre-Columbian Native American burial mounds or Ringling Brother Circus performers knew of a special quality to the region or their spirits protect it comforts the ever growing population living on the Gulf of Mexico coastline. With the majority of the residents having no long-term connection to the region and the landscape displaying mostly the contemporary, with the historic being mostly the 1920s Boom Times, the past is nearly invisible. One of the tasks for public archaeology is exposing the hidden histories of the region, a rich but racially complex heritage that can counter the myth of exceptionalism. Over the past several years, the New College Public Archaeology Lab has hosted programs for community members and school children that teach about the archaeology and environment for the region’s waters, specifically Sarasota Bay and the Manatee River. The activities instruct on the long history of people in the region, offering scientific approaches to addressing understandings of the past and offering cultural relativism for pre-industrial technologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18834