Archaeological Shoreline Monitoring in a Climate-Changing SW Florida: The Case of a Rapidly Eroding, Rare, Late-Archaic Shell Midden at Calusa Island

Summary

There are only a very few Archaic period sites in the Charlotte Harbor/Pine Island Sound region of southwest Florida. One of these, composing a large portion of Calusa Island, is an oyster-shell dominated midden. According to a landowner, since ca. 1973-1974 the site has suffered a horizontal loss of 11 m along parts (if not all) of its 80+meter, eroding archaeological shoreline. Based on a 1944 aerial photograph, it is likely that as much as 28 m has been eroded away. We began a monitoring program at this site in April of 2016, and in July began partnering with the Florida Public Archaeology Network’s Southwest and Southeast regional archaeologists to assist and then continue the work. We describe our initial, simple method, its problems, and the improvements made by our FPAN colleagues. Currently, FPAN incorporates Calusa Island’s monitoring into its statewide program which is, in large part, staffed by citizen volunteers who visit and re-visit sites in jeopardy and report their observations.

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): 22190