Are the Calusa Unique? Environmental Stewardship and Historical Contingency in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Coastal societies of the northern Pacific and southwestern Florida were once thought anomalous because they achieved sociopolitical complexity without agriculture. The Calusa are often cited as especially unusual, or as the "pinnacle" of complexity among fisher-gatherer-hunters because they achieved a tributary, state-like political formation by post-contact times. In this paper I re-evaluate such comparisons between the two coastal regions in terms of natural-resource stewardship, collective action, food production and processing, and the emergence of complexity. I argue that environmental characteristics, climatic fluctuations, and historical contingencies were major factors leading to the contrasts between southwest Florida and northern Pacific coastal societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23653