Home Ground Advantage: Small Battles and Large Consequences in the Third Seminole War

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Seminole Wars of the nineteenth century were critically important in establishing the modern Tribal identity of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the consequences of the conflict reverberate throughout the community today. Yet relatively little archaeological work has been done to study the small military engagements that characterized the Third Seminole War (1855-1858) in south Florida. The investigation of small battlefields presents several unique challenges not found in the study of their larger counterparts. The physical space encompassed by the engagement, the quantity of material culture still present in the record, and the existence of relevant documentation can often be quite limited. This presentation provides an overview of the attempt to locate the sites of several small skirmishes from the Third Seminole War within the Seminole Reservations of south Florida. The crucial role played by local community informants in conjunction with archival research and field investigations is emphasized.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• 2020 SHA Poster Submissions

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 602