Remembering Tocobaga: The Effacement and Persistent Materiality of a Native Florida Town

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historical and archaeological evidence provides a compelling association of the Native town of Tocobaga with the Safety Harbor site (8PI2), in Tampa Bay, Florida. The Spanish briefly established a mission-fort at Tocobaga in 1567. Responding to abuse by the colonizers, the Tocobagans killed the soldiers and the Spanish burned the town in retaliation. We employ the metaphor of effacement--the wearing away of the surface of a coin--to describe how the colonial destruction of the town provided an opportunity for the imposition of new meanings on the landscape of Tocobaga in the modern era: first as plantation and “pleasure garden,” next as ancient ruin and archaeological site, and later as reform park. Archaeology is part of the effacement of the Native town, the remnants reinscribed as type site for the eponymous Mississippian material culture complex. However, archaeology—including our own recent testing—also provides a means for highlighting the persistent materiality of Tocobaga.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow