A Palimpsest of Pits and Posts: Excavations at Mission San Buena Bentura de Palica in St. Augustine, Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the early 1700s, communities of Christianized Native Americans living in Spanish mission communities across the southeastern U.S. were being actively attacked by the British and their Native allies. By 1706, the chain of missions was reduced to only a handful of refugee settlements, including several that migrated to the outskirts of Spanish St. Augustine. One of these communities, called San Buena Bentura de Palica, consisted of Timucua-speaking Mocama and Yamasee refugees. To date, the size, extent, location, destruction, reoccupation, and community dispersal was poorly documented in historical records. Ongoing excavations at mission Palica between 2021-2022 have located two large components of the mission and employed the use of GIS to gain an understanding of the spatial distribution of the community and discrete areas of activity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow