Turtles All the Way Down: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Lady Bug (8JE795), an Inundated Archaeological Site in the Lower Aucilla River, Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Located in the lower Aucilla River in northwest Florida, the Lady Bug site (8JE795) is a late Pleistocene archaeological site which contains more than two meters of stratified faunal bearing sedimentary deposits. A diachronic zooarchaeological analysis will be performed on faunal material from these strata to better understand the environmental changes occurring in northwest Florida from the late Pleistocene to mid Holocene. The faunal material collected in ¼” screens during excavation will be examined level by level. Comparative specimens will be used to identify the faunal remains to their furthest possible taxonomic identification using morphological and metric characteristics. The minimum number of individuals (MNI) for each species will be determined. If species identification is not possible, then the genus will be recorded. Observing the changes in percent of terrestrial, aquatic, and semi-aquatic animal species throughout each stratum will help indicate environmental change. Once data collection is complete, a comparative analysis of faunal material from each identified stratum will be conducted, observing changes in species through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52868