Archaeologists Unearth What May Be the Long-Lost Spanish Fort of San Miguel

More than a century back, when archaeologists were digging pottery fragments near Tampa Bay, they saw something odd. Certain pieces bore designs that resembled pottery found hundreds of miles to the north. Judged by look alone, these fragments appeared connected to the Mississippian culture, which rose more than 1,000 years ago and changed social, economic and political life across much of southeastern North America.

Decades of mapping the Mississippian world often excluded peninsular Florida. But the Tampa Bay pottery showed that the region’s connection to that culture was far more complex than anyone had anticipated.

“It’s been this open debate for a century,” said Neill Wallis, curator of Florida archaeology, bioarchaeology and the Ceramic Technology Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “Tampa Bay sites had some Mississippian-like traits such as platform mound-village complexes and iconography, but lacked others, like maize agriculture and shell-tempered pottery. The Mississippian-looking pottery has always begged the question: How did this stuff wind up in Tampa Bay?”

What the Pottery Looked Like

The pottery of Tampa Bay communities shares enough visual traits with Mississippian pieces to potentially prove a connection between the two. However, those shared decorations cannot tell us where the pots were actually made. Without the needed equipment and knowledge to settle that matter, curators kept the puzzling fragments in storage as competing accounts of their origin stayed unresolved.

The Florida Museum researchers have undertaken a study to establish both the origin of the pottery and the people who made it.

Duke started working on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida. Afterward, he and his fellow researchers took what they had begun with his thesis and built it into something bigger, adding more evidence from a greater number of samples than the original work contained.

The researchers identified the origins of the decorated vessels by studying subtle signs of their manufacture that cannot be seen at first glance. They found that these objects came from a tight-knit group of skilled craftspeople who probably moved hundreds of miles from the center of Mississippian culture before setting up home in Tampa Bay. The decorated pieces differed from the plain molded pottery common in the region in terms of the clay they were made from, the tempering materials used, and the production techniques employed. These distinctions point to the migrants having specialized knowledge and access to resources that many local people lacked.

Mississippian Culture Spreads Across the Southeast

In the region that is now the Midwest and eastern United States, a distinct cultural system emerged around 1000 A.D. It spread from the Mississippi River Valley outward, and in its core areas, Indigenous societies took on a new form. They built political hierarchies, with chiefdoms holding sway over nearby settlements. Maize cultivation expanded over vast tracts of land, and immense amounts of soil were shifted to raise mounds crowned with temples and dwellings for their leaders.

Tampa Bay lay far outside those major northern centers.

This region’s inhabitants during this time belonged to a culture called Safety Harbor, which built smaller chiefdoms and flat-topped mounds much like the Mississippian societies did. The Tocobaga lived at the area’s biggest settlement, while the Mocoso, Pohoy, and Uzita chiefdoms dotted the surrounding landscape.

There were still significant distinctions between these groups. None of them came close to matching the level of political power held by the major Mississippian centers located farther north. Tampa Bay communities likewise never took up the extensive maize agriculture connected with Mississippian society, instead depending on fishing and other marine resources for their sustenance.

For a long time, archaeologists have wrestled with deciding just how close Tampa Bay’s ties were to the Mississippian heartland, given the mix of shared traits and distinct ones. Then the finding of pottery painted in Mississippian designs only added to the puzzle.

How the Study Worked

Florida Museum archaeologists Duke and his team gathered together 58 plain and decorated pottery fragments from Tampa Bay to examine them. The plain pots were probably used for everyday food preparation and serving, while the decorated ones may have been kept for special occasions.

During the Mississippian period, potters often added ground-up pieces of freshwater shells or bits of old pottery, referred to as grog, to their clay. Instead of shaping their vessels, they constructed them by laying coils of clay on top of one another.

Researchers could tell the difference between real Mississippian traditions and local imitations using those manufacturing details. The Tampa Bay vessels that were decorated should still show signs of the techniques used in their making if they came from somewhere else or were made by potters who learned Mississippian methods. But if local potters merely copied the look without learning the process, then the fragments would show the usual Tampa Bay methods, including sand tempering.

Neutron activation analysis was employed by the researchers to determine the chemical makeup of the pottery. The findings were then contrasted with raw clay samples taken from the Tampa Bay region.

The match in chemistry showed that the pottery bore the same elemental signature as local deposits.

What the Fragments Reveal

When the researchers looked at what went into tempering the vessels, they found something unexpected. Mississippian potters frequently mixed in crushed pieces of old pottery, a material called grog, to strengthen their clay. The Tampa Bay fragments also held similar crushed pottery pieces — but not merely local ones.

There is evidence that the craftspeople did not simply abandon their origins and move on without looking back. Instead, they took their skills, their knowledge, and physical remnants of their past along with them.

Comparing Mississippian and Safety Harbor Communities

The contrast explains why Tampa Bay remains hard to classify. It bears enough resemblance to Mississippian culture to suggest a connection, yet it holds enough distinct traits to keep researchers debating its exact place.

What Comes Next

The research settles one issue while leaving another unresolved. The fragments show that the pottery was produced locally, yet they bear marks of the homeland.

These fragments speak for themselves. They come from Tampa Bay, yet they hold traces of the homeland. They stand as a physical record of people who moved, carrying part of their past with them.

Researchers have now found a method to trace the pottery back to its makers, which puts an end to the long-standing debate over the issue.

Source material: “Archaeologists may have finally solved a 100-year-old Florida mystery,” ScienceDaily.

Ancient History · archaeology · Florida · Mississippian culture · pottery