SUMMER/FALL 2026

A rare intact pot was excavated by University of Florida students during fieldwork at a local mission site.

Some 400 years ago, a member of the Indigenous Potano-Timucua tribe scooped up some clay and carefully molded it into a modest vessel, small enough to rest in the palm of their hand. You can imagine their fingers pressing a tight crease around the pot’s simple rim and smoothing its dull grey surface, leaving it free of any adornment. We may never know exactly what the pot held or how many hands it passed through before it was excavated, still fully intact earlier this year.

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FMNH ARTICLE SMITHSONIAN ARTICLE

JOB OPPORTUNITY
Assistant Curator of Environmental Archaeology - Apply by Oct. 16, 2026

The Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida (UF) seeks qualified applicants for a 12-month tenure-track Assistant Curator of Environmental Archaeology. This position will be filled at the Assistant faculty level in the Florida Museum’s Department of Natural History here on the University of Florida campus.

The FM-EAP provides an exceptional opportunity for a curator to build on a strong tradition of collections-based research, especially in the circum-Caribbean region, while developing innovative approaches to environmental archaeology that will continue to advance our anthropological understanding of human-environment relationships through time and across the globe.

Candidate Qualifications
FMNH seeks to hire an innovative environmental archaeologist whose research and teaching will foster an interdisciplinary approach to natural history scholarship, including collections-based research design and student mentorship. Candidates who address questions in the broad field of environmental archaeology and who will contribute to, and make use of, the Florida Museum’s extensive and world-renowned environmental archaeology collection are invited to apply.

LEARN MORE AND APPLY

Shellworks, Solstices, and Seasonal Gatherings at the Cedar Point North Site
Victoria Hayes, Ph.D. student, University of Florida

Located on a barrier island in Jacksonville, the Cedar Point North (CPN) site features a sprawling array of shell mounds, ridges, and arcs dating to the local St. Johns II phase (940-1300 CE). From 2023 to 2025, the University of North Florida, in collaboration with the National Park Service, sampled shell-bearing and non-shell contexts at the site. In light of the recent discovery that several of these complex shellworks were intentionally built to reference specific astronomical events, this presentation explores CPN’s significance at both site and regional scales.

Victoria Hayes is a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida. She received a BA in Anthropology from the University of North Florida in 2024 and her MA from the University of Florida in 2026. Her research centers on the local St. Johns II phase of northeastern Florida.

PAS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 7:00 PM,
Florida Public Archaeology Network building (207 E. Main Street, Pensacola, Florida, 32502)

250 years of the Spanish colony of Florida, 1513-1763
Dr. Judy Bense, President and Professor Emerita at the University of West Florida

Join us for a lecture from Dr. Judy Bense, President and Professor Emerita at the University of West Florida on an overview of the first 250 years of the Spanish colony of Florida, 1513-1763. Covering the twists and turns of the Spanish strategies to build a Florida colony needed to hold the Atlantic coast and protect their gold fleets sailing across the Gulf Stream from Cuba to Spain. The Spanish attempts of military conquest and missionization of Native Americans, that failed and the encroachment by their European rivals resulting in the loss of Florida to the British.

LEARN ALL ABOUT DR. BENSE

WMSLSSAS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 6:30 PM, ZOOM LINK Meeting ID: 818 8487 5930 Passcode: 472140

Dancing with Florida Archaeology
John McCarthy

This illustrated program will provide a view of Florida Archaeology through the lens of a local native who has spent a lifetime being intrigued with Florida and its amazing history. In addition to some personal stories, this program will feature examples of how archaeological sites were discovered and described, going back to the 1870s in Sarasota County. The program will also share some of the latest improvements and upcoming activities at the Historic Spanish Point Campus of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.

John McCarthy is passionate about Florida ecology and history. A skilled storyteller, John is well-known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Sarasota region, which he shares through presentations, tours, and publications. John is a native Floridian and has lived in Sarasota since 1968. He attended Pine View School and received his B.S. from Goshen College, Indiana.

PAST
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 6:30 PM - Watch and listen via ZOOM

Fire, Rebellion, and Rediscovery in Tallahassee: The Search for San Antonio de Bacuqua
Dr. Tanya Peres, FSU and Dana Bryan

What started as a homeowner finding Native American and Spanish pottery on his two-acre lot, turned into the archaeological discovery of a lifetime. Dana Bryan details his discovery of what appears to be San Antonio de Bacuqua, a 17th-century Spanish mission that was burned to the ground during the opening massacre of the 1647 Apalachee revolt. Join Dana and FSU archaeologist Dr. Tanya Peres as they reveal the story of finding the remarkable artifacts they believe puts this forgotten battlefield back on the map.

TSAS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 5:45 PM, SARASOTA SELBY LIBRARY

Smoking Tobacco, Sipping Coffee, and Subjected to the Sultan: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire
Dr. Uzi Baram Professor Emeritus, New College of Florida

From its legendary origins in 1299, the House of Osman ruled over Anatolia, southeast Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa during turbulent centuries. Archaeological research is recovering the lives of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire as global commodities, like tobacco and coffee, entered everyday life under imperial rule. The legacies of those centuries haunt the successor states of that vast region.

Dr. Uzi Baram received his BA in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Baram taught anthropology and archaeology at New College, founding its Public Archaeology Lab, where he is professor emeritus.

SWFAS
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2026, 7:00 PM, BONITA SPRINGS FIRE STATION 24

Submerged Indigenous Archaeological Sites On Florida's West Coast
Steve Koski
The Southwest Florida Archaeology Society invites you to join us at the Bonita Springs Fire House No. 24. Numerous Indigenous archaeological sites have been discovered, eroding from the shore along coastal, bay-front waters, and submerged in the nearshore and offshore waters throughout the world. The west coast of Florida is no exception. With its shallow coastal waters and bays, and gently sloping continental shelf, the preservation of these submerged sites is more likely to occur on this coast than in other locations. Study of these sites can provide important information on the people who once lived along our shores in past centuries and millennia, as well as help us to gain an understanding of the processes which facilitate their preservation.

About the Lecturer Steven H. Koski is the former Sarasota County Archaeologist for the Division of Historical Resources (July 2015-July 2024, retired). He received his BA in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and completed graduate studies in an MA program at Arizona State University (1984-1986). His research interests include the early people of Florida, coastal adaptations, and early settlement and subsistence systems.

The Archaeological Institute of America - Jacksonville Society
FREE PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS TAKE PLACE AT NOON,
in Building 51 at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, (1 UNF Dr, Jacksonville, FL 32224)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
Dr. Nancy Marie White, professor at the University of South Florida
Apalachicola-lower Chattahoochee Valley Archaeology

Decades of jungle survey and testing have led to a synthesis of 14,000 years of human occupation in this region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, southwest Georgia. Paleo-Indian evidence is densest in the tributary Chipola River but also extends to the coast. Sea-level rise pushed the big river eastward after the Ice Age. Archaic peoples then adapted to climate change, made the earliest pottery 4500 years ago, and deposited shell middens. By Middle Woodland times (AD 350-700) mound ceremonialism included a fascination with light and exotics but not yet economic stratification. All this waned as people began growing maize; Fort Walton-period agricultural chiefdoms emerged by A.D. 1000. By the 1500s, Old-World invaders and colonists caused depopulation and disappearance of indigenous cultures. Creek groups moved south into Spanish Florida, becoming Seminoles here. The largest Maroon community in the U.S. was destroyed by the emerging America. Newer historical archaeology includes the antebellum boomtown of old St. Joseph (1836-1844); lost Civil War forts; recent historic sites; and destroyed landscapes after 2018’s Hurricane Michael.

LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. WHITE

NEWSLETTER

EXCITING SUMMER FIELD SCHOOL NEWS

CHAPTER PRESENTATIONS

MARK CALENDAR FOR NEXT MONTH

SPECIAL ASSOCIATE PRESENTATION IN CELEBRATION OF INTERNATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY DAY

Volume 79, Number 3