THE FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGIST Volume 61 Number 3-4 September - December 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS From the Editors 119 Refining the Ceramic Chronology of Northeastern Florida. 123 Keith Ashley Reexamining an Archaeological Survey of Big Talbot Island. 133 Keith Ashley and Robert L. Thunen The Thornhill Lake Archaeological Research Project: 2005-2008. 149 Jon C. Endonino An Analysis of Seminole Artifacts from the Paynes Town Site (8AL366), Alachua County, Florida. 167 Jane Anne Blakney-Bailey 2008 FLORIDA FIELD SCHOOL SUMMARIES 189 FAS 2008 AWARD RECIPIENTS 199 OBITUARIES William M. Goza. Jeffrey M. Mitchem 205 Arthur R. Lee. George M. Luer 207 BOOK REVIEWS Chang-Rodríguez: Beyond Books and Borders: Garcilaso de la Vega and La Florida del Inca. John E. Worth 215 Simmons and Ogden: Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers. Hope Black 216 White: Gulf Coast Archaeology: The Southeastern United States and Mexico. Wm. Brian Yates 217 Morrow and Gnecco: Paleoindian Archaeology: A Hemispheric Perspective. Robert J. Austin 218 About the Authors 221 Cover: (Left) The St. Marys region of northeast Florida, (Top Right) a topographic map of the Thornhill Lake Complex, (Bottom Right) glass trade beads from the Paynes Town site. See articles for more information. Copyright 2008 by the FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY, INC. ISSN 0015-3893 REFINING THE CERAMIC CHRONOLOGY OF NORTHEASTERN FLORIDA KEITH ASHLEY Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32224-2659 Email: [email protected] Over the past decade and a half archaeologists have been Interestingly, Russo was not the first researcher to working diligently to establish a ceramic chronology specific challenge the use of the St. Johns chronology in northeastern to northeastern Florida—an area I define narrowly as coastal Florida. In fact, similar arguments were made four decades northern St. Johns, Duval, and Nassau counties (Figure 1). In a earlier, immediately following Goggin’s (1952) seminal way this has been an uphill climb because many archaeologists publication on northern St. Johns archaeology. On the heels continue to subsume northeastern Florida within the broader of their non–systematic site survey of areas of Amelia Island boundaries of East and Central Florida, as defined by Milanich (Nassau County) in which they recorded 46 sites, Ripley (1994:xix). As a result, pottery types and ceramic trends Bullen and John Griffin (1952:50) asserted that “in no case apparent in the St. Johns heartland are extended a priori to all is there an[y] suggestion of a plain chalky period (St. Johns I) reaches of East and Central Florida, obscuring intraregional before the advent of [St. Johns] check stamping.” They further ceramic differences (Milanich 1994:348). The situation, bemoaned the fact that they were unable to “correlate the however, is beginning to change. Greater attention to ceramic archaeological situation at Amelia Island” with the chronology paste characteristics, emphasis on pottery assemblages (not proposed by Goggin (1952) for the St. Johns area to the south just types), and a growing number of radiometric dates are now (Bullen and Griffin 1952:62). To Goggin’s credit, however, he affording us the opportunity to refine the ceramic chronology too noted that “plain gritty wares” and “cord marked sherds” of northeastern Florida with more precision than ever before. distinguished St. Johns II sites in extreme northeastern Florida But this is still an ongoing process. In this brief paper I build from those to the south (Goggin 1952:56). upon the work of earlier researchers (e.g., Bullen and Griffin A few years later William Sears (1957) sank excavation units 1952; Goggin 1952; Russo 1992; Sears 1957) and propose an into a series of shell middens on six sites (8DU58-62, 8DU66) updated chronology for northeastern Florida, with emphasis along the south side of the lower St. Johns River. The results led at this time placed squarely on the temporal aspect of pottery him to virtually the same conclusion as Bullen and Griffin. He types and assemblages. compared his site-specific seriations to the ceramic chronology outlined by Goggin for the broader St. Johns region, but failed Background to find a good fit. Sears (1957:2) thus concluded that “due to the fact that the mouth of the St. Johns River seems to have In a 1992 article in The Florida Anthropologist Michael been on the boundary between the Georgia coast and Northern Russo openly questioned the applicability of the long- St. Johns culture areas, we have replacement of, additions to, established St. Johns region ceramic chronology to northeastern or modifications of the ceramic complexes in all periods.” Florida and southeastern Georgia, an archaeological region With respect to the Woodland period, rather than finding he coined St. Marys. The St. Marys region stretches from the a classic St. Johns I pottery assemblage, Sears’ (1957:33) south side of the St. Johns River, Florida north to the Satilla excavations yielded a low incidence of St. Johns Plain sherds River, Georgia and includes northern St. Johns, Duval, and in midden contexts dominated by sand tempered plainwares. Nassau counties, Florida and Camden County, Georgia. Dissatisfied with Goggin’s chronology, Sears formulated a Russo (1992:107) further stated that “[i]n terms of ceramic region-specific ceramic sequence for the lower St. Johns region chronology, subsistence, and settlement, the region displays a based on ceramic seriations in the absence of radiocarbon unique culture history from those surrounding it.” Befittingly dates. His Woodland period ceramic chronology opened with he eschewed the conventional “Orange (fiber-tempered) - St. the Deptford complex, followed by a lengthy sand tempered Johns I (chalky plain dominated) - St. Johns II (chalky plain and plain complex, and concluded with a sherd tempered complex check stamped)” ceramic sequence first alluded to by Wyman known as Colorinda. Swift Creek Complicated Stamped was (1875:52-56), later formally defined by Goggin (1952), and seen as a minor, yet persistent, part of the late sand tempered refined by Milanich (1994; Milanich and Fairbanks 1980). plain complex. The St. Johns II complex supplanted Colorinda As discussed below, even after synthesizing and assessing a and marked the beginning of the local Mississippi period, variety of data by broad archaeological periods Russo was still which according to Sears terminated in the mid-sixteenth unable to partition his chronology of northeastern Florida into century. distinct phases or subperiods based on ceramic, subsistence, A reading of the many archaeological survey and and social information. In the end he suggested that the mixing excavation reports penned since Sears’s work leaves one of different pottery types might be reflective of local groups somewhat perplexed with regard to the region’s ceramic “involved with more than one pottery tradition” (Russo chronology. The archaeological record reveals a lot of sand 1992:120). tempered plain pottery mixed with small amounts of check VOL. 61(3-4) THE FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGIST SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2008 124 THE FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGIST 2008 VOL. 61(3-4) Figure 1. The St. Marys region. stamped and complicated stamped wares along with some comments and possibly noting that the area might represent a chalky plainwares. But the one thing that stands out is that frontier, transitional zone, or cultural ecotone, most authors there is only one reported secure context, with appreciable until Russo (1992) continued to present a local culture history quantities of pottery, in which St. Johns plainwares dominate in which a classic St. Johns I period followed early Deptford. and it dates surprisingly to ca. 1000 B.C. (discussed below). Returning to the insightful—and often overlooked— Also the dominance of sand tempered plainwares on sites in observations made years earlier by Sears, Bullen, Griffin, northeastern Florida has typically been downplayed, since such and others, Russo (1992) took the next logical step and generic-looking wares provide little temporal aid. As a result, systematically addressed many of the discrepancies between sites have been assigned a cultural affiliation based on recovered existing chronologies and actual archaeological data. His study minority wares (e.g., Deptford, Swift Creek, St. Johns), with further spotlighted the need for radiometric dates from secure St. Johns often given primacy. In fact, it is not uncommon to contexts for all cultural periods. In the 15 years since Russo’s see a Florida Site Form in which a northeastern Florida site eye-opening article the ceramic chronology of northeastern containing a single St. Johns Plain sherd is classified as having a Florida has been further honed and bolstered by more than St. Johns I component. Other than citing Sears’s aforementioned 100 calibrated radiometric dates from sites throughout ASHLEY CERAMIC CHRONOLOGY OF NE FLORIDA 125 Table 1. Aboriginal ceramic chronology of northeastern Florida. ARCHAIC PERIOD Late (Orange) 2500 – 1000/500 B.C. WOODLAND PERIOD Deptford 500 B.C. - A.D. 100 Sand tempered Plain1 A.D. 100 - 300 Early Swift Creek A.D. 300 - 500 Late Swift Creek A.D. 500 - 850 Colorinda A.D. 850 - 900 MISSISSIPPI PERIOD St. Johns II A.D. 900 – 1250/1300 St. Marys II A.D. 1250/1300-1450/1500* San Pedro A.D. 1450/1500 – 1625/1650* CONTACT-SPANISH MISSION PERIOD San Pedro A.D. 1562 – 1625/1650* San Marcos/Altamaha A.D. 1625/1650 – 1702* 1sand tempered plain dominates during this