Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2009 - 56

(Continuedfrom page 18)
50 feet in diameter and about 6 feet
high» It was subsequently christened
Tatham Mound in honor of the
Miami resident who helped to assure
preservation of the large tract of
undeveloped land where Brent found
the site»
A small test pit dug into the top of
the mound revealed that only inches
under the surface there were both
human remains and 16th-century
Spanish artifacts, possibly from Hernando de Soto's expedition that was
thought to have crossed the cove during the summer of 1539» At the time,
I was involved in research to learn
about the Indians the de Soto expedition encountered in Florida» The
mound not only had the potential
to confirm that de Sotos army had
passed nearby, but
also to shed light ^fl È
on the biological
consequences
^^B I
of that passage,
including mass
burials of people
who died from Spanishintroduced diseases and in
battles with the Spaniards»
We obtained permission to
investigate the site from the
South Florida Boy Scout
Council, which owned the
property» One condition
of excavation stipulated
by the councils advisory committee
on Native Americans was that all
human remains be reburied following
analysis»Even before the passage of
NAGPRA, the Boy Scout Council
was incorporating the concerns of
Native Americans into their programs
and policies»
During 1985 and 1986 the Florida
Museum of Natural History, where I
was Curator in Archaeology, excavated
the site»Jeffrey M» Mitchem, another
of my graduate students, served as
the field director for the project and
Dale L»Hutchinson, then a graduate
student at the University of IllinoisUrbana, was the field bioarchaeologist»
The human remains and artifacts
from Tatham Mound were removed
for analysis and the mound was
backfilled» Subsequent study of the
56

skeletal remains showed that they
represented 28 people who had been
buried in a lower, pre-Columbian level
dating to a»d»1200-1450, and at least
another 339 people who were found
in the upper portion of the mound,
along with European artifacts known
to date from a»d»1525-1550»
Those dates, which bracket de
Sotos expedition in Florida,
together with wounds on some
bones caused by metal weapons, strongly indicate that the
Tatham Mound people had
indeed interacted with that
Spanish expedition»
We also learned the
Tatham Mound people were
The Tatham Moundpeople
likelyfashioned this two-inchlong silver pendant out of
metal obtained from Spaniards.
Other European artifacts
discovered in the mound
Include this iron chisel
^
and broken spike.

affiliated with the Safety Harbor
archaeological culture, which lasted
from about a»d»1000 into the early
colonial period, and occupied the
Florida Gulf coast from Charlotte
Harbor north to the mouth of the
Withlacoochee River, fewer than 10
miles north of Crystal River, Florida»
Safety Harbor sites, some of which are
large villages associated with extensive
oyster shell middens, are most
prevalent along the Gulf of Mexico,
but inland sites like Tatham Mound
and nearby villages, also are known»
In the centuries since 1539, palmettos and other vegetation and the
dry acidic sand had not been kind to
the bones buried in Tatham Mound,
some of which were only inches below
the mound s surface»Many bones had

roots growing through them; others
had been turned into scattered fragments, and untold numbers had simply rotted away»
Bioarchaeologist Dale Hutchinson,
now on the faculty of the University
of North Carolina, had spent 20 years
with those fragments, coaxing out
details about the health, diet, and
demography of the Tatham people»
He learned that the colonial period
I people in the top of the mound
1 probably ate maize, though in
I smaller quantities than Indians
B living in northern Florida» And
B though some of the people
B exhibit skeletal and dental lesions
K indicative of health problems,
their occurrence was more
HI infrequent than in comparable
Br populations elsewhere in the
Southeast» In general, the Tatham
Mound people were relatively
healthy, relying heavily on local
aquatic and terrestrial resources
to sustain themselves» The large
number of interments in the
upper mound, seemingly made
in
a short period of time, may
I
reflect the presence of infectious
disease, though direct evidence for
epidemics brought by the Spaniards
to Florida is lacking»
2006, with Dales
book manuscript in the
In mail to his editor at the
University Press of Florida,
it was time to honor our agreement to
rebury the Tatham Mound people, a
commitment I took very seriously and
was intent on doing before I retired
from the museum»
Over the two decades since the
mound had been backfilled, the natural and cultural landscapes surrounding the site had changed» Vegetation
had once again grown up and part of
the trail through the wetlands to the
mound had been obliterated»
Ownership of the mound also had
changed» What had been a Boy Scout
camp was now the property of the
Southwest Florida Water Management District (S WF WMD, known
as "Swift Mud"), a state agency that
oversees the conservation and use of
Florida wetlands»
* March/April2009
ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2009

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