Calusa socioecological histories and zooarchaeological indicators of environmental change during the Little Ice Age in southwestern Florida, USA

Abstract

The Pineland Site Complex, 8LL1902, is a large archaeological complex of middens, mounds, and other topographic features located in coastal, southwestern Florida. It was occupied from approximately AD 50 and was a major Calusa town at European contact. We combine extant research from this well-preserved site complex with new chronological and zooarchaeological analyses to provide new insight into the relationship between fisher-gatherer-hunter subsistence economies and small-scale but impactful climatic change. We identify and record the localized environmental changes co-occurrent with the global climatic episode known as the Little Ice Age (AD 1200–1850). By combining Bayesian statistical analyses of radiocarbon dates with zooarchaeological analyses of a waterlogged, shoreline midden we generate a high-resolution, localized view of socioecological interactions at the Pineland Site ca. AD 1200–1500. Such micro-scale temporal perspectives are necessary to achieve high resolution, localized histories of human-climate dynamics.

Keywords:

• Florida
• zooarchaeology
• Little Ice Age
• environment

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following institutions and granting agencies for funding and logistical support: Department of Anthropology, Laboratory of Archaeology, and Museum of Natural History at the University of Georgia; Randell Research Center and Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida; and National Geographic Society. Shorter versions of this research were presented at the 2018 Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Augusta, Georgia and the 2019 Society for American Archaeology Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We would also like to thank the following individuals for their guidance, insightful comments on this manuscript, and continued support of this research: Karen J. Walker and William H. Marquardt of the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida and Elizabeth J. Reitz and Suzanne Pilaar Birch of the University of Georgia. Finally, we would like to thank Nancy White and the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments which improved this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.