Cedar Key and Gulf Hammock, Fl

[RWilson2526]

I mentioned on an earlier post that way back when I got my degree in Archaeology from University of Florida. We did a semester in Cedar Key where we stayed on Seahorse key off of Cedar Key. The university owns or leases the land and there is a 1800's lighthouse that we stayed in for the semester. After school I worked as a field tech for an environmental engineering firm that would survey areas for historical signifigance prior to development which had me working in SW florida, Marco Island area (Horrs Island) , did a plantation site outside Mt Pleasant SC. (Dunes West golf resort) as well as worked with some UF people with grant money in the gulf hammock area.

I just recently hooked up again with a friend from that time on Facebook and he posted all sorts of pics from Florida days...thought I'd throw them up here....really one of the most beautiful places in Fl in my opinion.

Seahorse Key light house

Seahorse key is one of the few active Pelican rookeries in Florida. The trees were full of Pelicans for 3 months.

The majority of excavations we did in FL was midden archaeology....many of you may already know but the southern regions have shell mounds (or middens as they are called technically) which was where the indiginous coastal people would throw their discarded shells and fish and whatever garbage they had into a pile...over many many years the middens could be 15-20' deep. Our job was basically to excavate a certain cubic feet of shells, record how deep they were taken in relation to each other and send them back to be analyzed....by sorting the stuff and identifying how many clams vs oysters etc and what type of fish bones and how much per layer you could tell seasons the stuff was harvested and diet and such......for us in the field though all we were doing was humping 50 lb bags of garbage out of the woods 10 hours a day.....

 

[RWilson2526]

That's me...always on the lookout for gators and snakes

Gulf Hammock region

That's my future wife...she was a volunteer on a project and I was a real paid archaeologist...who could resist me really?

The area is a national wildlife refuge....those wildlife officers were always hanging around when the chicks were there!

Thats me leading the way somewhere

We called our jeep the Red October.....

Stuck again....hooking up the come along.

That's me 30 lbs ago (at least) next to the guy in the straw hat.

 

[captpete13]

nice pics. Looks like a really beautiful area. Archaeologist... thats pretty cool. whenever I hear that word I think of Indiana Jones.

 

[phatdaddy]

great pics & story.. i need your professional opnion,i was talking to a lady the other day about shell mounds (we had a lot of them in bay county) and she said you never would find blue crab shells in them. the indians would not eat them. i found that hard to believe with crab meat being as good as it is. can you confirm or deny this info. i thought maybe the crabshells just decomposed faster.

 

[spareparts]

shame you couldn't have found a reason for them to not develop the Dunes West area. I think half of Ohio has moved in there.

 

[RWilson2526]

great pics & story.. i need your professional opnion,i was talking to a lady the other day about shell mounds (we had a lot of them in bay county) and she said you never would find blue crab shells in them. the indians would not eat them. i found that hard to believe with crab meat being as good as it is. can you confirm or deny this info. i thought maybe the crabshells just decomposed faster.

Good question Daddy, got me really thinking....I have posed the question to 2 Phd's a masters grad and guy that has archaeological contracting company in Tampa....lets see what they say. It's been a long time and I cant say without certainty that there was no crab in the record that I worked with but it certainly did not stand out... being a crustacean it doesnt have the calcium that a mollusk shell has so its certainly not as durable but shell mounds are very non acidic (due to the shells) so I would think some would still be preserved under the right conditions. my guess is that much decayed and what did survive is generally crushed into pcs not recognizable from walking on the surface by the casual observer.....

I will guarantee you that there was no moratorium on blue crab harvesting and they ate those puppies.

 

[phatdaddy]

thanks for checking for me, i can't imagine them not being a food source, but maybe without garlic butter and old bay seasoning, they loose their appeal. most of the mounds in bay county were used in early road paving and no longer exist.

 

[reelapeelin]

Humpin' sacks of shells outta the woods back then(when we were all younger)woulda been small price to live in a place like that for a while...

 

[willy]

Looks like a good life adventure. Very nice. been stuck like that a few times

 

[RidgeRunner]

What?

I thought you were going to keep it a secret. LOL Tell them about the bugs, gators and the opressive heat. uhhh, on second thought don't tell them about the heat that might bring them here in waves... Great pics, thanks for sharing. Cut my teeth exploring the islands north all the way up to Horseshoe Pt. I worked, "unofficially" on crab and oyster boats in the spring summer and winter while growing up. It was fun, "unofficial" because I never got paid... Not a lot of hot chicks but some were fun and the ones I knew could outdo most if not all the men in; drinking, hunting, fishing, cursing and tracking game. It always amazed me how the locals got away with hunting out of season. They never took more than they needed to survive but rarely hunted at all in season. Most all are gone, they were forced out by big money or have since passed away. It is equally amazing how the chicks got much more attractive after two or three weeks in the woods.
There is a very interesting dig site behind Deer Island I found about 25 years ago. It is just a big hole (80ft across) someone dug in the limestone adjacent to Geiger Creek. There looks to be the remnants of a bridge across the creek there too. I often wondered who/what/why. It is land locked on low tide but I can get in there on high tide. Never many fish, just a cool place to go. I make up or pass along stories to my daughter when we go. Still making memories there.

 

[Blue_Runner]

Cool Wilson! Surely you guys found the occasional stone/shell tool. Knives, scrapers, points, etc. Did you?

 

[Road King Cole]

Thanks,

The story and pictures brought up memories of Egmont Key in Florida off St Pete. In the seventies, I was an ET in the coast guard and every so often we would need to go out to Egmont to do PM on their radio station. Basically I would just ride out with a civilian contractor who did all the work and I would just go out 'xplorin. Whenever that opportunity came up, I was first to volunteer and I would grab my bag and have a nice "vaca" day.

rkc

 

[RWilson2526]

Cool Wilson! Surely you guys found the occasional stone/shell tool. Knives, scrapers, points, etc. Did you?

Actually never found a stone tool in Florida...FL has no natural deposits of chert or other types of rocks that can be worked into projectiles....there are some stone tools/points found in Fl and when they are it is very significant because it establishes that there was trade with northern peoples where that kind of stone is native. Shell tools were more common , saw some really cool needle like tools for making fish nets out of the center spiral of conch shells, but being that I did mostly shell mound work there was very few...remember it was basically a garbage dump so no native in their right mind would throw away a useful tool.

 

[Blue_Runner]

That makes sense. I know trade was fairly common due to the fact that non-indigenous stone tools are found in lots of regions.

Actually its quite common to find stone tools around the encampments and even in their garbage. However the ones you find there have almost always reached their end in terms of usefulness i.e. knifes resharpened to to a nub, tools that were repurposed, or in most cases tools that were broken either during use or during production.

I say "almost always" because a decent albeit smaller percentage of the nicer points I have found were found in the encampments. I don't know that they were thrown away - perhaps they were lost for some reason or left behind in haste.