Books in Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series series

“Gives voice to a period in U.S. history that remains virtually unknown, even to specialists in the field.”—J. Michael Francis, coauthor of Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida “With these transcriptions and translations, Worth provides an important service to ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and others who share an interest in the Spanish colonial explorations of the greater Southeast.”—Mariah F. Wade, author of Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans “A model for how to handle important primary sources. The historical introduction is a treasure in its own right.”—Amy Turner Bushnell, author of Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission provinces of Florida Florida’s lower gulf coast was a key region in the early European exploration of North America, with an extraordinary number of first-time interactions between Spaniards and Florida’s indigenous cultures. Discovering Florida compiles all the major writings of Spanish explorers in the area between 1513 and 1566. Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this volume presents—in their own words—the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de León, Pánfilo de Narváez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. These accounts, which have never before appeared together in print, provide an astonishing glimpse into a world of indigenous cultures that did not survive colonization. With introductions to the primary sources, extensive notes, and a historical overview of Spanish exploration in the region, this book offers an unprecedented firsthand view of La Florida in the earliest stages of European conquest.

The late Pleistocene-early Holocene landscape hosted more species and greater numbers of them in the Southeast compared to any other region in North America at that time. Yet James Dunbar posits that a misguided reliance on using Old World origins to validate New World evidence has stalled research in this area. Rejecting the one-size-fits-all approach to Pleistocene archaeological sites, Dunbar analyzes five areas of contextual data―stratigraphy; chronology; paleoclimate; the combined consideration of habitat, resource availability, and subsistence; and artifacts and technology―to resolve unanswered questions surrounding the Paleoindian occupation of the Americas.Through his extensive research, Dunbar demonstrates a masterful understanding of the lifeways of the region’s people and the animals they hunted, showing that the geography and diversity of food sources was unique to that period. He suggests that the most important archaeological and paleontological resources in the Americas still remain undiscovered in Florida’s karst river basins. Building a case for the wealth of information yet to be unearthed, he provides a fresh perspective on the distant past and an original way of thinking about early life on the land mass we call Florida.A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

"Excavations on the Franciscan Frontier offers new perspectives on a little-known aspect of seventeenth-century La Florida, the western Timucuan-Franciscan mission frontier. Weisman's book illuminates both mission organization and the material culture of American Indians and Spaniards of interior northern Florida during this period."--Kathleen A. Deagan, and author of Artifacts of Spanish ColoniesIn 1949, tantalizing discoveries of Spanish and Indian artifacts in the waters of Fig Springs in North Florida hinted at the location of an early seventeenth-century mission site. Forty years later, archaeologists returned to the area to search out and excavate the mission. Weisman's account of this search is an adventure in field archaeology and discovery, and he provides the first detailed description of an aboriginal habitation associated with an early Spanish mission. While many mission sites have been excavated in the colonial capital of St. Augustine and in the populous Apalachee Province near present-day Tallahassee, few detailed excavations have been carried out in the frontier province of Timucua, an early setting for the Franciscan effort to bring Christianity to Florida's native peoples. Still fewer excavations have concentrated on the village areas of the mission community. The dag at Fig Springs has revealed remarkably intact remains of several mission buildings as well as thousands of artifacts in and around the buildings found as they were left when the mission was abandoned in the mid-seventeenth century. Most important, Weisman shows, the artifacts, architecture, and community plan from this site demonstrate how mission culture evolved well beyond the religious dimension and combined traits of both European and aboriginal cultures. The well-preserved artifacts of activities such as cooking, tool making, house building, and trash disposal represent a trememdous archaeological resource for understanding the aboriginal experience of mission life--an experience not often mentioned in contemporary documentary sources. The richness of the site augments the traditional focus of research into the Florida mission period and helps to provide a more complete picture of the mission commmunity as a whole.Brent Richards Weisman is an archaeologist with the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research in Tallahassee and is the author of Like Beads on a String: A Culture History of The Seminole Indians in Northern Peninsular Florida.

“Gives voice to a period in U.S. history that remains virtually unknown, even to specialists in the field.”—J. Michael Francis, coauthor of Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida “With these transcriptions and translations, Worth provides an important service to ethnohistorians, archaeologists, and others who share an interest in the Spanish colonial explorations of the greater Southeast.”—Mariah F. Wade, author of Missions, Missionaries, and Native Americans “A model for how to handle important primary sources. The historical introduction is a treasure in its own right.”—Amy Turner Bushnell, author of Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission provinces of Florida Florida’s lower gulf coast was a key region in the early European exploration of North America, with an extraordinary number of first-time interactions between Spaniards and Florida’s indigenous cultures. Discovering Florida compiles all the major writings of Spanish explorers in the area between 1513 and 1566. Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this volume presents—in their own words—the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de León, Pánfilo de Narváez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. These accounts, which have never before appeared together in print, provide an astonishing glimpse into a world of indigenous cultures that did not survive colonization. With introductions to the primary sources, extensive notes, and a historical overview of Spanish exploration in the region, this book offers an unprecedented firsthand view of La Florida in the earliest stages of European conquest.

"Excavations on the Franciscan Frontier offers new perspectives on a little-known aspect of seventeenth-century La Florida, the western Timucuan-Franciscan mission frontier. Weisman's book illuminates both mission organization and the material culture of American Indians and Spaniards of interior northern Florida during this period."--Kathleen A. Deagan, and author of Artifacts of Spanish ColoniesIn 1949, tantalizing discoveries of Spanish and Indian artifacts in the waters of Fig Springs in North Florida hinted at the location of an early seventeenth-century mission site. Forty years later, archaeologists returned to the area to search out and excavate the mission. Weisman's account of this search is an adventure in field archaeology and discovery, and he provides the first detailed description of an aboriginal habitation associated with an early Spanish mission. While many mission sites have been excavated in the colonial capital of St. Augustine and in the populous Apalachee Province near present-day Tallahassee, few detailed excavations have been carried out in the frontier province of Timucua, an early setting for the Franciscan effort to bring Christianity to Florida's native peoples. Still fewer excavations have concentrated on the village areas of the mission community. The dag at Fig Springs has revealed remarkably intact remains of several mission buildings as well as thousands of artifacts in and around the buildings found as they were left when the mission was abandoned in the mid-seventeenth century. Most important, Weisman shows, the artifacts, architecture, and community plan from this site demonstrate how mission culture evolved well beyond the religious dimension and combined traits of both European and aboriginal cultures. The well-preserved artifacts of activities such as cooking, tool making, house building, and trash disposal represent a trememdous archaeological resource for understanding the aboriginal experience of mission life--an experience not often mentioned in contemporary documentary sources. The richness of the site augments the traditional focus of research into the Florida mission period and helps to provide a more complete picture of the mission commmunity as a whole.Brent Richards Weisman is an archaeologist with the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research in Tallahassee and is the author of Like Beads on a String: A Culture History of The Seminole Indians in Northern Peninsular Florida.