Files
Abstract
Humans experience climate effects on scales that directly affect the availability of resources. This is especially true for those populations that reside near and depend upon estuarine ecosystems where sea level change can act as a primary driving force in the distribution and configuration of these ecosystems. The research that follows explores the local manifestations of global climate trends related to the Little Ice Age from AD 1000 – 1500 within two distinct estuarine systems in Florida, Charlotte Harbor/Pine Island Sound/San Carlos Bay and Estero Bay in Southwest Florida. It also combines this with an examination of the consequences of environmental change on economic strategies that in turn influence Indigenous sociopolitical and socioeconomic organization among the Calusa. This research utilizes high-resolution Bayesian chronological modeling, oxygen isotope geochemistry of incremental marine shell growth bands, and zooarchaeological analysis of vertebrate and invertebrate refuse at Mound Key (8LL2) and the Pineland Site Complex (8LL33, etc.), AD 1000 – 1450, to examine local environmental conditions and evidence for deeply rooted ecological knowledge that supported complex socio-economic organization. Lastly, this research examines evidence for the organization of non-subsistence based economies through a unique assemblage of toxic burrfishes remains recovered from archaeological deposits at Mound Key.