Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Diane Wallman, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jonathan Bethard, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rebecca Zarger, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Katherine Goldberg, Ph.D.

Keywords

Mimicry, Ambivalence, Foodways, Deathways, Second Seminole War, Third Space

Abstract

This project uses an historical archaeological approach to analyze the processes of cultural negotiation between disparate social groups living in a remote borderland in the early to mid-nineteenth centuries. Florida, first colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s was passed to the United States in 1821 as part of the young nation’s nascent Manifest Destiny. The Seminoles experienced multiple colonial conflicts, dealt with new diseases, and selected aspects of European culture to incorporate into their daily practices of lifeways.

Archaeological studies of culture change tend to focus on the product of colonial interactions rather than the processes of change that drives culture change. The postcolonial critique introduced the concept of hybridity, and it has been widely adapted to the study of material culture. However, hybrid material culture is the product of a series of negotiations between colonial entities. This dissertation draws on Homi Bhaha’s concept of third space, a figurative space in which disparate groups negotiate and contest cultural identities and traditions through the processes of mimicry and ambivalence. I utilize foodways and deathways as an organizational framework for complex colonial discourses of identity. Through the analysis of Fort Brooke’s archaeological assemblages curated by the City of Tampa and USF, gray literature from the Florida Master Site File (FMSF), archival documents, and oral history collections from the University of Florida and Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum; this study revealed a complex set of negotiations, in the third space of Florida, involving both incorporations of and resistance to European goods and ideas.

The end result of the United States colonial wars in Florida was the development of a White landscape of towns settled by religious families who brought the trappings of “civilization” with them to “wilds” of Florida. At the same time, the Seminoles lived fairly undisturbed in the Everglades from the end of the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. This study suggests that traditional subsistence patterns of fishing, hunting, and gardening continued; however, aspects of communalism disappeared. Over the course of the twentieth century more fast-food industries and chain groceries moved into South Florida shifting accessing to American products resulting in changes in diet and health among the Florida Seminoles. The result of colonial negotiations on Seminole deathways remains murky. Ancestral burials tended to center on multigenerational mounds rather than solitary interments. Burials during the Second Seminole War show an abrupt change in this process of death. Tree island burials tend to be solitary rather than communal suggesting that the rupture of war left a large scar in Seminole deathways.

This project contributes to the discourse of colonialism and research surrounding the formation of colonial identities associated with European expansion. It focuses away from the concept of hybrid material culture to consider how hybridities are produced through mimicry and ambivalence, which characterized colonial interactions.

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