Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Anthropology

Major Professor

Thomas J. Pluckhahn, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Ping Wang, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rebecca K. Zarger, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Charles Stanish, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Gregg R. Brooks, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Debra A. Willard, Ph.D.

Keywords

Estuaries, Florida Gulf Coast, Shell Mounds, Wetlands

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the geological, ecological, and archaeological histories of Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest open-water estuary system. Previous geoscientific and archaeological work has studied the evolution of Florida’s estuaries as ‘pre-anthropogenic’ ecosystems and conceptualized Indigenous maritime societies as mostly passive inhabitants of dynamic ‘natural’ environments. Further, the environmental legacies of more recent, industrial-scale estuary modification attending Florida’s 20th-century population boom have been understudied—leading to popular and scientific confusion about historical conditions. The work composing this dissertation research seeks to reconceptualize Tampa Bay as a complex mosaic of cultural seascapes that have been variously altered and modified by human societies across the Holocene. My approach is interdisciplinary and blends method and theory from environmental archaeology and coastal sedimentary geology. The dissertation is organized into three separate research articles, reproduced here as chapters two, three, and four. Chapter two represents my initial forays into Tampa Bay’s historical ecology and focuses on recent-historical shifts in estuarine conditions. Drawing on historical photographs and analyses of wetland sediment records, the research shows that mosquito-control ditching during the mid-20th century were a major driver of expansive and ubiquitous conversions of salt marsh-salt-prairie mosaics to homogenous mangrove forest habitats. Chapter three summarizes an intensive program of sub-surface testing and sedimentary analyses across Tampa Bay’s inshore estuarine bayous. The results refine the understanding of Holocene estuarine development and suggest that the modification and/or construction (i.e., terraforming) of coastal landforms by Indigenous peoples influenced the trajectory of inshore coastal evolution, most evidently over the past 2000 years. Chapter four focuses on Indigenous shell mound-terraforming at the Harbor Key site and estuary development within Bishop Harbor—a tidal bayou on Tampa Bay’s southeastern shore. Drawing on sedimentological, zooarchaeological, and radiometric data, the study establishes a chronology for the Harbor Key shellworks and reconstructs a complex history of interaction between shell mound construction, sea-level rise, and storm landfalls through which Native land use traditions altered conditions in the landward estuary sub-basin. In Chapter five I discuss broader conclusions of the research, highlighting implications for anthropological archaeology and the management and conservation of coastal environments.

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