Prehistoric Indigenous Foodways at a Northwest Florida Shell Midden
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Mentor Information
Nancy White
Description
Florida archaeology can give us further understanding of the ecology and environmental changes that occurred in the past and could re-occur in the present. In this thesis, I examine one site left by the indigenous peoples from prehistoric northwest Florida between about 1500 to 500 years ago to try to understand the environmental conditions they lived in and their food waste. The Van Horn Creek shell midden site (8Fr744) is in the Apalachicola River valley region, about 50 miles west of Tallahassee. In my research, I studied cultural materials from Test Unit 1 at the site, which was excavated in the 1980s by Nancy White and other USF field archaeology students, to show changes through time in the wild species harvested for food.
Prehistoric Indigenous Foodways at a Northwest Florida Shell Midden
Florida archaeology can give us further understanding of the ecology and environmental changes that occurred in the past and could re-occur in the present. In this thesis, I examine one site left by the indigenous peoples from prehistoric northwest Florida between about 1500 to 500 years ago to try to understand the environmental conditions they lived in and their food waste. The Van Horn Creek shell midden site (8Fr744) is in the Apalachicola River valley region, about 50 miles west of Tallahassee. In my research, I studied cultural materials from Test Unit 1 at the site, which was excavated in the 1980s by Nancy White and other USF field archaeology students, to show changes through time in the wild species harvested for food.
