JANUARY 17, 2024 7:00PM PRESENTATION
Meeting Location: IMAG History and Science Center, Fort Myers

ARCHAIC SITES IN FLORIDA AND THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH SHELL TOOLS
Michelle Calhoun, WMS/LSSAS Archaeological Society

Michelle will speak about shell tools in Florida. Lightning whelk (Sinistrofulgur perversum, once known as Busycon perversum) has been integral to the lives of Native Peoples throughout eastern North America since at least the Archaic. Lightning whelk is found in archaeological contexts in every eastern U.S. state and even parts of Canada, though it was most often obtained from the Gulf of Mexico. Important though it was, additional "exotic" resources traveled alongside the whelk- mica, copper, greenstone, and others, often deposited in the same places and all described as symbolic of the Milky Way. This presentation will highlight the role that lightning whelk has played over the millennia and will provide hypothetical routes of travel for whelk and its travelling companions.

Michelle Calhoun graduated from New College of Florida in 2021 with a BA in Anthropology and currently works for Archaeological Consultants Inc. (ACI). She is a long-term volunteer for Sarasota County Historical Resources, working on various archaeological collections. She is currently involved with many projects, including indexing dozens of archaeological journals to create an archaeo-bibliography and GIS database for the eastern U.S. and southern Canada, illustrating artifacts for various publications, and helping to document the assemblage from 2 local archaeological sites.