SWFAS was founded in 1980 to provide a meeting place for people interested in the southwest Florida area's archaeology, history and cultural past.
2018-2019 PROGRAMS & SPEAKERS
Our Saturday, December 8, 2018, the annual SWFAS December Field Trip will be to the Marco Island Historical Museum located at 108 South Heathwood Drive, Marco Island, FL 34145 (phone 239-252-1440).
In addition to the ten-foot wooden cat in the front yard, the real “Marco Cat” is in residence and on loan from the Smithsonian Museum. While much smaller than the cat in the front yard, this is your opportunity to see the real thing. We will meet in the parking lot of the museum at 10:30 am and will have 1-1/2 hours to view the cat and to see the many other attractions that the museum has to offer. It ranges from the Calusa Indians to 21st-century historical information about Marco Island, old fishing villages and “modern” conveniences of the 1920s. Entrance to the museum is free (we suggest a donation), and it has a shop with many unique gifts.
At 12:00 pm, we will leave the museum and travel about 4 miles South to the town of Goodland for lunch at the Little Bar, a waterfront restaurant in the small fishing village of Goodland. Goodland is a unique and eclectic place, and I guarantee that the seafood will be fresh. After lunch, I recommend a short drive around the village to see what “a real old Florida” fishing village looked like. Another famous attraction in Goodland is Stan’s. In season you must visit on Sunday afternoon!
If you plan to attend, I will need you to e-mail me with the names of the individuals attending at jffurey@charter.net or call me at (508-330-5566). You MUST have a reservation for both the museum and the restaurant. I need to know how many are going to the museum and how many are going to the restaurant. If you decide to skip lunch, the museum is not far from the Otter Mound on Marco and that may be a great location for a nearby visit. It is located at 1831 Addison Court. You should use your GPS to find it as the roads nearby can be confusing.
2019
January 16
Theresa Schober ..... The Making of “Escampaba, The Kingdom of Carlos”
February 20
Jarrett Eady ..... Early Black Settlers in Fort Myers
March 20
Christian Davenport ..... Palm Beach County Archaeology
April 17
William Locascio ..... Middens in the Muck: Evidence of Late Archaic Tree Island Communities in the Northern Everglades
May 2019
Florida Anthropological Society 71st Annual Meeting in Crystal River
Programs in November and April are held at Collier Museum at Government Center, Naples.
Programs January through March are held at IMAG, Fort Myers.
Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, November 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
SWFAS ELECTION OF OFFICERS 2019 Our chapter bylaws mandate that the current SWFAS Board of Directors must present and announce a slate of candidates in December 2018 to be voted upon by the membership at the January 2019 meeting. Any member wishing to run for an office or serve on the Board of Directors should contact John Furey at jffurey@charter.net or call me at 508-330-5566 to have your name entered in this election. We are always looking for new people with new ideas to step forward. I would be happy to answer any questions concerning these positions that you may have. Also, SWFAS will be the host for the May 2020 FAS Annual Meeting in the Naples/Marco Island area and we will need volunteers to help at this meeting.
ARTICLES FOR NOVEMBER
This month I have included three articles that I hope you find interesting. The first, ”New Projectile Point Style Could Suggest Two Separate Migrations into North America”. The second article, “Famous 'Beaded Burial' Shows Female Had More Power Than Previously Thought”, finds that some females burials at Mississippian Cahokia exhibited very high status. The third entitled “When Is It OK To Dig Up The Dead?” discusses the ethical and legal guidelines involved in the excavation of burials that we should all be aware of.
CONTINUE READING >>>Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, October 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
Our first SWFAS speaker of the 2018-2019 season will be David Southall on Wednesday, November 14th at the Collier County Museum. David will present a highly interesting historical talk on the Captain John Foley Horr house on Marco Island. As you are aware, SWFAS and the Marco Island Historical Museum (MIHM) have been working to try to save this historic structure that is one of twenty sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Collier County. The Historic Archaeological Preservation Board of Collier County lists The Captain John
Foley Horr House as “locally significant”.
Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, September 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
Welcome back to Southwest Florida Archaeology after a summer hiatus. School is back in session and everyone is in their Fall/Winter mode again. We at SWFAS have a great 2018-2019 speakers program organized with an emphasis on both coasts of South Florida. We have two programs on the archaeology of the Glades: one on Palm Beach County and one on Belle Glade area sites. On the West Coast, we have a special presentation on the Captain John Foley Horr House in November, a February presentation on the early black pioneer/settlers in Lee County to recognize Black History Month and a presentation on the making of the film Escampaba: The Kingdom of Carlos. This film explores the early European contact era of Florida from events that transpired at the Calusa principal village of Mound Key. The Calusa called their capital Stababa. We look forward to seeing you at these presentations and don't forget our December field trip! The complete and final program will be released next month.
Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, May 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
Our SWFAS Newsletter runs from October to May while our presentations run from November to April. This May we have the FAS 70th Annual Meeting and then we finally get the summer off. We continue to book quality and informative speakers for our speaker series and present topics of great interest in both local history and archaeology. Your annual dues and donations are an important part of our maintaining this ability. I would like to thank all our SWFAS members for their support and those that attended our presentations and supported SWFAS this year. Our December field trip is usually to a local archaeological or historical venue after which we go to lunch: this year it will be “special” so you should plan to attend. It will be announced later this year. Have a great summer and see you in the fall.
NEWSLETTER HELP NEEDED
The SWFAS Newsletter is always looking for original archaeological/anthropological articles from authors to publish as well as articles of interest to the general membership. Did you take a trip this summer to visit or work at a site, or a museum; please write about your trip and share the experience with us. If you have articles that you wish to have published in the newsletter, please submit them to me at jffurey@charter.net.Thanks.
Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, April 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
There will be no May meeting or presentation as the 70th annual FAS meeting is May 11-13 in St. Petersburg, FL. Check back for a May Newsletter with the 2018-2019 SWFAS presentation schedule, which should be completed by then.
SWFAS ONLINE
We have continued to add to the historical information of SWFAS available online. We recently added a historical listing of the officers and trustees of SWFAS back to the year 2000. SWFAS was founded in 1980 and this should be extended back to that date at some future date. Additionally, we have added a listing of the historical speakers and their topics back to 2005. This also will be extended back as far as possible in the future. A listing of the 31 original articles written by Jack Harvey have been included titled “Geology Rules” and “Digital Archaeology” published in the SWFAS Newsletter between June 2005 and December 2008 that reference the year and month for an easy way to look up the article. These, along with a listing of the various awards that SWFAS members have received over the years, such as The Craighead Awards, the Golden Trowel Awards, FAS Certificate of Achievement Awards, The Arthur R. Lee Chapter Award and the FAS Presidents Award are currently available.
Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, March 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
This month I have included three articles of great interest that combine a number of themes along our Gulf Coast and that tie into the March presentation by Dr. Paul Backhouse. First, the article History and culture of Egmont Key provides brief overview of the history of the island and only slightly mentions its role in the removal of captured Seminoles from Florida to the Oklahoma Territory. Egmont Key was a prison where the captured Seminoles were held for transit to New Orleans and then onward to the West. Today it is visited by day tripping beachgoers and is a National Wildlife Refuge Area and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The second article written by Dr. Backhouse deals with climate change, rising sea levels, archaeology, the erosion that threatens Egmont Key and the cultural heritage of the Seminoles; Egmont Key represents a dark part of their history and heritage. How to salvage that history is the role of the Historic Preservation Office of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and balancing all of the competing demands that this represents. This is a mixture of issues from the perspective of the Seminoles and how they came to a consensus.
The third article deals with a unique discovery off the coast of Manasota Key. An underwater site 300 yards off the current shoreline that was buried in the peat of a freshwater pond when sea level was much lower. The peat has protected and preserved the human and cultural remains and is dated at 7,214 years old. Heather Walsh-Haney is a forensics anthropology professor at FGCU and is one of the team of scientists analyzing the site. She will be our guest speaker at our April 18th presentation at the Collier County Museum in Naples, Florida.
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Southwest Florida Archaeological Society (SWFAS) Newsletter, February 2018
PRESIDENT’S CORNER by John Furey
FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH
As we commemorate Black History Month this February 2018, I would like to share with you two articles by African authors that I recently discovered that deal with African architecture and history and present viewpoints on racism we do not often encounter in the U.S. Most of the history of Africa was written by Europeans from the perspective of colonialism with little credit given to indigenous African societies for their many architectural and scientific accomplishments. Most of which Westerners are totally unaware of. One example of the racism that they see is that no one ever says that the Acropolis or the Colosseum were constructed by alien extraterrestrials but the pyramids are often depicted as being built by extraterrestrials and not Africans. The authors attribute this to racism and we see Western pseudo- science blurring the line between fantasy and real science with TV programs claiming to know the real truth that is being hidden and it is a conspiracy they are attempting to expose. The United States today seems to be awash with these ideas and is a fertile ground for many ideas presented on pseudoscientific reality TV shows; Bigfoot, Yeti, the Nazca Lines, UFO’s; we also have serious racial problems. Are these phenomena related? I hope that you find the attached articles by Julien Benoit and Zienab Badawi as interesting as I did.
There will be no May meeting or presentation as the 70th annual FAS meeting is May 11-13 in St. Petersburg, FL. Check back for a May Newsletter with the 2018-2019 SWFAS presentation schedule, which should be completed by then.
SWFAS ONLINE
We have continued to add to the historical information of SWFAS available online. We recently added a historical listing of the officers and trustees of SWFAS back to the year 2000. SWFAS was founded in 1980 and this should be extended back to that date at some future date. Additionally, we have added a listing of the historical speakers and their topics back to 2005. This also will be extended back as far as possible in the future. A listing of the 31 original articles written by Jack Harvey have been included titled “Geology Rules” and “Digital Archaeology” published in the SWFAS Newsletter between June 2005 and December 2008 that reference the year and month for an easy way to look up the article. These, along with a listing of the various awards that SWFAS members have received over the years, such as The Craighead Awards, the Golden Trowel Awards, FAS Certificate of Achievement Awards, The Arthur R. Lee Chapter Award and the FAS Presidents Award are currently available.
CONTINUE READING > > >