Recovering the Landscapes of the Second Seminole War A Historical Archaeological Approach to Gulf Coast Florida

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Baram, Uzi

Keywords

Seminole Wars, Historical Archaeology, Nineteenth-Century Forts

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

This historical archaeological study employs the notion of a cultural landscape as the scale of analysis in examining the military transformation of the greater Tampa Bay region during the years preceding and immediately following the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). Fort Brooke (1824-1887), located on Tampa Bay, Fort Armistead (1840-184 1), located on Sarasota Bay, and Fort Hamer (1849-1850), located on the Manatee River, each played a distinct role in the subjugation, containment, and removal of the Seminole peoples of Florida under Andrew Jackson's Indian removal program. However, it is argued that prior to the systematic removal of the Seminoles from areas of U.S. settlement, Seminole and European-American social relations were more frequently characterized by trade and economic interaction than by violence or warfare. The U.S. occupation of Florida saw new conceptualizations of the land and new attitudes towards its occupants. Thus, Seminole War-period military fortifications should not be interpreted solely as isolated military sites, but as nodes on the shifting boundaries of multiple cultural landscapes in the shaping of the modem American landscape.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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