Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Baram, Uzi

Keywords

Safety Harbor Culture, Burial Mounds, Mound Sites, South Florida Museum

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

This thesis presents Frog Creek Burial Mound (8Ma44) as a single component tumulus dating to the Safety Harbor Period (900-1725 CE). The data for this site have been reconstructed from obscured archives of the collector’s notes and a partially intact assemblage, both of which are curated at the South Florida Museum. Based on the existing data from the collector notes and artifacts, the site may represent an elite burial suggested by the excavated grave goods. This thesis discusses the implications of Frog Creek Burial mound for the associated Safety Harbor Culture and the Central Gulf Coast regional chronology through an in-depth discussion of the data on the site. Using relevant scholarship about the Safety Harbor Culture and region, the mound’s artifacts are analyzed in comparison to similar archaeological sites and their artifacts, to interpret and illustrate the relationship that Frog Creek Burial Mound may have possessed to the surrounding area and larger cultural region of the Central Gulf Coast. This thesis presents the approach of museum collection and archival research employed by the author as an effective strategy of embracing and overcoming issues within Florida archaeology and museum collections that possess poorly excavated and accessioned objects.

Download

Share

COinS