Abstract
ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION IN FLORIDA.-Mr. J. Walter Fewkes has been able to take advantage of the commercial exploitation of Weeden Island, Tampa Bay, to explore the shell mounds, which were noted nearly half a century ago as a prominent feature of this part of Florida, but have now to a great extent disappeared owing to the use of their material for road metal. In vol. 76, No. 13, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Mr. Fewkes describes and figures remains found in a preliminary exploration on Weeden Island, which was mainly directed to the investigation of a mound which had been used as a cemetery. The prehistoric aborigines appear to have lived principally on shell fish, but they also ate fish, game, and rodents, and, possibly, roots and fruits. The mound exhibited three layers of stratification, one being modern. In the upper of the two ancient strata, skulls and skeletons occur in numbers, and the im plements and a finely decorated pottery point to a relationship with the prehistoric inhabitants of Northern Florida and Southern Georgia. The lowest stratum contains, objects belonging to an ancient people of Florida whose origin and affinities are obscure, but whose pottery suggests affinity with the archaic pre-Tainan Ciboney culture of Cuba and the similar early cultures of other West Indian Islands. Whether it was autochthonous in both areas or an extension from one to the other is a question for future investigation.
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Research Items. Nature 115, 98–99 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115098a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115098a0