Late Prehistoric Florida: Archaeology at the Edge of the Mississippian World

4. The Indian River Region during the Mississippi Period

4 The Indian River Region during the Mississippi Period Thomas E. Penders The Indian River region of east-central Florida was inhabited by mobile fisher-hunter-gatherers for millennia prior to European arrival. Though they had contact with neighboring peoples during this time, Indian River populations were largely severed from intensive interactions with the broader Southeast by societies of northern peninsular and panhandle Florida, who were more actively engaged in widespread interaction networks . The sixteenth century, however, witnessed changes in native life as a somewhat steady flow of exotics made its way to the natives of the Indian River region. These foreign materials, however, did not derive from the Mississippian world but rather came from European shipwrecks, vessels grounded along the Atlantic seaboard of central Florida. This windfall brought power and increased sociopolitical complexity to the historic natives of the Indian River region, known to Europeans as the Ais, while they persisted as coastal foragers. Focusing on the Indian River Lagoon, this chapter provides an updated perspective on the Malabar II culture (A.D. 1000–1600) and explores changes wrought by European contact, including recent claims that the historic Ais (and perhaps their predecessors) constructed monumental architecture in the form of shell/earthworks. Indian River Lagoon Environment The Indian River is a restricted coastal lagoon with openings to the Atlantic Ocean at Ponce de Leon Inlet (north), Sebastian Inlet (central), and St. Lucie Inlet (south). It is part of a larger lagoonal system known as the Indian River Lagoon that includes Mosquito Lagoon and Banana River (Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution 2001). Combined, this watershed ◀◆◆◆▶ 82 · Thomas E. Penders Figure 4.1. Major physiographic features and political boundaries of the Indian River region. extends about 250 km along Florida’s east coast, between the outer islands and the mainland peninsula. Water movement is typically wind driven and nontidal except at the inlets, where tides do play a role. The Indian River Lagoon varies in width from just less than 1 km to 5 km and averages only 1 m in depth, conditions that would have facilitated native canoe travel. The Indian River Lagoon includes a chain of islands along the coast from St. Lucie Inlet north to Cocoa Beach, at which point the coastal geomorphology becomes more complex. Cocoa Beach has a series of islands within the Banana River known locally as the Thousand Islands. To the north are Merritt Island and Cape Canaveral, which are actually two barrier islands joined at the southern tip of Mosquito Lagoon (figure 4.1). The coastal area The Indian River Region during the Mississippi Period · 83 is a diverse mosaic of ecosystems that include mangrove and salt marshes, sea grass habitats, oak forest/maritime hammock, pine flatwoods, oak/ saw palmetto scrub, and beach dune (Brech 2004; Breininger et al. 1994). The Indian River Lagoon touts among the highest levels of biodiversity of any estuary in North America, being home to more than 3,000 different plants and animals (Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution 2001). It serves as a spawning ground and nursery for many different marine and freshwater fish species and has one of the most diverse bird populations in America (Breininger et al. 1994; NASA 2000; Virnstein and Campbell 1987). Because the Indian River Lagoon lies between temperate and tropical climatic zones, it is often viewed as an environmental transitional zone (Dickel and Doran 2002: 40). Malabar Culture The Indian River culture area was originally defined by Irving Rouse (1951: 51) as stretching from near the northern boundary of Brevard County south to St. Lucie Inlet, a distance of some 190 km. From east to west it extended from the Atlantic seaboard to the upper St. Johns River basin, an average distance of about 50 km (figure 4.1). Rouse (1951) further defined the post-Archaic Malabar culture of the region, the archaeological antecedent of the historic Ais, whose territory roughly mirrored that of the Indian River region. Relying primarily on the widespread distribution of the St. Johns ceramic tradition, Milanich and Fairbanks (1980) later opted to combine the St. Johns and Indian River regions to form the East and Central Lakes District, which covered nearly the entire eastern two-thirds of peninsular Florida. Following the results of a series of archaeological investigations in the 1980s, however, researchers again spotlighted the Indian River region as a distinct culture area or transitional zone between St. Johns to the north and Glades to the...