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

11. Defining Pensacola and Fort Walton Cultures in the Western Panhandle

11 Defining Pensacola and Fort Walton Cultures in the Western Panhandle Norma Harris Pensacola culture is an archaeological construct first defined by Gordon Willey (1949a) based on a series of plain and decorated shell-tempered pottery found on the Gulf coast of the western Florida panhandle (figure 11.1). Although he recognized the distinctive pottery as somehow related to Moundville-influenced ceramics to the west in Mobile Bay, he also saw a relationship between Pensacola and Fort Walton ceramics to the east. He described the Pensacola series as a “regional or subregional variable” in assemblages from the extreme western reaches of the Fort Walton culture area (Willey 1949a: 452). This chapter presents an up-to-date perspective on the Pensacola culture and examines how it relates to and differs from the Fort Walton culture. Geographic Overview This chapter covers extreme northwest Florida, an area that lies within the East Gulf Coastal Plain physiographic province (Fenneman 1938; Hunt 1974) and the Coastal Lowlands physiographic subdivision of the coastal plain (Marsh 1966). The province is blanketed by sediments of the Citronelle Formation, deposited during the Plio-Pleistocene epoch some one million years ago. High-energy streams deposited upland sediments of sand, clays, and gravels in alluvial fans that have coalesced on most of this section of the coastal plain, east to interior Washington County. In contrast to most of Florida, the western panhandle counties are situated on loosely consolidated sandstone bedrock, with few outcroppings, especially near the coast. The limestone bedrock and its associated sinkholes and numerous springs characteristic of Florida karst topography begin in ◀◆◆◆▶ 276 · Norma Harris interior Washington County, dipping into northern coastal Bay County, the easternmost county examined in this chapter (Puri and Vernon 1964). Mississippi-Period Northwest Florida: Fort Walton and Pensacola Cultures Among the 39 “Fort Walton” sites in the Florida panhandle reported by Willey (1949a: 452–53), 24 are located in the westernmost counties adjacent to the Alabama state line: Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay (figure 11.2). These five counties encompass three large estuary systems along the central Gulf coast, which are the focus of this chapter: Pensacola, Choctawhatchee, and St. Andrew bays. Willey included the site of Bear Point (1Ba1) on the much smaller Perdido Bay system in Alabama in his list of Fort Walton sites, because of its obvious ceramic connection to his newly named Pensacola ceramic series, but he was apparently unaware of the much larger ceremonial center of the Pensacola culture to the north, Bottle Creek (1Ba2). Until recently, Pensacola culture in southwestern Alabama was not viewed as a fully developed Mississippian society (Brose 1984, 2003; Figure 11.1. The western Florida panhandle. Courtesy of UWF Archaeology Institute. Defining Pensacola and Fort Walton Cultures in the Western Panhandle · 277 Brown 2003; Fuller 1985, 2003; Knight 1984; Milanich 1994; Stowe 1985). Rather, Pensacola was considered the “fringe” of the Mississippian world, lacking key Mississippian characteristics such as substantial agricultural production in its subsistence base, complex sociopolitical organization, and iconographic complexes traditionally associated with centers such as Moundville and Etowah (Knight 1989, 1990; Peebles and Kus 1977; Scarry 1996; Smith 1985). This view also was shared by archaeologists working in the core Fort Walton region, at least until a few decades ago (Brose 1984; Brose and Percy 1978; Jones 1982; Scarry, 1980, 1985, 1990; Tesar 1980). As it became evident that Pensacola may not be merely a Fort Walton variant , researchers began to question the relationship more deeply. Brose and Percy in 1978, for example, suggested that Pensacola culture “was a veneer , overlain on western Fort Walton coastal sites in Florida” (Brose 2003: xvii); whereas Louis Tesar defined five Fort Walton “subareas,” calling the coastline from Mobile to Choctawhatchee Bay the Pensacola–Fort Walton subarea (Phillips 1995; Tesar 1980). Excavations at Bottle Creek, led by Ian Brown (2003), have provided a substantially different view. His work has revealed preserved maize, at least 18 mounds, several plazas, habitation middens, and dates ranging between A.D. 1250 and 1550. The Bottle Creek complex is located on Mound Island in the upper Mobile-Tensaw Delta, just south of the confluence Figure 11.2. The counties of the western panhandle surrounding Pensacola, Choctawhatchee, and St. Andrew bays. Courtesy of UWF Archaeology Institute. 278 · Norma Harris of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers. The environmental setting is not that of a terrace overlooking a major drainage, as with most Mississippian mound centers, but a low...