The Evolution of Calusa: A Nonagricultural Chiefdom of the Southwest Florida Coast

Preface

Preface Southwest Florida is a unique region of the United States. Having grown up in south Florida, I took for granted many of the special features of the unusual environment of the area. The extraordinarily good fishing had always impressed me, and I silently observed on many occasions that it would be impossible for anyone who could fish to starve in coastal south Florida. I remember vividly, as an adolescent, standing on a pier and watching the coastal water turning to a white froth for as far as the eye could see up and down the coast as predatory fish attacked an incredible shoal of mullet on their migratory run. Not until later did I discover that prehistoric Indians had relied on the very fish resources I enjoyed so much for sport. I read an article by Goggin and Sturtevant (1964) which argued for the nonagricultural economic base for the aboriginal Indians, known at contact as the Calusa, who lived on the southwest Florida coast. These Indians and their prehistoric predecessors apparently developed a society with a highly structured hierarchical political organization, known as a chiefdom, characterized by a number of inherited positions, called ranks. Because chiefdoms are usually associated with agricultural societies, I became interested in how this type of society developed, independent of agriculture. From 1969 on, I began rigorously to investigate what I intuitively took to be obvious, that the southwest Florida coast could indeed support a highly ranked chiefdom without agriculture. Although I disciplined myself not to leap from intuitive gut feelings about the productivity of the region, I confess that my belief that such an adaptation was possible guided my research, and a more systematic understanding of how this adaptation worked became my goal. xiv Preface My first archaeological field experiences were in north Florida, rather than southwest Florida. In 1970, however, I had the opportunity of working on Marco Island with the Florida Division of Archives and History. This was my first exposure to the archaeology of south Florida. I remember finding it difficult to believe the incredible Caxambas site 8Crl07, composed of shell, was aboriginal. I then began to realize that this site was not an anomaly and that there were others, such as Key Marco and Goodland, now covered by houses, that were probably villages of the Calusa or their antecedents. This discovery reaffirmed my belief that this chiefdom was not only possible but had actually existed. I therefore became committed to the study of the Calusa and their antecedents. I recognized, as had investigators before me, that the distinctive environment of the Calusas had made their chiefdom possible. As an undergraduate, I read a book by W. T. Sanders and B. J. Price entitled Mesoamerica: The Evolution of a Civilization. The theoretical approach they used in the book could, I thought, equally be applied to a study of the Calusa. Since William Sanders was at Pennsylvania State University, I decided to go there to carry out such a study. It took me a while to convince him that a highly ranked chiefdom was possible without agriculture, but eventually he concurred with my findings. Much to my surprise, I found out that a noted authority on the paleoenvironment of southwest Florida, William Spackman, was also at Pennsylvania State, and so I was able to take advantage of his guidance and data. Near the beginning of my research on the background of the Calusa, I realized two things: first, that an incredible amount of work had been done in the area over a very long period and, second, that in spite of this long history of research, no one had synthesized the work. In fact, southwest Florida was the only area of Florida for which there was no synthesis. This book is intended to provide one, but it is also intended to be a theoretical model of the evolution of a nonagricultural chiefdom, the Calusa. In this model, I have attempted to tie together a series of substantive layers, each of which is independent yet essential for producing the model. These layers include the specific geological, ecological, environmental , and archaeological data relevant to the area. They are held together by anthropological and ecological method and theory. Because the archaeological data are limited, and will always be so, I have begun with theory to construct the model. For example, after one hundred years of archaeological investigations in southwest Florida, we still have no idea what an aboriginal house in this region looked like. Furthermore...