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MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
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Driscoll, Kelly A. (MA). An archaeological study of architectural form
and function at Indian Key, Florida (Weisman). 2004.
Indian Key Historic State Park is a small island located on the Atlantic
Ocean side of the Florida Keys, near Islamorada. Before it was bought
by the state of Florida in 1970, Indian Key had been the setting for
a number of historically significant activities. The most well known
of these is the 1840 raid on the people and buildings that made up a
small wrecking village, established on the island by Jacob Housman in
the early 1830s. The limestone foundations of these structures are the
main attraction to today's visitor to the park. There is more to the
story of Indian Key, though, than the Housman period and the structural
remains left behind from this stage of the island's history. Almost immediately
after the near destruction of the island in 1840, the Florida Squadron
of the Navy took over, constructing their own buildings, and re-using
some of the previously constructed foundations.
This cycle of rebuilding and re-use continued for another hundred years,
with families and fishers trying to inhabit and profit from Indian Key.
The focus of this thesis is to examine the foundations and associated
archaeological features of Indian Key in order to determine better periods
of use and re-use for the buildings that have been identified through
archaeological investigations. This research was conducted in order to
examine the site's architecture through an archaeological perspective;
it is by no means an attempt at a complete architectural study of the
site. Rather, it is an effort to examine the entire island of Indian
Key, by focusing on the history of the buildings that helped make it
an important piece of Florida's past.
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