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MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
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Rodriguez, Nelson D. (M.A.) Contact/Mission Period and Depopulation in the Apalachicola River Valley, Northwest Florida (White), 2004.
Abstract: This thesis describes the archeological fieldwork I conducted in the Apalachicola River Valley of Florida at the Thick Greenbriar site (8Ja417). The excavations were done based on the data produced in 1996 by Dr. Nancy White and her field crew. Multiple excavations were done to help develop a clear model of the protohistoric/contact period in northwest Florida, a period relatively unknown but of unprecedented culture loss for native peoples.
The Thick Greenbriar site is one of only two known to date to the contact or very early historic period in the Apalachicola Valley. Data from these sites help us fill out the picture of pre-contact Floridian culture by adding pieces to the puzzle. The time period (A.D. 1500-1740) represented at Thick Greenbriar is the time of the Spanish Entrada into the New World and subsequent missionization of the Indians. It is the period after 1492 but mostly before any historic records of the group or groups that were west of Tallahassee. The material evidence collected from field excavations during the summers of 1996, 2000, and 2002 solidly characterized the Thick Greenbriar site as having two Fort Walton components, a prehistoric and contact/early historic period, as well as evidence of sporadic visits by later native groups. The limited evidence for sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century native habitation in this valley (even though it had been a major population center earlier) suggests widespread depopulation due to disease and other effects from the Spanish Entrada.
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