Abstract
No area along the far edges of the Mississippian world is as remote from Cahokia as northeastern Florida. But objects of possible Cahokian derivation, though limited in number, made their way to this distant locale The most compelling material evidence in Florida for any kind of connection to Cahokia comes from the Mill Cove Complex and Mt. Royal along the St. Johns River of the northern peninsula. Situated about 100 km from one another, these two fisher-hunter-gatherer communities were recipients of copper and stone artifacts that likely originated in the American Bottom, some 1200 km away. The overall geographical distribution of Cahokian styles and artifacts enmeshed varied internal and external processes and flows that encompassed exploration, migration, diaspora, trade, and politics. While no evidence exists for a Cahokian outpost or diaspora as far south as Florida, the presence of American Bottom artifacts along the St. Johns River could have involved more than the stock answer of simple down-the-line-exchange. This essay explores issues of long-distance travel, direct contact, knowledge seeking, object biographies, and diplomacy among peoples from these geographically disparate locales.
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Notes
It has recently been argued that one of the mechanisms responsible for the presence of non-local Ocmulgee Cordmarked pottery from south-central Georgia in St. Johns II contexts was intermarriage (Ashley et al. 2015).
The tentative statements made on the origins of this artifact are based on viewing a stock photograph of the object taken by the National Museum of the American Indian. No one cited as personal communication (or the authors) has examined the artifact in person.
Plates of all sizes typically possess a small center hole, and a number of plates have a large circular protuberance. Some sheets include beaded nodes in a circular pattern around the perforated center or beaded nodes in linear lines extending from the embossed center to the four corners of the plate. Another decorative form includes a continuous raised circle around a perforated center. A recurring comment made by Moore (1894a, b, 1895) with regard to his discovery of copper plates is that most were wrapped in either bark or woven vegetal fibers.
According to Moore (1894a:18; 1895:454, 473), Grant also may have possessed earthen embankments leading from the mound, but due to intensive plowing, they disappeared into the surrounding terrain a short distance from the mound. No pond or lake, however, was in the path of the possible embankments at Grant.
As a reviewer pointed out, embankments are found at earlier Woodland period sites in Florida, such as Crystal River, River Styx, and Fort Center. In fact, Goggin (1952:55) looked to south Florida as a source of influence, noting that the paired ridges on the two St. Johns II sites bear resemblances to those of the Lake Okeechobee area. Fort Center, located deep in the everglades of south Florida, is a ritual landscape that consists of circular and linear earthworks, ditches, and a charnel pond and mound complex (Thompson and Pluckhahn 2011). However, none of the lengthy embankments there directly link a burial mound and a pond.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Jayur Mehta, Sarah Baires, Melissa Baltus, and Liz Watts Malouchos for inviting two Floridians to participate in their 2017 SEAC symposium on Cahokia’ Diaspora. Special thanks also to Vicki Rolland, Nancy White, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Ashley, K., Thunen, R.L. St. Johns River Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers: Florida’s Connection to Cahokia. J Archaeol Method Theory 27, 7–27 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09439-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09439-5