Hidden in Plain Sight

Abstract

We present digital documentation of the Cockroach Key archaeological site in Tampa Bay on the western coast of Florida, USA. The site consists of a mound and midden complex constructed by Native Americans between around 100 and 900 CE. Although well known to antiquarians of the 1800s and archaeologists of the early 1900s, the site has slowly become “hidden in plain sight” to both archaeologists (owing to the lack of contemporary investigations) and the public (owing to the density of vegetation). We use LiDAR-based mapping and ground-penetrating radar to document the site’s surface and subsurface features.

Geoarchaeology and Coastal Morphodynamics of Harbor Key (8MA15): Indigenous Persistence at a Partially Inundated Native Shell Mound Complex in Tampa Bay, Florida

“…Previously studied early civic-ceremonial centers in the region are concentrated along Florida's northern Gulf Coast, with conspicuous inland peninsular examples (e.g., 8GL23, 8PB6292) set within the Lake Okeechobee basin (Figure 1). The present study at Harbor Key, along with recent work at Cockroach Key (8HI2; Pluckhahn et al 2022b) and Bayshore Homes (8PI41; Austin and Mitchem 2014), indicates that mound centers on the central peninsular Gulf Coast may have served as important nodes of interaction and exchange within ritual and political economies that connected Native peoples from the southern peninsula to the greater southeastern coastal plain and farther afield (Pluckhahn et al 2020). Our findings call for further investigation of understudied mound centers on the central and southern Florida Gulf Coast, particularly sites at the mouths of the Anclote (e.g., 8PA10) and Pithlachascotee Rivers (e.g., 8PA2), as well as shell mounds within Charlotte Harbor, Pine Island Sound, and Estero Bay.…”

Stratigraphic Framework, Paleoenvironments, and Indigenous Terraforming of Inshore Estuarine Subbasins in Tampa Bay, Florida, U.S.A.

“…Late-Holocene Native societies intensified these practices, and by ca. 1000 calibrated (cal) years before present (YBP) the peninsula's western coastline was dotted with shell-bearing sites, some measuring more than 0.5 km 2 in area and raised more than 10 m above surrounding terrains (Austin, Mitchem, and Weisman, 2014;Pluckhahn, Jackson, and Rogers, 2021;Sassaman et al, 2017;Schwadron, 2017;Thompson et al, 2018). In Tampa Bay, as elsewhere along Florida's Gulf and Atlantic coasts, shell-terraformed Native settlements are situated conspicuously on the seascape, commonly on prominent points or along major tidal creeks, and sometimes forming islands or peninsulas that partially enclose tidal bayous (Pluckhahn, Jackson, and Rogers, 2022).…”