John Worth

University of West Florida | UWF · Department of Anthropology

We conduct a synthetic archaeological and ethnohistoric dating program to assess the timing and tempo of the spread of peaches, the first Eurasian domesticate to be adopted across Indigenous eastern North America, into the interior American Southeast by Indigenous communities who quickly “Indigenized” the fruit. In doing so, we present what may be...

Spanish Olive Jar is a ubiquitous marker of the Spanish colonial period in the southeastern United States, appearing on both terrestrial and maritime sites where colonists resided and traveled between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Olive Jar ceramic type has been the subject of many archaeological studies, most of which use vessel shap...

The town of Potano, refenced in sixteenth-century and in early seventeenth-century Spanish accounts of the exploration and settlement of the Southeast, is one of the named sites associated with the Hernando de Soto entrada that possesses sufficient documentary and archaeological evidence that would allow for its firm identification. The Richardson...

This chapter provides a comprehensive synthesis of work related to locating Mission San Joseph de Escambe. In this chapter, Worth discusses finding and researching the mission, an up-to-date artifact analysis that includes all of his team’s work up to 2015, and other previously unpublished research on the mission site.

The primary legitimate distinction between history and prehistory has always been methodological, based on differing degrees of direct or indirect access to what people did and thought in the past. Moreover, if we view culture as an emergent phenomenon that is manifested through the socially contextualized actions and thoughts of individuals over t...

Following the fortuitous 2015 discovery of a substantial assemblage of mid-16th-century Spanish ceramics in a residential neighborhood overlooking the Emanuel Point shipwrecks in Pensacola Bay, the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute worked with more than 120 landowners to conduct extensive archaeological testing across a broad area in...

This first volume of a two volume set represents the result of six years of additional research beyond my 1992 dissertation, and presents a detailed analysis of the emergence, structure, and function of the 17th-century colonial system of Spanish Florida, focusing on the Timucuan chiefdoms of the northern peninsular interior of Florida. The volume...

This second "Timucuan Chiefdoms" volume explores the many stresses that undermined and eventually led to the collapse of the mid-17th-century colonial system of Spanish Florida, including depopulation due to a variety of causes, as well as the important Timucuan Rebellion of 1656, which resulted in a massive restructuring of the indigenous social l...

Since its discovery in 2015, the University of West Florida has conducted archaeological investigations at the site of Santa María de Ochuse, Tristán de Luna y Arellano's 1559-1561 settlement on Pensacola Bay. After nearly four years of fieldwork and lab work, the site has already revealed a substantial and diverse assemblage of artifacts associate...

Since the 2015 discovery of the 1559-1561 Tristán de Luna settlement in Pensacola, the University of West Florida has conducted archaeological investigations of the site of this earliest multi-year European settlement in the continental United States. Based on a comprehensive shovel-test survey, three summer field schools, and multiple mitigation p...

Excavations at the terrestrial settlement of Tristán de Luna y Arellano on Pensacola Bay suggest that the material culture of the colonists at the site between 1559 and 1561 included a significant amount of contemporaneous Native American ceramics evidently scavenged along with food from evacuated communities along the coast and interior. Combined...

There are many examples of colonial entanglements resulting in shifts in religions, practices, subsistence, and political structures, largely linked to inequalities between the colonized and the colonizers. However, there are also examples in which practices, particularly among Native American societies, persisted in the context of social situation...

Long-term research by the University of West Florida into the 1559-1561 expedition of Tristán de Luna y Arellano to Pensacola Bay has only accelerated following the 2015 discovery of Luna's terrestrial settlement and the 2016 discovery of a third shipwreck from Luna's fleet that wrecked just offshore. In addition to ongoing archaeological investiga...

Based on field, laboratory, and archival research, discoveries made at the shipwreck systematically told their stories, allowing the wrecked ship and its remains to be closely dated and identified as part of the Luna fleet that sank in 1559 during a violent hurricane in Pensacola Bay. At that time, the ship was a veteran of transatlantic trade, sub...

The Emanuel Point Shipwreck helped to persuade the University of West Florida to begin a program of maritime archaeology. Those students ultimately continued the survey of Pensacola Bay, finding another Luna shipwreck near the first one and then, recently, a third sister ship in the fleet. Above the shipwrecks on the Emanuel Point Bluff, remnants o...

Following the fortuitous 2015 discovery of a substantial assemblage of mid-16th-century Spanish ceramics in a residential neighborhood overlooking the Emanuel Point shipwrecks in Pensacola Bay, the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute worked with more than 120 landowners to conduct extensive archaeological testing across a broad area in...

The 1559-1561 expedition of Tristán de Luna was the largest and most well-financed Spanish attempt to colonize southeastern North America up to that time. Had it succeeded, New Spain would have expanded to include a settled terrestrial route from the northern Gulf of Mexico to the lower Atlantic coast. While a hurricane left most of the fleet and t...

Sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts are uncommon but widespread finds in the Southeastern United States, and documented assemblages have been variously used by archaeologists either as secondary indicators of the presence of passing Spanish explorers, or also as evidence of direct or indirect Spanish trade. The vast majority of such artifacts are f...

Despite the fact that archaeological ceramics have long been viewed as a proxy for ethno-political identity, recent research exploring the precise relationship between ceramics and identity during the historic-era southeastern United States provides increasing support for the conclusion that geographic variability in archaeological ceramics is best...

This chapter provides a newly discovered and translated account of the Pardo expedtions, written by interpreter Domingo Gonzales de León in 1584. León had arrived in La Florida with the adelantado Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in 1565, helping to found both the colonies of St. Augustine and Santa Elena. He was a member of Pardo’s second expedition, so t...

Paper presented at the 49th Annual Conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. (2016).

Though sporadically visited early in the European exploratory era, Native American groups of the Eastern Gulf Coastal Plain generally remained isolated from formal European colonization until Spain and France established twin colonies at Pensacola and Mobile after 1698. During the 18th century, multiple extralocal groups are documented to have migr...

This chapter describes the experiences of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda as a captive between 1549 and 1566. According to his testimony, Fontaneda was only 13 years of age when he sailed through Florida waters. Documentary evidence regarding his life before captivity is limited. In 1549, it is said that a “Hernando de Escalante” appeared as a pass...

The failure of Juan Ponce de León's colonial expedition in 1521 paved the way for subsequent expeditions by the Spaniards to the southeastern United States. This chapter provides an account of the Spanish expeditions that were part of the second attempt by the Spanish at colonialism. It describes the expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez as the most...

This chapter describes the next phase of colonial exploration and contact along the lower gulf coast of Florida, which was the most intensive of the early Spanish era. This stage in Spanish exploration began with the 1566 arrival of the founder of the Florida colony, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. This chapter provides a narrative account of the rescue...

The first documented Spanish expeditions to make direct contact with the native inhabitants of the lower gulf coast of Florida were those led by Juan Ponce de León in 1513 and 1521. This chapter provides a narrative account of Juan Ponce de León's initial discovery of Florida. In addition to Juan Ponce de León's aim of acquiring new lands for the S...

Contact between Spaniards and the indigenous inhabitants of the lower gulf coast of Florida was first made in the sixteenth century. At that time, the lower gulf coast region of Florida was inhabited by Florida Indians. Early Spanish narratives tell how the region could easily be approached by ship. This book presents comprehensive narratives of fi...

Including transcriptions of the original Spanish documents as well as English translations, this volume presents--in their own words--the experiences and reactions of Spaniards who came to Florida with Juan Ponce de León, Pánfilo de Narváez, Hernando de Soto, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

Not long after Spanish Florida became United States territory in 1821, the attention of Anglo-American settlers was drawn to the handful of remaining Spanish fishing ranchos along the lower gulf coastline, inhabited by Cuban fishermen and their "Spanish Indian" families and neighbors. The history and identity of these groups, many of whom were forc...

This comparative synthesis examines archaeological and ethnohistoric data pertaining to Native American coastal adaptations along the southern coasts of the eastern United States. We consider the totality of experiences of people living along coasts, examining such issues as technological innovation, environmental variability and change as it relat...

Archaeologists have long known that important changes took place in aboriginal ceramic assemblages of the northern Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coast after the arrival of Europeans. New pottery designs emerged and aboriginal demographics became fluid. Catastrophic population loss occurred in some places, new groups formed in others, and mov...

One of the most profound events in sixteenth-century North America was a ferocious battle between the Spanish army of Hernando de Soto and a larger force of Indian warriors under the leadership of a feared chieftain named Tascalusa. The site of this battle was a small fortified border town within an Indian province known as Mabila. Although the Ind...

Scholars have developed two broad approaches to researching the history of the native peoples of the American South from the sixteenth century to the present: culture history and social history. The essential task in culture history is to classify native so-called tribes into cultural and/or linguistic categories, to list defining cultural traits,...

In 1733, General James Edward Oglethorpe officially established the colony of Georgia, and within three years had fortified the coast southward toward St. Augustine. Although this region, originally known as the provinces of Guale and Mocama, had previously been under Spanish control for more than a century, territorial fighting had emptied the reg...

Recent archaeological investigations in western North Carolina have revealed the presence of 16th- century Spanish artifacts in association with contemporaneous aboriginal occupation. This paper examines the available Spanish historical evidence regarding the various mechanisms by which such items may have been disseminated among aboriginal populat...

This paper presents a current overview of documentary and archaeological evidence for aboriginal occupation associated with the Creek confederacy in the Flint River drainage of western Georgia, correlating specific archaeological sites with named towns where possible, and predicting locations for as-yet unrecorded sites. Largely depopulated soon af...

During the nearly two decades since the publication of Hudson et al.'s landmark study of the Coosa chiefdom, a considerable amount of new ethnohistorical research has been directed at this and many other chiefdoms across the Southeast. This is particularly the case with chiefdoms that were either assimilated within or had more regular contact with...

In 1763, 108 Yamasee and Apalachee Indians accompanied the Spanish evacuees from Pensacola to a new home in Veracruz, and two years later just 47 survivors laid out a new town north of Veracruz called San Carlos de Chachalacas, electing dual mayors representing each ethnicity. These expatriates were the remants of two Pensacola-area missions that h...

Between the 1513 and 1760, the indigenous societies of South Florida were subjected to increasingly forceful external pressures which eventually led to cultural extinction. Nevertheless, perhaps more effectively than any other region of greater Spanish Florida, the Calusa and their neighbors mounted a conscious and proactive resistance to these col...

Beginning in the early 16th century, small numbers of Florida Indians were sporadically transported to Cuba, which became a staging ground for many Florida expeditions. Cuban vessels also maintained trade with South Florida Indians between the 16th and early 19th centuries, involving indigenous groups and immigrant Creeks after the 1760s. And from...

As has been aptly summarized by archaeologist David Hurst Thomas as "the Guale problem," considerable debate still exists regarding the degree to which the Indians of the Atlantic coastal zone north of St. Augustine could be characterized as sedentary agriculturalists, particularly when compared with interior groups. Influenced by early Jesuit lett...

In 2009, documentary evidence and archaeological testing led to the discovery of the archaeological site of Mission San Joseph de Escambe (c1741-1761) along the Escambia River north of Pensacola. Home to Apalachee Indians and resident Spanish friars and soldiers, the mission's excavated material culture clearly reflects the multi-ethnic nature of t...