Perico Island Culture
Origins[edit]
The Perico Island Culture was a prehistoric aboriginal culture that evolved on the central Gulf Coast of Florida probably as early as 3500 BC. The culture was named after large settlement, burial mound, and shell ring excavated on Perico Island, the City of Bradenton, Florida by archaeologist Dr. M. T. Newman in the 1920s[1]. In the 1940's Gordon R. Willey[1] and John M. Goggin[2] authored complete classifications and timelines for all of the prehistoric culture, their regions and dates. The history shows that Goggin as a young student of anthropology assigned the name Perico Island while researching the south Florida Glades culture. Goggin's dates for the culture were 100 AD - 350 AD.[2] Willey's research and conclusions based on the archaeology of five mound complexes: Cockroach Key site and Thomas Mound site in Hillsborough County, Parish Mound site and Perico Island site in Manatee County and the Englewood Mound site in Sarasota County between 1900 and 1937[1][3]. Willey dated the Perico Culture as 650 AD -1000 AD. The large oval shell ring found on Perico Island connects the settlement to a prehistoric epoch in the southeastern region of North America beginning from 3500 BC to 950 AD. Estimates of dating have changed dramatically with carbon dating. More than likely, as a distinct culture, the Perico Island Period began at around 950 AD and lasted into the Weedon Island and Safety Harbor Periods 1000 AD. Ceramic found in the burial mounds, indicates they traded with and were contemporary with the other earliest Florida cultures, The Deptford and St. Johns cultures[1]. Beginning in the 1970's anthropologists Luer and Almy[4] have designated the people of that region as the Manasota, a combination of Manatee and Sarasota. History shows that by 1250 AD the culture found themselves between two powerful cultures and chiefdom, The Safety Harbor and the Calusa. In the early 1900's archaeologist C.B. Moore recorded a canal built from the base of the Thomas Burial Mound 3 to the river. The canal was destroyed by 1932[1]. This would show the Calusa culture existed much further north than the Charlotte Harbor.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CULTURE[edit]
Willey's concluded based on the shell mounds, shell tools, burial practices and the ceramics that the Perico people were a northern variant and expression of the Glades Culture.[1]. All of the sites had large quantities of characteristic sand-tempered plain Glades pottery. Despite being surrounded by stratified and agriculturally based chiefdoms, the Perico or Manasota people remained egalitarian fishing-hunter-gatherers[4]. As such, their beliefs, rituals and ways remained tied to the Glades people on the southern coast and inland around Lake Okeechobee. Willey noted that the mound and ditch construction of the Parish Mound 3 in Manatee County was "strikingly reminiscent of the Big Mound City site in Palm Beach County."[1]
LOSS OF SITES TO DEVELOPMENT[edit]
Discovery and excavations of the known Perico Island archaeological sites predated state and federal laws and efforts to designate and protect cultural heritage sites by thirty years. Even in 2018, Manatee County which had a rich prehistory has not had one of the sites registered as a National Historic Landmark. In 2007 Governor Charlie Crist provided state funds to purchase the Pillsbury Mound in Bradenton from development. In 2017, a recreational diver found a barnacle encrusted human jaw bone off Manasota Key. One of only submerged archaeological sites in the world, the Offshore Manasota Key burial site offers to through light on the ancestors of the Perico people 7000 years ago on the central Gulf Coast.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Gordon R. Willey, Archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol 113, 1949, 103-193 ISBN 978-0-404-57318-8 Search this book on
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- ↑ 2.0 2.1 John M. Goggin, Florida Archaeology-1950, Gainesville, Florida, Florida Anthropologist, 1950 pp. 9-20
- ↑ Jerald T. Milanich, Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida, Gainesville, Florida, University Press of Florida, 1994, 7-9, 221-225 ISBN 0813012724 Search this book on .
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 George M. Luer and Marion M. Almy. A Definition of the Manasota Culture, Gainesville, Florida, Florida Anthroplogist, 35, 34-58 [1]
- Ripley P. Bullen (Nov 1950). "Perico Island - 1950". Florida Anthropologist. 3 (3–4): 40–44.
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