Florida Museum study says Tampa Bay pottery was made by Mississippian migrants

About a century ago, archaeologists excavating pottery fragments around Tampa Bay found pieces with decorations similar to pottery found hundreds of miles farther north, according to ScienceDaily. On appearance alone, the fragments seemed connected to the Mississippian culture, which emerged more than 1,000 years ago. For decades, maps of the Mississippian world generally left out peninsular Florida.

Neill Wallis, curator of Florida archaeology, bioarchaeology and the Ceramic Technology Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said the question had been an open debate for a century. According to Wallis, Tampa Bay sites had some Mississippian-like traits, such as platform mound-village complexes and iconography (symbolic designs), but lacked others, including maize (corn) agriculture and shell-tempered pottery. Wallis said the Mississippian-looking pottery had always prompted the question of how it wound up in Tampa Bay.

Researchers at the Florida Museum conducted a study to determine where the pottery came from and who made it. Trevor Duke, who began the research for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida, said the team wanted to know whether the vessels were imported from the heartland by trade or were local imitations of Mississippian motifs. Duke said the researchers ultimately found the vessels were made by migrants who had moved into communities in Tampa Bay to take up shop and residency there.

By examining details of pottery production that are almost invisible from the surface, the researchers traced the decorated vessels to a small community of skilled craftspeople. According to ScienceDaily, those craftspeople likely traveled hundreds of miles from the Mississippian heartland before settling in Tampa Bay. Compared with the plain molded pottery widely used in the area, the decorated vessels were made with different clay, tempering materials and production methods. The researchers said those differences suggest the migrants possessed specialized expertise and access to resources unavailable to many local residents.

Around 1000 A.D., a new cultural system developed in the Mississippi River Valley and spread across large parts of what are now the Midwest and eastern United States, according to ScienceDaily. In its core regions, Indigenous communities became organized into political hierarchies, with chiefdoms exerting influence over surrounding settlements. Large areas were planted with maize, and large quantities of earth were moved to construct mounds topped by temples and residences for leaders.

The regional culture that occupied Tampa Bay and nearby areas during this period is known as Safety Harbor. Like Mississippian societies, Safety Harbor communities formed smaller chiefdoms and constructed flat-topped mounds, according to ScienceDaily.