Spanish Indian is a generic term that has been used repeatedly in written documents over the past three centuries to describe a range of different social, ethnic, and economic groups in the southeastern United States. In this thesis, a comparative analysis of the material culture from Cuban fishing ranchos of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the west coast of Florida addresses the ways in which specific Spanish Indian artifact assemblages fit into the archaeological record. Three archaeological assemblages from known Rancho sites are detailed and analyzed. In addition, this thesis details a public archaeology project undertaken in conjunction with the Florida Public Archaeology Network, which led to the development of a traveling exhibit and public presentation on the origins of local place names. The thesis also provides suggestions for how historical archaeologists might contend with difficulties in determining and documenting identity at early historical sites in coastal Florida. The research undertaken for this thesis demonstrates a pressing need for additional data collection and research in the field. As it currently stands, however, the preliminary analysis conducted in this thesis indicates an economic basis for cultural interaction and intermarriage rather than an actual cultural synthesis, creolization, or ethnogenesis, which would imply shared cultural systems of belief and meaning. This thesis is also a proposal for a typology of ranchos. Through a cross-comparison of the similarities and differences in subsistence strategies and labor practices, a research design for rancho archaeology is outlined.

This thesis is a reassessment of the concept of the ‘fort community’ and analysis of the people who dwelled within it, utilising archaeological evidence from the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Traditional approaches which have focused on military functions or on military-civilian dichotomies cannot provide a full account of discrepant identities (Mattingly 2011). A holistic approach which acknowledges and incorporates non-military activities can provide an important alternative perspective into how the inhabitants of Roman fort communities related to one another. The thesis utilises Lewis Coser’s concept of the ‘greedy institution’ (1974) to resituate the imbalance of power affecting identity within the Roman military. The discussion is framed within nested layers of identity and community. In the first chapter, a historical overview of Roman military scholarship is presented that contextualises the current archaeological climate and illustrates key issues of bias. Three core forms of identity are analysed in the second chapter in the context of the Roman auxilia; socio-cultural, gender, and ethnicity. This discussion positions the auxiliaries as a group both empowered and subjugated, consisting of ‘martial races’ exploited within a military role. In the third chapter, the textual evidence for identity on the northern frontier is analysed, using epigraphy and the Vindolanda tablets. Within these the discrepant identities of members of the fort communities are identified. In the fourth chapter, I analyse the architectural underpinnings of military identity through an examination of the development and ideology of the ‘standard plan’ fort. In the fifth chapter, I analyse the material evidence for the habitus of fort community life, focusing on three activity contexts; military display, craft and industry, and bodily consumption. The thesis concludes by assessing the strengths of the ‘greedy institution’ approach and outlining its significance with regards to future research.