Return to search

A Preliminary Analysis of Artifacts and Area Usage Associated with the Spanish Fort at San Luis de Talimali (8LE4), Leon County, Florida

Located in what is now Tallahassee, Florida is the former site of a Spanish mission named San Luis de Talimali (8LE4). This area was colonized by the Spanish in the heart of Apalachee territory and became an important component of Spanish rule: religiously, economically, agriculturally, and militarily. The Spanish Crown supported Franciscan missionaries to convert and pacify local Indians, while the military protected Spanish interests by defending the locals from English and French raids and quelled any uprisings. To this end, several forts were constructed, not only at San Luis de Talimali, but in several outlying areas as needed. At the fall of the Spanish mission system in the early eighteenth century, these forts were destroyed, either by the invading party or by the Spanish themselves to prevent their being useful to the enemy. Fort San Luis was no exception. In 1704, with the British army and their Creek Indian allies only days away, the soldiers at San Luis set fire to the fort complex and church before retreating east towards St. Augustine. San Luis de Talimali, as well as the Apalachee Nation, never recovered. The ruins of the fort complex would eventually be the source of treasures for antiquity hunters, as remnants of the once-powerful fortification produced cannon and other military artifacts. Starting in 1940, professional archaeologists conducted scientific excavations, and the land was purchased by the State of Florida in 1983. The most extensive archaeological project to excavate the ruins of Fort San Luis was conducted from 1998-2002, while the assemblage produced from those excavations provides artifact and spatial data. This thesis researches and demonstrates preliminary results of that analysis, with 450 of the 1700 field samples analyzed. The purpose of this thesis is to publish a detailed analysis of the artifacts recovered during the 1998-2002 excavations of the fort and blockhouse area and combine this analysis with previously published excavation data of the San Luis fort and blockhouse complex. I will use these new data to produce artifact distribution maps of the fort complex to determine usage areas within the blockhouse and make comparisons to published data from contemporaneous Spanish forts located throughout Spanish Florida. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2019. / April 9, 2019. / Florida, Fort San Luis, Mission, San Luis de Talimali, Spanish, Tallahassee / Includes bibliographical references. / Tanya M. Peres, Professor Directing Thesis; Rochelle A. Marrinan, Committee Member; Jayur M. Mehta, Committee Member.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_709780
ContributorsKorkuc, David J. (David Jason) (author), Peres, Tanya M. (Professor Directing Thesis), Marrinan, Rochelle A. (Committee Member), Mehta, Jayur M. (Committee Member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Anthropology (degree granting departmentdgg)
PublisherFlorida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, text, master thesis
Format1 online resource (88 pages), computer, application/pdf

Page generated in 0.0018 seconds