Modeling Fort Walton Culture in Northwest Florida

Abstract

Fort Walton in northwest Florida is presented in the archaeological literature as the adaptation of sedentary, maize-producing agriculturalists who participated in certain mortuary practices and symbolism, long-distance trade networks, and chiefdom-level sociopolitical units similar to those of other contemporaneous Mississippian manifestations throughout the Southeast. We examine the data from which the extant models were drawn-ceramics, settlement patterns, chronology, and dates-to reveal how limited and derived they are and to present our own interpretation of Fort Walton, which represents the cultural accomplishments of the last prehistoric people in this area. Fort Walton is the variant of Mississippian culture in the northwest Florida-South Alabama-southwest Georgia region, defined 60 years ago (Willey 1949; Willey and Woodbury 1942) as characterized by large agricultural villages, temple mounds, and distinctive ceramics. Since Willey's original description, models have been generated to redefine everything from ceramics to sociopolitical systems. Here we examine these models in the light of both old and recent evidence. We focus on the Fort Walton heartland, which encompasses two regions, the Apalachicola River Vailey and the Tallahassee Red Hills (Figure 1), where we have firsthand experience. This work was originally presented in 1998 at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference. The paper was entitled Smoke and Mirrors in Modeling Fort Walton Culture because Fort Walton models in the Apalachicola Valley are clouded over with speculative hypothesizing that can be cleared away to reveal few foundations, and in the Tallahassee Red Hills area Fort Walton is thought to be a prehistoric reflection of the missionized Apalachee Indians who were actually enormously changed by centuries of European dominance. If archaeology is a science, as has been argued since the late 1960s, archaeologists must use the scientific method to reconstruct prehistoric societies. Data from controlled contexts are needed for model building, then new data for hypothesis testing in which the model is supported, refuted, or altered. Such would be the ideal situation; the real situation is that we have either few, or questionable data, but lots of model building nonetheless. There is no shortage of theoretical reconstructions of Fort Walton (e.g., Brose and Percy 1978; Knight 1991; Scarry 1990, 1996a, and 1999). Though proposed as hypothetical, these have been taken as received wisdom by subsequent researchers, instead of tested with new data. While speculation can be a good thing, to provide ideas to explore, early models have been used as established fact or repeated without questioning their fundamental premises. In some areas, particularly the Tallahassee Red Hills, they have promoted a kind of stasis in which new data have not seemed necessary or desirable enough to encourage new field investigations. In the broader understanding of the Mississippi period, Florida has been considered to lie on the fringe of the Mississippian world. Yet several cultural manifestations beyond this edge exhibit developments that are arguably Mississippian: Safety Harbor (Griffin and Bullen 1950; Mitchem 1989; Willey 1949) along the upper peninsular Gulf Coast and Mill Cove complex in northeast Florida near the Atlantic Coast (Ashley 2003, 2005; Thunen 2005). In both areas, maize agriculture is evidently not a factor in the subsistence base; rather, dependence on coastal resources seems to be the adaptive mainstay. The question for these archaeological cultures is, Can there be Mississippi without maize? It is not our intent in this discussion to consider these Mississippian-related groups, nor the recognized hunter-gatherer-fisher tributary chiefdoms farther south in Florida which also subsisted mainly upon coastal resources (though these questions are clearly germane in Florida and beyond). Our goal here is to discuss Fort Walton, a regional variant already in the Mississippian club and the southeasternmost manifestation of Mississippi culture. …