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Research Interests
Though I have always maintained a broad-based interest in the prehistory and early history of the Southeastern Indians, in my present research activities I am particularly interested in the impact of the European colonial era on indigenous chiefdoms of the southeastern United States, and their response and adaptation over time in differing political and economic circumstances. In broader perspective, one of my major long-term goals is to explore the developmental trajectories of the new colonial society comprising greater Spanish Florida between 1513 and 1821, incorporating both indigenous and immigrant colonial groups (and emergent new social and ethnic formations) within and beyond the colonial frontier (see my web page Spanish Florida: Evolution of a Colonial Society, 1513-1763). Over the course of my professional career, I have had the opportunity to conduct direct research across a broad geographic region within the zone of influence of Spanish Florida and its colonial neighbors, including not just the core mission territories in the Coastal Plain region to the west and north of St. Augustine, but also the territories of the historic Creek and Cherokee Indians of the Piedmont, Appalachian, and Ridge and Valley provinces, as well as the Calusa and other nonagricultural groups of the deep southern Florida peninsula, and now finally including the far western margin of colonial Florida along the northern Gulf coast in Pensacola. To this end, I collaborate with students and colleagues in broad-based anthropologically-oriented research which draws upon multiple sources of evidence from a number of disciplines. For information on my past and present research, see the sections below:
Current Research / Background / New / Books / Online Papers
I have a number of ongoing research projects, some of which are described briefly below:
In concert with the 2009-2011 UWF terrestrial archaeological field schools that I taught, since 2008 I have been actively conducting a review of 18th-century Spanish documentation relative to Native American communities established in the environs of Pensacola's three successive presidios (Santa Maria, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel), including missionary activity and military detachments in these communities. Working with several colleagues at the UWF Archaeology Institute and Department of Anthropology (including Norma Harris, who was co-principal investigator for the 2010 and 2011 field schools), I have identified high-probability areas where archaeological fieldwork may result in the discovery of one or more of these Pensacola missions, permitting us to examine the source communities for the large collections of Native American ceramics in all three presidios. Moreover, since the descendants of these mission communities migrated to Veracruz with the evacuation of Spanish Pensacola in 1763, there may also be possibilities for future archival and archaeological work there as well. I have developed a separate web page relative to the Pensacola Colonial Frontiers Project, which contains further details regarding the overall project as well as a link to a blog regarding our 2009-2011 field schools at Molino, Florida.
In concert with ongoing excavations by UWF at the Emanuel Point II shipwreck here in Pensacola Bay, I have returned to my earlier studies of Spanish records relating to the expedition of Tristan de Luna y Arellano to Pensacola Bay (and points inland) between 1559 and 1561. I have been exploring various dimensions of the Luna expedition, ranging from the destruction of the fleet in September of 1559 to various survival strategies undertaken by colonists during subsequent months, including the relocation of the colony inland, as well as the penetration of a small military detachment as far as the Coosawattee River valley of Northwest Georgia, where I was able to conduct archaeological work several years ago. As a complement to this research, I am also reviewing detailed documentary evidence for material culture in use at the time of the Luna expedition.
For a number of years, I have been exploring the survivorship of Florida Indians who migrated to Cuba during the 18th century, including not only the 89 surviving inhabitants of the Franciscan missions who evacuated St. Augustine in 1763 and settled in Guanabacoa, but also several earlier waves of migration by Calusa and other South Florida Indians to the vicinity of Havana before 1760. Detailed review of parish archives in Guanabacoa, combined with extensive Florida and Cuba records in Spain, has provided a remarkable portrait of these expatriots from Florida, in some cases including biographical details from before and after their relocation to Cuba. I have also recently turned my attention to another 108 Yamasee and Apalachee Indians who migrated to Veracruz in 1763 from their mission communities near Pensacola, and their subsequent fate in Mexico in the newly-formed town of San Carlos de Chachalacas.
I am also involved in writing up the results of my intensive investigation of the Cuban fishing industry in the coastal waters of southwest Florida, from its origins during the 17th century through its growth and development during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From their primary base in the fishing community of Regla, Cuba, a small fleet of sailing vessels maintained an increasingly regular presence along Florida's southern coastlines, especially following the evacuation of the region by its indigenous inhabitants and their replacement by immigrant Creek and Yamasee Indians after 1760. Parish records in Regla have supplemented other Cuban and Spanish archival sources to document the emergence of a new creolized ethnic group known as the "Spanish Indians," resulting from extensive commerce and eventual intermarriage between Cuban-based Spanish fishermen and Creek Indians residing in Florida.
Academic Background and Research Experience
A native of northern Georgia, I began my archaeological training began in 1981 as a high school volunteer under the tutelage of Roy Dickens at Georgia State University in Atlanta (see photos of this and other projects), and continued between 1984-1988 at the University of Georgia in Athens with classes from David Hally (see right) and Stephen Kowalewski (including a field school with Chester DePratter at the University of South Carolina), from which I received my dual BA and MA in Anthropology. From 1988-1992 I attended graduate school at the University of Florida in Gainesville, with coursework from archaeologists Jerald Milanich, Kathleen Deagan, Brent Weisman, and William Keegan, from which I received my Ph.D. in Anthropology with an interdisciplinary focus in History (see below). My overall archaeological experience in school and subsequently has included survey, excavations, and labwork relating to sites in Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama, including Mississippian mounds, villages, and farmsteads, Late Archaic steatite quarries, Woodland-era shell middens and house-floors in Southwest Florida, 17th-century Spanish missions, a late 18th-century Cuban fishing camp, early 19th-century Cherokee and Creek farmsteads, an early 19th-century Creek Agency, and a mid 19th-century Seminole War fort.
My early ethnohistorical training, and also much of my anthropological theoretical orientation (aligned with British social anthropology and the Annales school of French social history, with strong influence from archaeological processualism), originated with Charles Hudson (see above right) at the University of Georgia, and continued at the University of Florida with the support of Jerry Milanich above, as well as coursework with historians Michael Gannon and Murdo MacLeod, and archivist Bruce Chappell. My subsequent ethnohistorical experience has included extensive Spanish archival research during twelve trips to the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, as well as in the Archivo Historico Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo Nacional de Cuba in Havana, the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City, as well as parish archives and other repositories in Spain, Cuba, and Mexico, concurrent with considerable research at the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History at UF in Gainesville and most recently at the Department of Special Collections at UWF in Gainesville.
A full listing of my professional research publications and activities can be found at this link: c.v. for John E. Worth
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The Struggle for the Georgia Coast (Reprint of
1995 edition with expanded preface). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press (2007) This reprint of the 1995 volume described below includes a new and significantly expanded preface detailing recent discoveries and new insights from the intervening years, and provides details regarding the evidence for Guale and Mocama survivorship through their 18th-century withdrawal to St. Augustine and eventually Cuba. |
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The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida,
Volume I: Assimilation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida
(1998). This first volume of a two volume set represents the result of six years of additional research beyond my 1992 dissertation, and presents a detailed analysis of the emergence, structure, and function of the 17th-century colonial system of Spanish Florida, focusing on the Timucuan chiefdoms of the northern peninsular interior of Florida. The volume explores not only the internal details of indigenous Timucuan political economy, but also the over-arching political structure of the military and Franciscan jurisdictions of Spanish Florida, as well as the infrastructure and economic basis of the Florida mission system. Online press site (out of print, but available as eBook via NetLibrary subscription). |
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The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida,
Volume II: Resistance and Destruction. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida (1998). This second "Timucuan Chiefdoms" volume explores the many stresses that undermined and eventually led to the collapse of the mid-17th-century colonial system of Spanish Florida, including depopulation due to a variety of causes, as well as the important Timucuan Rebellion of 1656, which resulted in a massive restructuring of the indigenous social landscape of interior Florida. The volume details the contraction and withdrawal of the interior Timucuan missions in the context of increasingly frequent slave-raiding, and the final decades of Timucuan presence in the vicinity of St. Augustine between 1706 and 1763. Appendices include detailed locational information on interior Timucuan missions, as well as new translations of pivotal documents. Online press site (out of print, but available as eBook via NetLibrary subscription). |
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The Struggle for the Georgia Coast: An
Eighteenth-Century Spanish Retrospective on Guale and Mocama.
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Number
75. Athens: University of Georgia Press (1995). The core of this book is a set of annotated translations of a 1739 package of Spanish documents that were assembled by Florida Governor Manuel de Montiano (and his secretary Francisco de Castilla) at the request of the Spanish crown in an effort to demonstrate the historical antiquity of the Spanish presence in what was then the recently-founded British colony of Georgia. The documents spanned the 16th through 18th centuries, and provided extraordinary details regarding a poorly-known era of early Georgia history. An in-depth introductory overview provides my analysis and interpretation regarding the gradual retreat and withdrawal of the Guale and Mocama missions between 1661 and 1685, when slave-raiders and pirates ravaged the Georgia coastline. Appendices include detailed locational information on coastal missions. Out of print (but see 2007 edition above). |
Selected Essays, Presented Papers, Reports, and Thesis Online
The PDF files below represent a selection of my previous writings which have never been published, including a range of presented papers and brief reports (some with co-authors), some of which contain a full set of citations and references, and others of which are simply text essays. Clicking on the links below will open a new browser window, or the files can be downloaded by right clicking and saving. Some of my papers are also posted on my homepage at Academia.edu.
Mississippian Occupation on the Middle Flint River. M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens (1988). [warning: large PDF file, 22 MB]