SW019 Crack Survey Team Sights Forgotten Forts Shrouded in Florida Foliage

Was there a battle here? "Not that I know of. Now get off my property."

Finding Seminole War battlefield sites is hard. We generally know the vicinity but things have, well, developed in Florida since then. 

What the US Army left behind was not exactly buried underground with full military honors. In fact, when it abandoned its wooden- or earthen-structured forts in Florida in the 1830s, the Army usually just burned them to the ground. The Florida climate and the organic nature of the forts themselves has meant little remains in the soil some one-hundred-eighty-five years later or so. Fauna overgrowth has obscured them as well. Then came the pioneers, and after that, the commercial developers, and the subdivision homeowners. Fortunately, all is not lost. Thanks to the, pardon the term, pioneering survey work by the Gulf Archaeological Research Institute, or GARI, from Crystal River, Florida, we are reclaiming these overgrown garrisons.

GARI is the only independent, not-for-profit organization focused on preserving both the archaeological and the natural heritage of Florida. GARI takes a holistic approach to studying the past. This approach includes consideration of natural history, ecology, hydrology, and sedimentology to comprehensively investigate past peoples and the environments they inhabited.  One of its focuses is The Seminole Wars.

 

Joining us today is Sean Norman, GARI’s acting executive director. Sean explains some of what GARI has learned from its battle site excavations over the years; how this has enhanced understanding of how the combatants waged the Seminole Wars; and what benefits the identification of such sites holds for communities that surround them.

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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