Archaeologists uncover centuries-old mystery of Tampa Bay’s secret community of migrant potters

Archaeologists have debated for decades over how Mississippian-style pottery ended up in Tampa Bay, an area long left off of maps showing the Mississippian culture stretching across the Southeast and into northern Florida starting a thousand years ago.
Archaeologist Trevor Duke conducted compositional and chemical analyses of the pottery as part of his doctoral dissertation research at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The research eventually expanded as scientists compiled additional evidence from across the region.
The results of that research have been published in a new study in which the authors concluded that migrants from the Florida Panhandle, in the heartland of Mississippian culture, likely used their specialized knowledge and access to resources to produce the distinctive pottery in Tampa Bay, potentially establishing themselves and integrating into the region’s existing society in the process.

About a hundred years ago, archaeologists unearthing pottery sherds in Tampa Bay found something unexpected. Some of the fragments they recovered had designs that were nearly identical to decorated pottery located hundreds of miles to the north. At least on the surface, the pottery appeared to be Mississippian, a culture that emerged over a thousand years ago and brought social, economic and political transformation across southeastern North America. For years, archaeologists excluded peninsular Florida from maps of its range, but the artifacts suggested a different story.

“It’s been this open debate for a century,” said Neill Wallis, curator of Florida archaeology, bioarchaeology and the Ceramic Technology Laboratory at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “Tampa Bay sites had some Mississippian-like traits such as platform mound-village complexes and iconography, but lacked others, like maize agriculture and shell-tempered pottery. The Mississippian-looking pottery has always begged the question: How did this stuff wind up in Tampa Bay?”

Finding Mississippian pottery would provide some of the clearest evidence of the region’s connection to the culture, but the surface-level designs themselves weren’t enough to determine where the pottery originated. Without the proper instruments and expertise, curators shelved the mysterious pottery sherds. Various theories lingered without conclusive evidence – until recently, when researchers at the Florida Museum conducted a study to track down the answer.

“We were curious to find out if these vessels were imported from the heartland by trade, if they were local imitations of Mississippian motifs, or, as we ultimately found, if they were made by migrants who had made their way into communities in Tampa Bay to take up shop and residency there,” said Trevor Duke, who began conducting the research for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida. In the years since, Duke and his colleagues have expanded on the initial scope of his dissertation to compile more evidence from a larger collection of samples.

The researchers were able to look beyond the surface designs of the vessels to uncover the small, nearly invisible details of production baked into them. In doing so, they traced this decorated pottery back to a secretive community of artisans who likely traveled hundreds of miles from the heartland of Mississippian culture to their new home in Tampa Bay. Compared with the plain, molded wares commonly found throughout the region, the decorated pottery’s distinct high-quality clay, temper and production method indicate this group of migrants had access to both specialized knowledge and resources that the existing residents did not.