부산대학교 도서관

Stanley Mound (8MA127) is a disturbed sand burial mound constructed in present-day interior Manatee County within the headwaters of the Myakka River drainage. While the Stanley Mound was tested in 1975 as part of a larger compliance survey, the site and its surrounding landscape remain poorly understood. Subsequent visits noted a paucity of geo-spatial and archaeological data and documented a pressing need for conservation measures. We report the results of survey testing and stabilization efforts at Stanley Mound carried out through a collaboration between USF Applied Anthropology, FPAN West-Central, and Florida State Parks. Our survey incorporated LiDAR mapping, Total Station mapping, and shovel testing with a re-analysis of the artifact assemblage recovered in 1975. In this paper we redefine the morphology of the mound, report a newly identified activity area, and describe the conservation program currently being implemented by Florida State Parks to preserve the site. Our study demonstrates the value of heavily looted and previously excavated sites to contemporary research interests, and we suggest that continued archaeological work within the interior central Gulf Coast may contribute meaningfully to studies of complex monumentality and regional interaction in Precolumbian Florida. Stanley Mound (8MA127) is a disturbed sand burial mound constructed in the interior headwaters region of the central peninsular Gulf Coast (Figure 1). The site was known to and dug by relic hunters periodically from the 1930s until, and presumably after, its professional documentation in 1975 during a contract survey of phosphate mining property (Deming 1975, 1976). Recent work by Burger (2017), described below, has revealed that the Stanley Mound has a long and complex history of excavation by collectors. Fortunately, the site was spared destruction by the phosphate drag line and the surrounding land tract was transferred to the State of Florida in the 1980s. In 2016 the land was designated as Wingate Creek State Park, and after consultation with archaeologist William Burger, Florida State Parks environmental specialists and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection recognized a pressing need for the spatial-topographic delineation, study, and conservation of Stanley Mound (Stanton 2015). Our research team documented the topographic morphology of the mound and its surrounding landscape through mapping. We shovel-tested the nearby area looking for occupational evidence associated with activities at the mound site. Lastly, we collaborated with Florida State Parks to develop and begin implementing a conservation program for the mound area. In this paper, we review the history of disturbance and investigation at Stanley Mound, and then report the results of our topographic mapping, shovel testing, and conservation/stabilization work. In a discussion, we place Stanley Mound in regional perspective and present the sand burial mounds of Florida's interior central peninsular Gulf Coast as valuable sites for future research into late-Precolumbian ritual landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]