Archaeology searches for clues to our past in watery graves

By Ron Matus

Special to the Florida State Times

The water is the color of strong coffee. And even with 1,000-watt lights, visibility is two or three feet or less.

But somewhere in the gloom lie clues to Florida's past.

This fall, a new Florida State professor and a handful of students are preparing to enter this murky world, which can be found in some of Florida's rivers and sinkholes, and in other places just offshore.

Before long, they will be unearthing bits of bone and rock to help figure out what life was like for Floridians 10,000 years ago.

The students are enrolled in the FSU Program in Underwater Archaeology - one of the few such programs in the world. FSU recently hired the program's first full-time professor, Michael Faught, and his job is to take the program up (down?) to another level in underwater research.

Faught, an assistant professor in anthropology, will teach undergraduate and graduate students.

Thanks to his hiring, the latter will soon be able to earn academic specialty certificates through the anthropology department. The certificates will allow them to showcase their skills in underwater archaeology.

"It's scary at first; it's disorienting," Faught said of diving into waters blackened by the tannic acid of tree bark.

But it does have its rewards.

Faught recalled diving off the coast of the Big Bend for three days as a graduate student and finding "flaking debris" - bits of rock that indicated the location of ancient quarries where tools were made. He and other researchers eventually located a dozen prehistoric sites no one had found before.

"We were ecstatic," Faught said.

Underwater archaeology is a young discipline. It didn't really begin until the 1960s, Faught said, when the technology to explore underwater sites emerged.

Since then, the handful of university programs that came with it have focused on shipwrecks more than prehistoric sites, Faught said. But Florida's coastal waters are rich in both.

FSU students in the program will spend as much time on the remains of prehistoric Florida as they do observing the sunken boats that mark a more modern Florida.

"I have a whole bunch-load of places to go look," Faught said in his typical laid-back fashion. "That's where we'll be taking the students."

A short 10,000 years ago, Florida's land mass was twice as big as now. Its earliest inhabitants, like their modern counterparts, built their communities along the coast.

Melting polar ice caps left the sites of many of those societies under water, on what is now called the continental shelf. There, just off the coast, are the remnants of those sites, Faught said - and clues to our past.

"We don't know if they had boats," Faught said of the earliest Floridians. "We don't know if they were eating fish or big elephants. We don't know if there were a lot of people. There're so many questions. It's a big terra incognita."

Faught has had a hand in unearthing a few thousand clues about Florida incognita.

Faught's doctoral research at the University of Arizona brought him to Apalachee Bay, south of Tallahassee. He found several major sites along the banks of what used to be the southern end of the Aucilla River, before it was covered by salt water.

The earliest Floridians often made their communities along river banks.

"One of the ways to find sites is to look for the river channels," Faught said. "That's where you go to find the goodies."

Faught's goodies included chipped stone scrapers, projectile points and other tools that were clustered around what used to be, on land, an old sinkhole. One site, about three miles offshore, yielded more than 1,000 artifacts.

Finding a prehistoric archaeological site is like finding a needle in a haystack, underwater. But it's a little easier off Florida's Gulf Coast than in other parts of the globe.

The geological make-up means little sediment to cover things up, Faught said. And unlike the Atlantic, the Gulf has less current to move sand around.

Besides his own research, Faught has worked on several major projects started by others.

For several years, he was director of the Aucilla River Pre-History Project, a long-running undertaking by the University of Florida. Researchers are using evidence from that project to determine where and when the earliest Floridians lived, Faught said.

Last year, Faught mapped the whereabouts of The Tarpon, a boat that ran freight between Carrabelle and Mobile, before sinking off the coast near Panama City in 1937.

The Tarpon has been named Florida's sixth underwater archaeological preserve because of its historical value. Ships like The Tarpon were important links in Florida before the coming of interstate highways and international airports.

Many underwater archaeology students will turn to projects like The Tarpon after they graduate, Faught said. Old sunken ships are now cultural resources and, for those with entrepreneurial spirits, "there's money in it."

FSU students have long been able to gain experience with underwater archaeology through the university's Academic Diving Program, a nationally recognized program in scientific diving. The program offers interdisciplinary courses in underwater diving and research for students of all majors.

Faught's classes will work closely with the diving program once they begin doing research in the field.

"(Faught will) have the archaeological supervisor hat on," said John Kiwala with the diving program. "We're going to have the diving-supervisor hat on."

The diving program and the anthropology department have worked together on underwater archaeology projects in the past, Kiwala said. But Faught's addition to FSU means a whole new level of coordination.

"He'll be coming up with a plan," Kiwala said. "He's going to bring some focus and direction."

Beginning in the spring, Faught will take students on field trips: to the Santa Fe River near Gainesville, to a sinkhole in Big Dismal State Park near Tallahassee and to St. Andrew's Bay near Panama City, where students will map an old pier.

Considering the often poor visibility underwater, it is essential for researchers to reconstruct mapping and videotaping sites once they get back on land.

Students probably won't go offshore until next summer, Faught said. But then the real fun begins.

Within 100 miles of FSU, Faught said, are countless archaeological sites full of information about an earlier Florida. Many are just waiting to be discovered.

"There's so much to do," Faught said. "I'm like a kid in a candy store."

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