Key Marco's Buried Treasure: Archaeology and Adventure in the Nineteenth Century (Ripley P. Bullen Monographs in Anthropology and History)

Univ of Florida Press / The Florida Museum of Natural History, Ripley P. Bullen Monographs in Anthropology and History no. 8, [Published Date: 1989]. Hardcover, 138 pp. Includes 21 plates, mostly in color and black and several white illustrations, references, index. [From front jacket flap] In 1895-1896, Frank Hamilton Gushing led the Pepper-Hearst expedition to Marco Island, Florida, where he discovered one of the richest archaeological sites in North America. Miraculously preserved in the coastal muck were artifacts of the vanished Calusa Indians, the prehistoric inhabitants of southwest Florida. The resulting collections of wooden sculpture, painted masks, carved bone and shell tools and ornaments, and netting and cordage are unique; and the fine craftsmanship and fortuitous preservation in the muck, remarkable. In a companion volume to her well-received book on the artifacts, The Material Culture of Key Marco, Florida, Marion Gilliland uses diaries, letters, and other firsthand sources to present an authoritative account of the expedition and the now-famous site. Using some reports never before published, Gilliland confronts the controversies that have lingered over Gushing and the site for nearly a century. She brings new evidence to bear on charges of artifact fabrication leveled against Gushing...