Glades culture

The Glades culture is the name archaeologists give to the way of life of the hunter-gatherers of southernmost Florida, from about 500 BCE until a little after Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century. Its people lived among the Everglades, the Florida Keys and the coasts, fishing, hunting and gathering from scattered camps and some semi-permanent villages. The Tequesta and Jaega peoples met by the Spanish belonged to this tradition.

In the early twentieth century archaeologists treated the whole of southern Florida as one culture area, partly because few large excavations had been made and most local pottery was plain. Work in the 1960s and 1970s divided the region, and by the late twentieth century it was split into three: the Caloosahatchee culture of the south-west coast, the Belle Glade culture around Lake Okeechobee, and the Glades culture. The Glades area covers the Everglades, the Keys, the Gulf coast up to Marco Island and the Atlantic coast up to what is now Martin County. The Ten Thousand Islands, the East Okeechobee district and the Keys are sometimes treated as variant districts.

The culture is defined almost entirely by its pottery: mostly plain, coil-built bowls tempered with sand and grit, first described as Glades Gritty ware by John Goggin in 1939. Changes in the small share of decorated pottery provide the timeline. Glades I runs from 500 BCE to 750 CE, with incised types appearing after about 500 CE. Glades II (conventionally 900 to 1200, though its first sub-phase is dated from 750) saw incised rim designs such as Key Largo Incised, and Glades III (1200 to 1513) brought the tooled, pie-crust-like rims of Glades Tooled ware along with pottery traded from northern Florida. Some archaeologists once linked Glades designs to pottery from Cuba, but the Cuban wares in question turned out to be much later.

With no local flint, people made most tools from shell and bone. Large sea-snail shells became picks, hammers, adzes, cups and dippers; antlers held shell blades or shark teeth; and stingray spines and fish bones became points and ornaments. Limestone weights were probably used with fishing nets. At Key Marco, on Marco Island, Frank Hamilton Cushing excavated waterlogged wooden objects in 1896, among them masks, painted plaques, tool handles and the carved figure known as the Key Marco Cat. Stone tablets bearing motifs like those of the Mississippian culture have also been found.

The Glades environment of sawgrass marsh, mangrove and coastal ridges was less productive than the lands of neighbouring cultures, and its population was smaller and more scattered. Sites range from small seasonal camps to large shell middens and mounds, some built into elaborate shell works in the Ten Thousand Islands. Sea levels rose and fell during the Glades period, and in neighbouring regions people abandoned and later reoccupied sites in response. The Miami Circle, a ring of postholes perhaps 1,800 to 2,000 years old, is among the best-known sites.

Around 1300, pottery on Marco Island became almost identical to Caloosahatchee wares, suggesting a close alliance with, or absorption by, the Calusa. Sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, especially by Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, named many chiefdoms along the east coast, including Tequesta and Jaega. After the collapse of the missions of Spanish Florida in the early eighteenth century, raiders from the north disrupted the peninsula, and by the time missionaries visited Biscayne Bay in 1743 the Tequesta were no longer named. Later pottery suggests newcomers from northern Florida moved in after the original peoples died out or left.

The maps label this area "Glades Culture" and draw it from 500 BCE to 400 CE, in southern Florida in the United States. The outline is approximate; the culture continued long after 400 CE, and on the 500 map the region is shown as the Caloosahatchee culture.