Time Sifters Archaeology Society Newsletter May 2021

MAY-2021 PRESERVATION  EDUCATION  RESEARCH  INSPIRE Dear Member: The 2020/2021 Season is coming to a close. We finish up this year with Dr. Uzi Baram who will tell us about the successful dig in our own back yard, Manatee Mineral Spring. In this issue we also have an excellent article by Sherry Svekis about what they found and the new exhibit displaying the cool stuff they unearthed. We are putting together our 2021/2022 season, which will kick off in September. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a line. If you haven’t been to our website, www.timesifters.org or our YouTube channel, please check them out for the latest society information and other interesting stuff from the world of Archaeology. Have a great summer and thank you for being a Time Sifters member. Darwin “Smitty” Smith, President [email protected] May 19- at 6:00 PM – ZOOM. A History No Longer Silenced: Angola on the Manatee River Dr. Uzi Baram Professor of Anthropology, Director of the New College Public Archaeology Lab, New College of Florida Freedom-seeking people Photos: Kimberly Horn, Uzi Baram, Sherry Svekis public anthro- found a haven of liberty on the pology for the Manatee River from the 1770s Angola program, until 1821. The community Professor known as Angola, destroyed Baram is just as Spain transferred Florida contributing to to the United States, was a multi- nearly lost with only a slender disciplinary reed connecting local interest research project to a historian and then a uniting cultural community scholar. With the and biological support of Time Sifters, Looking heritage for the for Angola launched a public Florida Gulf anthropology program in Coast. 2004. This presentation offers a slide-illustrated look at the can now be told, inspiring Instructions for real time viewing: Back to Angola festivals and insights into a key moment in Register in advance for this meeting: the Network to Freedom Florida history and freedom’s Go to the Time Sifters website, Designation for the Manatee heritage in Sarasota/Manatee. www.timesifters.org and click on Mineral Spring and shares images the registration url. from the January 2020 Uzi Baram is a lifetime member excavations and exciting insights of Time Sifters, part of a After registering, you will receive from laboratory research. Details commitment to anti-racist a confirmation email containing for the daily life of the maroons community-based archaeology. information about joining the Beyond the archaeology and meeting.

What’s up at the Lab? Counted, weighed, described, identified, and photographed 31,957 pieces! By Sherry Svekis Time Sifters Board Member 1. 1. 3. 4. 5. 2. 6. 7. 8. The long process of analysis 7. and cataloging is done! Along with help from volunteers who 9. 10. did initial artifact cleaning, Sherry Svekis, Jean Lammie, 1. What is it? 2 Manatee Mineral Spring Site. 3. Sherry Svekis photographing the “Well and Mary Maisel counted, Monster”. 4. David Morriss painting the sky. 5. Before and After Electrolysis of Nails. 6. Mary weighed, described, identified, Maisel and Sherry Svekis recreating a \"bottle dump\" found during the 2020 excavations. and photographed 31,957 7. The exhibit under construction. 8. Jean Lammie keeping the panels safe during transport. pieces of artifacts from the 9. The Stratigraphy wall in place at Reflections of Manatee. 10. The Archaeology of Freedom January 2020 excavations at room at Reflections of Manatee. the Manatee Mineral Spring. the findings and their display represents a condensed The information was fully significance for Time Sifters’ view of the excavation recorded onto over 4,600 May 19th lecture. including bottle/trash caches; catalogue sheets and then evidence of quahog, cow, pig, entered into a searchable March and April was spent and fish consumption; database. It is clear that the building a 3D stratigraphy belongings recovered at excavations revealed a thin display and installing it at different levels; wood from layer of belongings and evidence of Reflections of Manatee as structural elements; and a dog a structure from the early part of an exhibit about burial. Time Sifters members 1800s maroon community of Angola. Architect and artist will be invited when the exhibit Angola, which was destroyed David Morriss lent his expertise has its grand opening in in 1821. These include fragments and his workshop to help September. of ceramic dishes, kaolin clay with the construction. The smoking pipes, meaningful items that were purposely buried, and an 1808 (or 1803) coin. As expected, we also recovered a wealth of artifacts from the Manatee settlement period (post 1842) as well as many items from the mid-20th century, including many that had been disposed of at the site. Professor Uzi Baram will have a full presentation about

Notes from a Time Sifter A bundle of sticks tied together around an axe. By Evelyn Mangie, Time Sifters Board Member The fascis is a bundle helmets and buckles of French of sticks tied together army uniforms. around an axe. It was the Roman symbol of The American founders adopted authority. Fasces the fasces to show U.S. association (plural of “fascis”, the Latin word meaning with the Roman representative “bundle”) were carried republic. (George Washington by lictors (attendants) stands beside a fascis, the who walked in single file axe covered by a Phrygian ahead of a magistrate cap of liberated Roman (elected official) when he slaves). You can see two walked in public. Very fasces on either side of the important magistrates could flag behind the speaker’s have as many as 24 lictors podium in the House of carrying fasces that were meant to protect him and Representatives, display his legal authoritative and at the bottom of power. the seal of the Senate. There is one above Both Livy (ca. 64-31 the door in the oval BCE) and Strabo (ca, office, several on the 64 BCE-24 CE) tell us front of the Supreme that the tradition of the Court building, and fascis was adopted on the armrests of from the Etruscans Lincoln’s Seat of State at whose kings had body- the Lincoln memorial. It guards that carried fasces was the symbol of the as mobile tools for Union during the Civil War. beating or beheading They are on the seals of the miscreants. The Romans National Guard, the U.S. borrowed the concept Army Reserve, and the U.S. and the fascis became tax court. a revered symbol of The Russians, Spanish, Norwegians, political, religious, and and Swedish use the fascis on cultural importance police organizations. Virtually all that continued as a European and Western Hemisphere symbol of authority nations have adopted the fasces even after the empire as a symbol of national unity. fell in the 5th century The fascis retained its unity symbol- CE. The Early Christians ism in Italy until 1922, when saw the fascis as symbol Benito Mussolini took the of Roman abuse until the fascis as a symbol of his 4th century, when political party that stood Christianity became a for revolutionary nationalism Roman religion. Then it and superiority they called was made the symbol of “fascism”. Hitler joined ecclesiastical authority. Mussolini in 1937 and since then the fascis has Renaissance artists come to represent ethnic added the fascis to their work as superiority and authority, a symbol of justice or unity (it is even in the U.S. easy to break a stick but difficult to (Charlottesville protest). break a bundle of sticks). King Roman magistrates and American Louis XIII (1610-1643) used it founding fathers would be to show his power, but French aghast at the current use of the revolutionaries took the fasces fascis that needs to be rescued to replace the royal symbols of from the dark symbolism and the crown and the fleur-de-lis. restored to its republican ideal. The fascis still appears on the Photos: Wikipedia.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites #26 - The Île de Gorée, Senegal by: Smitty, Time Sifters Board Member. Sources: World Heritage Site, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica The island of Gorée lies off the Europeans or any other cultural -scale trans-Atlantic slave trade” coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar group. economy was based out of the in the Atlantic Ocean. The Île de House of Slaves. Despite this lack Gorée is one of the 19 districts of There is some speculation of the city of Dakar. It is small, just 3,000 feet in length and 1,150 Photos: Wikipedia feet in width totaling 45 acres and is located 1.2 miles off the coast how Gorée came to be under of evidence, it has become a pilgrimage from the main harbor of Dakar shel- European or Dutch control. site to commemorate forcible removal tered by the Cap-Vert Peninsula. There is some textual evidence that of Africans from their homeland, Its population is around 1,680 the Dutch purchased the island also known as the African diaspora. inhabitants. Gorée is both the from the Chief of Dakar or from local smallest and the least populated of fisherman on the island. While This contrasts with the role of the districts of Dakar. there is little archaeological the site of Rue des Dongeons on evidence of this transaction. It was Gorée. As the name suggests, there are The name is a corruption of its captured by the United Netherlands dungeons, which can clearly be original Dutch name Goedereede, in 1588, then the Portuguese associated with the confinement meaning \"good roadstead\". It was again, and again the Dutch. The of the slaves. After the decline of a minor port and site of European British took it over in 1664. the slave trade from Senegal in settlement along the coast. Being the 1770s and 1780s, the town almost devoid of drinking water, Maison des Esclaves, or the became an important port for the the island was not settled before House of Slaves, was built in shipment of peanuts, peanut oil, the arrival of Europeans. From 1784 by Nicolas Pépin. Although gum, ivory, and other products of the 15th to the 19th century, it it is the home of the infamous the \"legitimate\" trade. It was probably was the largest slave-trading center on “Door of No Return”, which is in relation to this trade that the the African coast. Ruled in said to be the last place exported so-called House of Slaves was succession by the Portuguese, slaves touched African soil for built. Many public personalities Dutch, English and French, its the rest of their lives, there is visit the House, which plays the architecture is characterized by little evidence to suggest a “large role of a site of memory of slavery. the contrast between the grim slave- quarters and the elegant houses of the slave traders. Today it continues to serve as a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation. It was designated UNESCO World Heritage Site #26 in 1978. It was one of the first places in Africa to be settled by Europeans, as the Portuguese settled on the island in 1444, where they built a small stone chapel and used the land as a cemetery. Abandonment is archaeologically evident by the middle of the 15th century, possibly due to a massive termite invasion. There is no archaeological or physical evidence of a struggle or conflict between the eventual Board of Officers: Lifetime: $350 Pay online at: Directors Darwin \"Smitty\" Smith, President Individual: $25 WWW.TimeSifters.org Sherry Svekis, Vice President Family: $35 Or mail checks to: Mary S. Maisel, Secretary Student: $10 Time Sifters, Inc. Laura Harrison, Treasurer Supporting $50 PO Box 5283 Karen Jensen, Membership Sarasota, FL. 34277 Marion Almy Jean Louise Lammie Evelyn Mangie Don Nelson Copyright © 2021 Time SiftersArchaeology Society,Inc., All rights reserved.