In 1521, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon attempted to settle Florida at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. While the settlement failed, some of the expedition's cattle remained. By the 1600's, 20,000 heads of cattle supported early Spanish settlements and missions. Open range, unclaimed herds, and the lawless frontier ultimately created Cattle Barons, wide-open cow towns, rustlers, and a new breed of tough cow hunters. The story of cattle ranching in Florida heads like a Wild West novel but is still part of the fabric of everyday life in Florida. The Charlotte Harbor Anthropological Society presents a fascinating look at Florida's cattle industry history and welcome Theresa back to our society.

Theresa Schober is the manager of the Immokalee Pioneer Museum at Roberts Ranch, part of the Collier County Museums. She holds a masters degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and specializes in collaborative planning and development of archaeological and historic sties into interactive museum and park facilities. She serves as an advisory board member to Florida's chapter of the National Council for History Education.

We will welcome FGCU visiting professor, forensic anthropologist Xenia Paula Kyriakou, to our March meeting, who will present a program on one of her research projects titled “Bioarchaeology of Monasticism: the Unruly Nuns of Cyprus.”  The presentation will cover the discovery of the human remains from the St. Theodore nunnery in Cyprus and contextualize the findings of the skeletal analysis within the socio-cultural context of medieval monasticism. Xenia Paula Kyriakou is a Greek-Cypriot forensic anthropologist and bioarchaeologist. She studied at the University of Malta for her undergraduate degree and continued her graduate education and professional development at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  

Bioarchaologist Xenia Paula Kyriakou 

She is currently a visiting instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University and is soon to complete her PhD at the University of Warsaw, Poland.   Xenia has worked in many countries both as a forensic expert dealing with the repatriation of those missing in armed conflict and as the bioarchaeologist on many archaeologist projects.  As a bioarchaeologist, Xenia has engaged in the study of different ancient and historic populations. She is currently working on a research project that addresses behavior and lifestyle within monastic and religious settings of Medieval Europe. We are very fortunate to have met Xenia, who came to our January 2019 meeting with FGCU colleague Dr. Heather Walsh Haney for her presentation on “The Science and Art of Reading Bones.” Someone had the foresight to ask Xenia to return to speak. And she enthusiastically accepted. SO, let’s welcome her to our May meeting.  Hope you can make it! 

Think you know about the Calusa? Think again. Now a book that is written for the general reader about an ancient civilization that lived around the Charlotte Harbor for 25 centuries.

Author and founder of the Charlotte Harbor Anthropological Society Ted Ehmann investigated the mound building societies in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys for twenty-five years before moving to Port Charlotte. Despite his extensive knowledge of these ancient people, he had heard never heard of mound builders far away in south Florida. Upon moving to Port Charlotte, he set out to find out what he could. What he discovered is the basis for his book. Written for the general reader, Ehmann tells the story of a highly evolved people who successfully adapted to southwestern Gulf coastal environment, Immigrants from Louisiana around 800 BC, the Calusa engaged with the people already settled here. The result was a highly expressive culture that built monumental shell mound complexes, canals and even entire islands. Ehmann also shares how the view of these people have been misunderstood by Florida researchers, and how their conclusions fail to capture what was really the most " important and significant hunter-gathering society in world history."

COMING SOON -  The  People of the Great Circle, Prehistoric Mound Builders In South Florida, December, 2019, Pineapple Press, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing  ISBN 97816833405 22 Available through booksellers everywhere