Wintergarden Presbyterian Church will not be opened to our society for this event scheduled for March 19th. We are in the process of rescheduling Xenia. Please check back.

"Get thee to a nunnery"?

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. 

  In 1934 archaeologist from the Smithsonian excavated mound and midden sites as part of the federal Works Project Administration. Many of these excavations were around Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay. It was the most coordinated and productive period for archaeological findings and research in Florida’s history. In almost all locations, no further research was done and the records forgotten. All the sites and their contents fit into prior knowledge of the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland Periods except one. The mysterious burial mound on Lemon Bay referred to as the Englewood Mound. The archaeologists of the time and to the present passed over two important findings that did not fit with the surrounding cultures, nor on the Florida peninsula. First, the ceramics found only there were so distinctive and of such finer quality, they were named Englewood and Lemon Bay. Second when they dug down to the primary burial, the burials were coved by a thick layer of red ochre. Ehmann concluded therefore that the people who built the burial mound on Lemon Bay were a distinctive and not a local culture at all. The presentation is about his journey to discover who were those mysterious people and where did they originate.

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