History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

The Isotopic Profile Of Plague Victims Buried On The Quarantine Islands Of Venice, Italy, Katherine L. Dunning

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis combined carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotope analysis and historical documentation to explore diet and mobility for 45 individuals whose remains were excavated from the Venetian island Lazzaretto Vecchio, where plague victims were quarantined, cared for, and buried between 1423 and 1700 CE. δ13C from bone collagen, bone apatite, and tooth enamel apatite was evaluated to determine terrestrial, aquatic, C3, and C4 contributors to diet. δ15N from bone collagen was evaluated to understand the individuals’ trophic levels. δ18O from tooth enamel apatite and bone apatite was evaluated to detect mobility over the life course. Adult diet was primarily …

Vestitus Auctoritate: Visual Representations Of Power In Late Roman Sicily, Angela L. Costello

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Late Roman iconography of dress and appearance acted as visual bolsters of elite identity in the province of Sicily by engaging with two villas and their mosaic corpora: the Villa Romana del Casale, and the Villa Romana del Tellaro. Traditional Roman scholarship on power have focused on monuments, military achievements, and imperial building programs, and while these are all necessarily facets of Late Roman identity, there are valuable avenues left unexplored. Some, but not enough, attention has been given to the role of dress iconography during Late Antiquity. This study addresses this gap by investigating how …

The Materiality Of Religious Syncretism And Co-Production In The Catacombs Of Sicily And Malta: Novel Techniques For The Interpretation And Dissemination Of Legacy Data, Madeleine A. Kraft

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the lengthy history of the investigations into the catacombs of Sicily and Malta. These investigations, in some cases, began as early as the 17th century. They have maintained the intrigue of archaeologists beginning in the late 19th century. In doing so, these spaces have amassed truly remarkable amounts of data and of interpretations of that data. This legacy data has proved simultaneously a barrier and an entrance to understanding these complexes. While they are valuable for descriptions of the spaces prior to mutilations and interventions as well as descriptions of evidence no longer extant due to a …

2,000 Years Of Occupational History And Cultural Change At The Pierce Mounds Complex, An Estuarine Center In Northwest Florida, Hui Xiao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research on Woodland and Mississippian heartlands in the Midwest and Mid-South have greatly enriched our understanding of these ancient societies. More recent studies increasingly emphasize regional variants, recognizing that various environmental settings and local traditions can produce cultural patterns distinct from those of major centers. The Pierce Mounds Complex offers a valuable case for exploring these regional dynamics through an approximately 2,000-year occupational history in an estuarine setting in northwest Florida.

Located at the mouth of Apalachicola River, Pierce is a Woodland and Mississippian center characterized by thirteen burial and platform mounds, extensive shell middens, and associated habitation …

Subsistence And Settlement In Northwest Florida During The Late Archaic-Early Woodland Transition (3500 Bc Through Ad 300), Kerri A. Klein

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research presents quantitative and qualitative data on subsistence and cultural transitions in a warm-temperate area of northwest Florida during the Late Archaic-Early Woodland transition (from about 3500 – AD 300). By completing an inventory of the faunal assemblages from two shell middens, I was able to evaluate resource selection and use both within and between sites. Results suggest that site inhabitants utilized consistent resources, despite any documented or potential climatic and ecological change which occurred. Radiocarbon dating establishes the timelines for both Sam’s Creek Cutoff (8FR754), a single-component Late Archaic campsite, and Depot Creek (8GU56), which has a Late …

Aging In The Shadows: Szekler Cemeteries And The Case For Recognizing Elderly Populations In Bioarchaeology, Katie M. Mcgrath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The study of aging in past populations lies at the intersection of bioarchaeology and paleodemography, offering insight into both biological processes and lived social experience. Despite this potential, older adults are often rendered “invisible” in skeletal assemblages due to methodological and cultural biases. This thesis addresses this gap through a rare, community-based study of aging among the Székely population of Transylvania. By integrating osteological analysis of individuals (11th–19th centuries) from the archaeological Papdomb church cemetery with demographic data derived from the modern cemetery headstones (ca.1850–present), this research examines patterns of aging, longevity, and elder visibility across a culturally and spatially …

The Paleoecology Of The Lower Chincha Valley, Peru Using Pollen, Phytolith, And Geomorphological Analyses, Christine L. Bergmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research is a part of a larger project, undertaken by the Programa Arqueológico Chincha (i.e., PACH). The focus of the project centered on the societal, economic, political, and environmental mechanisms involved in the advent of social complexity on the south coast of Peru, specifically in the Chincha Valley. PACH comprehensively studied archaeological sites in the upper, middle, and lower valleys. One of the sites studied was Pozuelo. Pozuelo is a type site located in the lower Chincha Valley (and the focus of this dissertation). Pozuelo possesses the earliest ceramics, domestic activities, and mound structures in the Chincha Valley. Furthermore, …

A Bioarchaeological Study Of The Individuals From The Városfalva Burial Mound In Transylvania, Romania (15th-19th Century), Vanessa C. Reeves

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the lives and deaths of the Szekler people recovered from a burial mound in the Transylvanian village of Városfalva. The Transylvanian plateau is located in present day Romania, and is protected on the east and the south by the Carpathian Mountains. The Szekler people arrived in this area around 1000 CE, and were a nomadic group originating in the Asian Steppes region who later intermarried with various migratory groups as they moved across the Eurasian plains. The Szeklers eventually banded together with the proto-Hungarian Magyar peoples and settled in the Carpathian Basin, the easternmost frontier of the …

Fort Brooke After 200 Years: A Public Heritage Approach, Alex F. Fawbush

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fort Brooke, established in 1824 at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, shaped the growth of Tampa and Florida’s west coast for nearly sixty years and served as the nucleus for the forced removal of Indigenous people. Though the Fort itself has long since vanished beneath the modern city, archaeology has preserved its legacy. Excavations since the 1970s have uncovered rich assemblages of ceramics, glass, military equipment, faunal remains, and domestic refuse. These materials reveal daily life at the post, highlighting the interactions of soldiers, Seminoles, African Americans, white settlers, and Cuban fishermen, while also uncovering the deeper prehistoric, referred …

Archaeological, Pxrf, And Gis Analyses At The Trestle Bridge Site (8ja186), Northwest Florida, Victoria Marie Freitas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Trestle Bridge Site (8JA186), located on an eroding riverbank of the upper Apalachicola River in northwest Florida, represents a significant multi-component precontact site with occupations that date from the Early Woodland (~800 B.C.–A.D. 300) and the Fort Walton periods (A.D. 1000-1500). Previous research has broadly classified the site based on ceramic and lithic assemblages, but a detailed investigation into pottery production and environmental changes over time at the site remains unexplored in the understudied Apalachicola valley region. There also appears to be over a thousand-year gap in occupation at the site, as no Middle or Late Woodland ceramic or …

Imperial Crosshairs: Grand Marronage At Negro Fort Along The Apalachicola River, Colby J. Williams Ii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Grand marronage describes the process whereby Africans sought to liberate themselves from enslavement through means of escape to establish permanent communities and create a truly free society. The Southeastern region of the modern United States was once a geopolitical arena where European and Euro-American empires sought to spread their power and influence over both the Indigenous and African inhabitants. Following the American Revolution was the War of 1812, fought between the former colonial master and the recently formed United States. Commonly referred to as the Second War of American Independence, and infamously known for the burning of the White House. …

Toxic Varnishes: Perfumes, Stench, And Glow In Eighteenth-Century French Salons, Érika Wicky

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

As several historians, including Alain Corbin, have noted, a new sensitivity to odors emerged in the 18^th century that increased people’s negative responses to strong smells and heightened the demand for fragrances that were not only pleasant but also light and subtle. Some scholars see this period as a true “olfactory revolution.” How was this expressed in the salon, perceived both as a luxurious space and a site of elite sociability? This focus on the smell of varnish aims to illustrate how the scent of materials intertwined with the pleasures of decorative arts, both in the entire space of …

Human Remains In Now-Extreme Cave Settings: Exploring Ancient Funerary Practices, Andrea Demjén, Florin Gogaltan, Szilárd Gall, Călin Ghemiș, Viorel Traian Lascu, Bogdan Petroniu Onac, Ioana Nicoleta Meleg

FRONTIERS UNBOUND: Exploring Extreme Environments

No abstract provided.

Mill Point (8hi16-20) And Mosaic Park (8hi6747) In The Pre-Columbian And Historic Periods, Dennis Pierson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the participation of the Mill Point archaeological complex (8HI16-20) and the adjacent Mosaic Park archaeological site (8HI6747) in the changing cultural, economic, and geopolitical relationships that took place among the Indigenous polities present in the Tampa Bay region of southwest Florida during the pre-Columbian and early Spanish colonial periods. Political economy theory provides a framework for understanding the interactions that occurred among them.

Historical accounts, ground reconnaissance, surface survey, repeat aerial photography, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to gain a better understanding of the archaeological significance of the sites. The …

Seminoles, Soldiers, And Settlers: Identity And Power On The Florida Frontier, Jean Louise Lammie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project uses an historical archaeological approach to analyze the processes of cultural negotiation between disparate social groups living in a remote borderland in the early to mid-nineteenth centuries. Florida, first colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s was passed to the United States in 1821 as part of the young nation’s nascent Manifest Destiny. The Seminoles experienced multiple colonial conflicts, dealt with new diseases, and selected aspects of European culture to incorporate into their daily practices of lifeways.

Archaeological studies of culture change tend to focus on the product of colonial interactions rather than the processes of change that …

Good Times, Politics, And Collapse: The Archaeology Of Old St. Joseph, Florida, Christopher N. Hunt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The town of St. Joseph, established in 1835, served as a deep-water port for receiving and shipping dry goods up the Apalachicola River north along the vast network of navigable inland waterways in the southeastern U.S. during the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this town was hit with a yellow fever epidemic, a fire, and a series of hurricanes that, combined with the infancy of its cotton trade activities, eventually devastated its economy and population. The town disappeared by 1842, only much later to be replaced by modern Port St. Joe (est. 1909), located north of the original settlement. However, St. …

Investigating Mobility In The Northern Balkans During The Fifth Millenium Bc Through Strontium Analysis Of Human Tooth Enamel, Aurélien Tafani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates how individual mobility among ancient populations in Romania during the Eneolithic, between 5000 and 4000 BC, may be related to the spread of the material culture known as Kodjadermen-Gumelniţa-Karonovo VI (KGK VI) that extended over most of southern Romania and Bulgaria. This work seeks to combine results on individual mobility with other lines of archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding of the social context and kinship relationships that were in place when these events took place.

Strontium isotopic analyses were performed on 130 individuals from two sites located in the southern Romania: 49 from Sultana and …

Foodways Of The Florida Frontier: Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Gamble Plantation Historic State Park (8ma100), Mary S. Maisel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gamble Plantation sits on the banks of the Manatee River in Ellenton Florida and has been home to many different occupants since its construction in 1844. Archaeological research at the site has recovered material culture spanning the entire occupation of the estate. One of the most universal aspects of life that these many residents shared is that they all prepared, consumed, and disposed of food and food waste in the same midden on the property. This thesis analyzes the faunal remains recovered from the 2017 and 2018 excavations of Gamble Plantation to identify remains down to a species level, …

Visualizing Empire: Advancing Roman Archaeology In Sicily And Malta Through 3d Digitization And Spatial Technologies, Stephan N. Hassam

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the negative effects of data fragmentation and heterogeneity on the Roman archaeology of Malta and Sicily. Roman period villas in Sicily and Roman period ceramics in Malta have both been marginalized within scholarship on Roman archaeology due to historical processes, bureaucratic organizations, and different academic trajectories and cultures. Digital technologies, especially 3D digitization and spatial information are well poised to address the fragmentation of these two contexts from wider discussions on the Roman Mediterranean. The dissertation introduces two long term projects, the E-unification of the De Piro Collection (EDPC) and the Digital Atlas of Roman Sicily – …

Archaeogaming And The Re-Use Of Digital Archaeological Materials: Generating Serious Games For The Villas Of Roman Sicily, Kaitlyn Kingsland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With 10 million copies sold and 500 million dollars of revenue, the 11th installment of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018), showed how a videogame based on ancient Greek history and archaeology can make a splash in popular culture and that the distant past can become an extinguishable source of infinite engaging gaming narratives. As pedagogic and research counterparts to videogames of this kind, serious games and archaeogames focusing on Greek and Roman civilizations move from different premises, though aspiring to the same level of success. Serious games, created for a primary purpose other than sole entertainment, have …

Geoarchaeology Of Estuarine Seascapes In Tampa Bay, Florida., Kendal R. Jackson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the geological, ecological, and archaeological histories of Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest open-water estuary system. Previous geoscientific and archaeological work has studied the evolution of Florida’s estuaries as ‘pre-anthropogenic’ ecosystems and conceptualized Indigenous maritime societies as mostly passive inhabitants of dynamic ‘natural’ environments. Further, the environmental legacies of more recent, industrial-scale estuary modification attending Florida’s 20th-century population boom have been understudied—leading to popular and scientific confusion about historical conditions. The work composing this dissertation research seeks to reconceptualize Tampa Bay as a complex mosaic of cultural seascapes that have been variously altered and modified by human societies across …

Fragmented Hours: The Biography Of A Devotional Book Printed By Thielman Kerver, Stephanie R. Haas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the most richly illustrated and widely-owned texts of the late medieval and early modern eras, books of hours are essential to the study of art, religion, and the history of the book. Fragmented and damaged books, while perhaps less coveted, are of particular value to researchers for what they may reveal about their owners as well as the changing meanings of devotional texts and images over more than five centuries of use. This thesis explores the compelling biography of a damaged book of hours preserved in the University of Florida Library. The book has undergone such extensive alteration prior …

Early Agricultural Lives: Bioarchaeological Inferences From Neolithic And Early Copper Age Tombs In The Central Po Valley, Italy, Christopher J. Eck Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current project seeks to illuminate the diets of the earliest farming societies in central Northern Italy. Neolithic peoples who first began settling in the Central Po Valley sometime at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth millennium BCE forever changed the landscape from one of expanding sub-continental forests to one of intensive agricultural production and anthropogenic influence. A total of 109 individual burials from 24 separate infrastructure project excavations of 17 sites surrounding the modern city of Mantua, Italy were analyzed utilizing a biochemical approach and a bioarchaeological explanatory theoretical framework based within embodiment and life …

Taking Chardin's Kitchen Maids Seriously, Danielle Ezor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Historically, Jean-Siméon Chardin’s The Kitchen Maid and Return from the Market have been characterized as austere images of middle-class virtue. However, the engravings made after these paintings include verses that place the paintings within the satirical tradition. Thus, there is a misalignment between the canonical interpretation of Chardin’s kitchen maids as virtuous and the satirical understanding of these paintings. I reconcile these two contradictory interpretations by offering a feminist reinterpretation of Chardin’s The Kitchen Maid and Return from the Market, juxtaposing the prints and their satirical verses and considering the female viewer. In my analysis, I focus on small, …

Hannah Humphrey, London’S Leading Caricature Printseller, Ersy Contogouris, Béatrice Denis

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Hannah Humphrey (ca. 1745-1818) was the exclusive publisher of James Gillray's (1756-1815) caricatures from 1791 until Gillray's death. His achievements were made possible in large part thanks to Humphrey and her innovative business acumen. But while Gillray has been celebrated and studied by art historians, Humphrey’s contribution to his success and to the history of graphic satire has remained unexamined. This article is a first attempt to shift the focus onto her in the story of the “golden age” of British caricature. It outlines Humphrey’s career, takes a closer look at her relationship with Gillray, and finally considers some of …

Harmony Of Difference: Theorizing Rashid Johnson's New Universalism In The Grids Of Antoine's Organ, Mark Fredricks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My reading of Antoine’s Organ, a sculptural installation created by the artist Rashid Johnson in 2016, explores the artwork as a richly textured response to the limited universalism of modernism. I argue that Antoine’s Organ is a multimodal expression which crafts a harmony of difference using the aesthetic language and forms of both visual art and music. The term “harmony of difference” is taken from and inspired by a composition of the same name by jazz musician Kamasi Washington, and is used within to describe Rashid Johnson’s counterpoint strategy to work differences with and against each other, mobilizing the grid’s …

Mound-Summit Practices At Cockroach Key (8hi2) Through The Lens Of Practice Theory, Chandler O. Burchfield

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cockroach Key (100-1000 CE) has one of the tallest platform mounds (Mound A) in Tampa Bay and all of prehistoric Florida; however, little is known about what the surface was used for. This research uses a forward-looking approach (following the ideas of Pauketat and Kassabaum) of interpreting mound-summit practices to avoid pre-Mississippian platform mound misconceptions of surfaces serving primarily as elite residences. Recent GPR investigations on the mound-summit revealed a circular pattern of anomalies hypothesized as a structure. These results are tested by the sampling of artifacts from a small diameter auger (18 auger samples) and elemental distributions based on …

Review Of The The Closet: The Eighteenth-Century Architecture Of Intimacy, By Danielle Bobker, Mary Peace

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Black Cemeteries Matter: The Erasure Of Historic Black Cemeteries In Polk County, Florida, Juliana C. Waters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the past several years, the Tampa Bay area has experienced a reckoning with regard to the intentional erasure, destruction, and abandonment of historic African American cemeteries such as Zion Cemetery in Tampa or St. Matthews Baptist Church Cemetery in Clearwater. Scholars, journalists, community members, archaeologists, and others have contributed to a growing movement that aims to identify and document these sacred sites in an effort to prevent further destruction. In this vein, this project aimed to identify and record cemeteries in Polk County, examine the processes leading to the erasure of historic Black cemeteries, the history surrounding erasure on …

An Edgefield Ceramic Assemblage From The Lost Town Of St. Joseph, Northwest Florida, Crystal R. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From 1835-1842, the train depot at what is today the Depot Creek Depot site (8Gu199) served the historic town of St. Joseph in the Florida Panhandle. This town originated as a competitor to the city of Apalachicola in the cotton industry and grew into an economic boomtown. Imported goods arriving on ships in the Gulf of Mexico were delivered to the Depot Creek Depot by railway, and then were shipped up through Lake Wimico and into the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River System. Unfortunately, after 8 years of occupation, St. Joseph was destroyed by several hurricanes, a yellow fever epidemic, and fires resulting …