Native American Land Acknowledgment Research Guide

This section includes resources that deal with historic time periods before the 16th century.

There are a number of different names to classify certain time periods, but here are some of the most common names used by researchers:
Paleo Indian Period (10,000 BC/BCE to 7500 BC/BCE); Early Archaic Period (7500 BC/BCE to 5000 BC/BCE); Middle Archaic Period (5000 BC/BCE to 3000 BC/BCE); Late Archaic Period (3000 BC/BCE to 500 BC/BCE); Formative Period (500 BC/BCE to 1000 AD/CE); Mississippian Period (1000 AD/CE to 1500 AD/CE).
 
Names specific to the West Central Florida area include:
the Florida Transitional (1200 BC/BCE to 500 BC/BCE); Manasota (500 BC/BCE to 200 AD/CE); Manasota/Weeden (or Weedon) Island-related (200 AD/CE to 800/1000 AD/CE); and Safety Harbor (800/1000 AD/CE to 1700 AD/CE).  

As mentioned earlier in the St. Petersburg section, local archaeological sites such as Weedon Island and Maximo Park remind us of the region's earliest Native American cultures. Indigenous people from the Late Archaic Period were the first caretakers of this land from approximately 3000 BC/BCE to 500 BC/BCE. Native Americans from the Manasota and Weedon archaeological cultures were in the Tampa Bay area between 500 BC/BCE to 800/1000 AD/CE. The Safety Harbor culture, which took place from about 800/1000 AD/CE to the early 1700s, included the Tocobaga people who built the shell mounds near the current University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus.

Brown, Robin C.  Florida's First People: 12,000 Years of Human History.
Sarasota, Florida: Pineapple Press, Revised edition, 2013.
 
McCarthy, Kevin.  Native Americans in Florida.  
Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 1999.

Milanich, Jerald T. Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida.
Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1994.

Milanich, Jerald T. Florida Indians from Ancient Times to the Present.
Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Milanich, Jerald T. Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe.
Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1995.

Milanich, Jerald T.  Hernando de Soto and the Indians of Florida.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida Museum of Natural History, 1993.

Milanich, Jerald T. and Susan Milbrath, eds.
First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492 – 1570.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1989.