University of Florida Press

Using fresh evidence and nontraditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). Challenging the decades-old opinion that this culture evolved similarly across isolated Woodland populations, they discuss signs of migrations, pilgrimages, violent conflicts, and other far-flung entanglements that now appear to have shaped the early Mississippian past.

In Water from Stone, Jason O'Donoughue investigates the importance of natural springs to ancient Floridians. Throughout their history, Florida's springs have been gathering places for far-flung peoples. O'Donoughue finds that springs began flowing several millennia earlier than previously thought, serving as sites of habitation, burials, ritualized feasting, and monument building for Florida's earliest peoples.

In Microbes to Ecosystems, follow the scientists, researchers, and staff of the University of Florida’s Biodiversity Institute as they marshal unprecedented amounts of biological data to help us conserve species, adapt to climate change, and solve pressing environmental problems.

The Catawba Nation played an important role in the early colonial Southeast, serving as a military ally of the British and a haven for refugees from other native groups, yet it has largely been overlooked by scholars and the public. Fit for War explains how the Nation maintained its sovereignty while continuing to reside in its precolonial homeland near present-day Charlotte, North Carolina.  

Using archaeological and archival information, Chenoweth reveals how a web of connections led to the community’s establishment, how Quaker religious practices intersected with other aspects of daily life in the Caribbean, and how these practices were altered to fit a slavery-based economy and society.

This incredible cookbook, filled with hundreds of recipes that were used by people of all nationalities during the American Era, represents the merging of all those cultures. It aims to preserve the unique cultural and historical heritage of those dedicated men and women who labored to make the Canal truly one of the World’s greatest accomplishments.

Examining ceramics from eighteenth-century household sites in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, and St. Augustine, Florida, Setting the Table opens up new interpretations of cultural exchange and identity in the early modern Spanish empire.