Join us in welcoming Charles Cobb, the Curator of Historical Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History for his presentation, “Recent Advances in the Archaeology of La Florida at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “SAAA lectures are free and open to the public!
Over the past decade, the Florida Museum has been involved in a variety of research projects related to the history and archaeology of the Spanish colony of La Florida that continue the long-term research agenda established by Kathy Deagan. This presentation will highlight three of those efforts: First, our collaborative efforts with other universities to identify the path of explorer Hernando de Soto through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi; second, our ongoing investigations at the Franciscan mission of San Francisco de Potano; finally, our long-term project to make our collections related to Spanish Florida available online for research and education purposes.
Charles Cobb received his PhD from Southern Illinois University in 1988. Following stints at Binghamton University and the University of South Carolina, he has been the Curator of Historical Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History since 2014. He has a long-term interest in colonial history and in the Indigenous cultures of the southeastern United States, with a particular focus on connections between Native American and European societies. His current research focuses on the impacts of 16th-century Spanish incursions into the Southeast, and his related fieldwork in Mississippi has been carried out in collaboration with the Chickasaw Nation. Cobb also is developing online digital databases of Florida Museum artifact collections from St. Augustine and Franciscan mission sites.