Abstract
Ethnographers have ably documented the great extent and diversity of social institutions that contemporary fishers and shellfishers employ to collectively manage common property resources. However, the collective action regimes developed among ancient maritime societies remain understudied by archaeologists. We summarize research into the development and form of collective action among the maritime societies of the western peninsular coast of Florida, USA, drawing on our own recent work in the Tampa Bay area and previous work elsewhere in the region, especially the Calusa area to the south. Archaeological evidence suggests that collective action became more important in Tampa Bay in the first centuries CE, probably owing to a marine transgression that resulted in more productive estuaries. Groups here staked claims to productive estuarine locations through the founding of villages, the building of mounds, and the construction of relatively simple marine enclosures. Historically, these changes resulted in societies of relatively small scale and limited authoritarian government. In contrast, collective action developed later in the Calusa area, may have begun in relation to resource scarcity than plenty, and may been founded in kinship rather than in public ritual. Collective action in the Calusa area resulted in projects of greater scale and complexity, providing a foundation for more hierarchical and authoritarian social formations.
Highlights
Acheson (2015, p. 1) has noted that oceans “are almost always held as common property” owing to the fact that marine resources are typically low in value relative to the costs to defend them
We think it more likely that the enclosures De la Vega describes were comprised of piled shell, which could be confused with limestone from a distance, based only on casual observation, or through retelling of the story. This does not preclude the use of other materials in combination or in place of shell. Combining these inferences regarding size and material, we suggest that the Native systems of mass capture that the Spanish observed in Tampa Bay may have consisted of small embayments, the mouths of which were artificially restricted by the deliberate piling of shell
Collective action may have been slower to develop in the Calusa area, may have formed more in relation to resource scarcity than plenty, and may been founded more in kinship than in public ritual, it eventually resulted in projects of greater scale and complexity
Summary
Acheson (2015, p. 1) has noted that oceans “are almost always held as common property” owing to the fact that marine resources are typically low in value relative to the costs to defend them. Recent evidence suggests that fish traps were constructed by precolonial Native peoples in areas both to the north and south of Tampa Bay on the western Florida peninsula.
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