April 30 talk to be on pond cemeteries

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April 30 talk to be on pond cemeteries

County News

Wednesday, 13 April 2011 14:04

Rachel K. Wentz, director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network East Central Region, will be the guest speaker for the program.

Water burials used by Native Americans in Archaic period

There were populations of Florida’s early people that used natural bodies of water to bury their dead. Today, the discovery and examination of these sites are providing detailed knowledge about these past populations.
These burials will be the topic of the Saturday, April 30, program of the Osceola County Historical Society’s History Talks series entitled “Beneath the Surface: Exploring Florida’s Ancient Pond Cemeteries.”

Prehistoric burials in Florida usually experienced extreme degradation due to its acidic, sandy soils. However, the mortuary practices used during the Archaic period (between 9,000 and 3,000 years ago) involved the use of natural bodies of water for the interment of the dead, providing an exceptional environment for the preservation of skeletal material. This burial method involved placing the body within the peat layer at the bottom of small ponds and springs. The peat provided an environment that promoted the preservation of skeletal material and, in some cases, brain tissue.
Guest speaker Rachel K. Wentz, director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network East Central Region, will discuss this subject. The program will include visuals and followed with a question-and-answer segment.

Photos/Osceola County Historical Society
Pond burials, used by Native Americans in Florida during the Archaic period and illustrated above, will be the topic of an April 30 Osceola County Historical Society talk.

Wentz, a board member of the Florida Archaeological Council and a Brevard County Historical commissioner, graduated from Florida State University with a doctoral degree in anthropology and specializes in the analysis of human remains; she focuses on ancient disease and population health. Her master’s thesis was an analysis of fracture frequencies among the Windover skeletal population at a 7,000-year-old site in Titusville.
Her doctoral dissertation was a bio-archaeological assessment of the same population. Wentz also has analyzed remains from Little Salt Spring and Calico Hill, both prehistoric sites in Florida. She has done skeletal work in St. Croix, England, and Ukraine, and obtained experience in forensic anthropology at the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and has taught courses in physical anthropology, human osteology and forensic anthropology at Florida State University.
The April 30 program will begin at 2 p.m. Admission is $10 ($5 for students and Historical Society members). Seating is limited and reservations are suggested by calling 407-396-8644.
The Osceola County Historical Society is at 750 N. Bass Road (just off West U.S. Highway 192), Kissimmee.