The Effacement and Persistence of Tocobaga, a Native Florida Town

Historical descriptions and archaeological research provide a compelling association of the Native town of Tocobaga with the Safety Harbor site (8PI2), in Tampa Bay, Florida. The Spanish established a mission-fort at Tocobaga in 1567, but it was short-lived: responding to abuse by the colonizers, the Tocobagans killed the soldiers who had been left at the town and the Spanish burned the town in retaliation. We employ the metaphor of effacement, in its original referent to the wearing away of the surface of a coin, to describe the manner in which the colonial destruction of the town provided an opportunity for imposition of new meanings on the landscape of Tocobaga in the modern era: first as a plantation and “pleasure garden,” next as an ancient ruin and archaeological site, and later as a reform park. Archaeology is part of the effacement of the Native town—the remnants of Tocobaga were reinscribed as the type site for the Safety Harbor–period and the eponymous Mississippian-period (1010–1550) material culture complex. However, archaeology—including our recent testing—also provides a means for understanding such concepts as effacements, as well as the persistence of materiality.