Greetings All,
Well, I am off on another Dig. This time for 3 weeks. I will be working on a "Phase III" dig, like you see on TV with all the meter x meter squares and people working with dental tools, trowels, and brushes. I feel very lucky to have gotten onto this crew. The Dig is under the direction of Dr. Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. Is is being partly funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education.
Santa Isabel de Utinahica (ca. 1560-ca. 1640) was a 17th century Spanish mission located in what is in a Telfair County forest in an area known as "the forks," where the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers converge to form the Altamaha River. The small mission was a part of a series of missions set up in what was then the northern reaches of the Spanish colony of Spanish Florida, similar to the Spanish Missions in California or Mexico.
Operating in the early 1600s, the mission was a religious outpost consisting of one Catholic friar sent out to convert and monitor the native people at the edges of the colony. The name Utinahica was taken from the local Native American chiefdom, themselves a part of the Timucua people and ancestors of the current Creek people.
Based on historical accounts and American Indian artifacts, there's no doubt there was a mission in the area, one of the most remote of several dozen missions set up by the Spanish in northern Florida and southern Georgia, Dr. Dennis Blanton said.
The mission was named Utinahica after the Indians that lived in the area, They were ancestors to the well-known Creek Indians. Archeologists have already surveyed the area using remote sensing devices and ground penetrating radar.
Spanish artifacts have already been recovered at three sites and those will be targeted first. It is also possible that this is NOT the site of the Mission, but a stopping place for the expedition of Hernando DeSoto in 1539.
See Ya'll Soon,
Eugene
