surface collections, and excavations throughout Florida and the Caribbean between 1949 and 1957 in order to recover well-dated samples of majolica to use in a dated typological seriation (Goggin 1968). The result was a detailed classification of majolica using the then-standard North American Midwestern Taxonomic system. Despite criticism of his typological system, Goggin’s majolica study has remained a reliable classificatory and dating system since its publication, with only minor revision (Deagan 1987).

Sunken Towns and Ships

Systematic underwater historical archaeology in Florida and the Caribbean began during the 1950s with a series of investigations loosely coordinated by Mendel Peterson of the Smithsonian Institution (see Peterson 1965, 5–17). Various shipwrecks, including those of the Spanish treasure fleets and British privateers sunk in Florida were studied; however the most important project of this period was at the sunken city of Port Royal, Jamaica. The British colonial city was plunged into the sea by an earthquake in 1692 and remained submerged as a seventeenth-century time capsule. Edwin and Marion Link, avocational archaeologists working with Peterson and a team of U.S. Navy divers, began investigation of the site in 1956 to identify sunken structures and recover evidence of life in seventeenth-century Port Royal (Link 1960).

Archaeological research at the site has continued to the present day under the auspices of the Jamaican government, carried out from 1965 to 1968 by Robert Marx (Marx 1973), and during the 1980s and 1990s by the Institute for Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University under the direction of Donald Hamilton (Hamilton 1992). Through Texas A&M’s involvement, Port Royal became the site of one of the few academic field training programs in underwater archaeology in the Americas. Port Royal is also one of the few colonial sites in the hemisphere at which underwater and terrestrial excavations have been conducted simultaneously, in order to coordinate the study of submerged remains with those buried remains not drowned by the 1692 earthquake.

Meanwhile in Florida, developments in shipwreck excavation shaped a very different kind of trajectory for underwater archaeology in the state, which until recently was defined by the search for sunken treasure. The first organized treasure hunting consortium in Florida, Real Eight, was formed during 1959 and 1960 through the efforts of Kip Wagner and Mel Fischer. Real Eight received permits from the State of Florida to salvage several wrecks off the east coast, with 25 percent of the recovered value going back to the State of Florida. Archaeologists Goggin and William Sears provided oversight for both the projects and the division of remains, but by 1964 fiscal and contractual problems resulted in the appointment of Florida’s first State Underwater Archaeologist, Carl Clausen (see Burgess and Clausen 1982; Wagner and Taylor 1972). The State Underwater Archaeologist was assigned to manage and oversee the study and salvage of Florida’s marine resources, and the position as well as the permitting partnerships have been maintained since that time.

One consequence of these early developments in Florida’s marine archaeology program was the sustained interest of Goggin in underwater archaeology. Goggin and Fairbanks encouraged the incorporation of submerged archaeological data with terrestrial research in a way that has rarely been seen since that time. Goggin’s early interest in underwater historical archaeology was focused on a variety of sites and materials submerged in rivers and springs, including isolated finds, mission refuse, Seminole materials, and abandoned settlements (Goggin 1960b; Fairbanks 1964).

Despite the level of activity and the diversity of interests in the historical archaeology of Florida and the Caribbean during the period from 1935 to 1970, the field was not formally recognized as a coherent school, specialty, or subdiscipline within the wider archaeological community until the 1960s. The Conference on Historic Sites Archaeology was organized by Stanley South and many of the Florida historical archaeologists (see South 1994), publishing its first several proceedings in the Florida Anthropologist. The primary professional organ for