Decorated pots made in Tampa Bay may preserve the skills and broken vessels that migrant artisans brought from their homeland.
A century ago, archaeologists digging around Tampa Bay uncovered pottery fragments bearing designs that seemed out of place. The motifs closely resembled those of Mississippian culture, which emerged around A.D. 1000 in the Mississippi River Valley and spread across much of the Midwest and eastern United States.
Hundreds of miles south of that heartland, Tampa Bay’s coastal communities, known to archaeologists as the Safety Harbor culture, relied on fishing and other marine resources rather than the maize farming characteristic of Mississippian life…