Customer Reviews

Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola (Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series)

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The history of America's earliest settlement has been reinterpreted over the last twenty years. Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola summarizes the para-historical research and development that has developed over the last two decades and how it has influenced the history of Pensacola. Editor Judith A. Bense discusses in her preface that though Pensacola was first settled in 1559, the excavation of colonial Pensacola is very new, in fact the first excavations occurred by accident only in 1983. This 1983 site in downtown Pensacola turned in to research and surveying nearly every square inch of the greater Pensacola area and produced one of the best public representations of archaeological history in the nation. Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola follows the work of the University of Western Florida's fledgling archaeology institute and then "presents their discoveries and interpretations of documents" (p. xiii). These discoveries of the archaeology of Pensacola give the modern historian crucial insight into the undocumented culture and everyday lives of the colonial settlers and the environment in which they existed.

Dr. Judith Bense received her PhD in Terrestrial Archaeology at Washington State University, while doing her undergraduate and Master's work in Florida (Archaeology Institute of University of Western Florida official website, http://uwf.edu/archaeology/ facstaff/). She is currently professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Western Florida (UWF). In 1980, Bense started an anthropology-archaeology department at UWF for certain reasons: "the area's untouched resources" (p. xv) and the fact that she would be "the area's first archaeologist in residence" (p. xv). She built a neophyte archaeology program in to one of the best archaeological institutes in the nation, in a matter of a few short years. Bense's true accomplishment was that the city of Pensacola "pioneered the melding of public interest (and support) with archaeological and historical research. The Pensacola model, which has received national awards and acclamation, has inspired similar projects through the United States" (p. xv).

While Bense writes some of this book, the majority is written by her own former students; those who majored in archaeology. As all of the archaeological sites in Pensacola were excavated by students at UWF, these students are just as much experts on this subject as Bense, herself. As a full fledged archaeologist, Bense's own writing in this volume is incredibly accessible, as is the writing of her students. Though the descriptions of their discoveries are extensive, never is it dry. The accessibility fused with the abundance of raw research data found in the appendixes, makes it for an archaeologist well worth the [...]; however for the casual history reader out of the price range. As it is, the volume is absolutely indispensable when studying the history of colonial Pensacola, due to the fact that is one of only a handful written on the subject.

In contrast to Bense's balance of documents and archaeology, the only other full-length book on colonial Pensacola entitled, Santa Maria de Galve, A Story of Survival, by Virginia Parks, deals almost exclusively with documents. In A Story of Survival, Parks, however, does use some data presented in Bense's volume. It is not an exaggeration to state that Judith Bense owns the expertise on the archaeology of Pensacola.

There is no debate that the documented history of Pensacola must be studied across the disciplines to include, for certain, archeology. It is definite that Judith Bense and the UWF archaeology program have answered many questions plaguing Pensacola's history and the data has been wrapped up in Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola in a very accessible, cross-discipline book.

Teresa Pangle
December 2006