Over 97,00 Spanish artifacts from St. Augustine were donated to the Florida Museum of Natural History; museum archaeologists, including Anthropology adjunct professor Dr. Kathleen Deagan, are continuing work on the source site, the first Spanish colony in the New World at the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park.
“These artifacts are the only evidence we have as to how people lived in the colony and what objects they used,” Deagan said. “The documents from the period only briefly describe the settlers’ time at the site. There is nothing there about their lives and how people coped with being in a new, strange place. Now that we know more about their lives within the colony, we want to understand how they defended it.”
Edited June 1, 2014.