The Florida Public Archaeology Network center is open at Mound House
There’s a new archaeological director in town. Since mid-August, Steve Archer has been assigned to the Southwest Regional Center of the Florida Public Archaeology Network. He is temporarily based out of the Mound House but expects to move into the Seven Seas building at Newton Park when construction is completed in December or January.
Archer, who holds both a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of Michigan and a Master’s Degree from the University of California at Berkeley, moved to the Beach from Williamsburg, Virginia, where he worked at Colonial Williamsburg. The Michigan native has extensive archaeological experience in his home state, Virginia, California, the American Southwest, and outside the country in Turkey and Japan, working with both historic and prehistoric resources.
This new center serves the counties of Charlotte, Glades, Lee, Hendry and Collier. The Town is hosting the center and its new director.
“The Town put in a proposal to the Florida Public Archaeology Network,” said Archer. “The complicated arrangement involves a state government program that is administered through the University of West Florida. The university hosts the coordinating center for the whole Florida Public Archaeology Network. There are multiple regions around the state each with a sponsor organization. We are the most recent center to open.”
According to Archer, FPAN has three primary goals: conducting public outreach; providing assistance to local governments in their efforts to preserve and protect archaeological resources; and supporting the Florida Division of Historical Resources.
“During these initial months of the center’s operation, I will be engaging in a series of meetings with interested parties in the five-county region,” said Archer. “This first phase of work is intended to listen to the experiences, issues, and concerns of individuals and organizations with vested interest in southwest Florida’s cultural resources. In the coming months we will be solidifying our goals and strategic plan, and also hiring additional staff, including an Outreach Coordinator and an administrative assistant.”
While his expertise is more in environmental and historic archaeology, Archer hopes to gain more knowledge in the prehistoric component working around Mound House Director and Archaeologist Theresa Schober.
“Theresa has a lot of expertise in prehistoric archaeology so I’m hoping I can bring in more historic components in this,” he said. “The job is coordinating all archaeological resources.”
Archer says some of the activities other FPAN centers participate in include coordinating public lectures and events, teacher training, curriculum development, workshops for developers in legal compliance and site preservation, coordinating volunteer archaeological projects and many other tasks that fall under the broad umbrella of “public archaeology”.
“Basically, I feel responsible for anybody who is a stakeholder in cultural resources,” said Archer. “We are here as a resource. It is my intention to build on the positive aspects of these programs while developing new initiatives for the Southwest region,” It’s great here being at the Mound House so I can piggy-back on Theresa and Regan (McBride) and use all their contacts and get to know who they know.”
Once at the Seven Seas building, Archer and his staff will provide a lot of on-site public programming at Newton Park as well.
“The cool thing about the Seven Seas property is -unlike all these other centers where most are hosted by colleges and the center’s offices are hidden in campus buildings- we’ll get more public drop-in traffic. We’ll be a little more based out of that building in doing events at Seven Seas more so than some of these other centers. I’m hoping we’ll be doing several events a months like talks, workshops, and host developers who want to know about cultural resource laws. We should have a pretty visible presence right there on the beach.”
For more information about the Florida Public Archaeology Network at www.flpublicarchaeology.org.
“I am committed to strengthening our local communities in the area and using archaeology as a tool that benefits both our diverse people and fragile, endangered resources,” said Archer. “Strong communities and strong participation in archaeology together ensure that both flourish for generations to come.”