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Pcola Pride - Episode 25
65 Plays8 years ago
In this episode we explore two difference phases of early exploration and settlement in North America. First, the Vikings because Vikings don't need an explanation they're Vikings. Second, a recent discovery in Pensacola has revealed the location of an early Spanish settlement that has brought Spanish colonialism back into the spotlight. So sit back and enjoy, I promise I only mention Columbus once, the scoundrel!
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:05
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello friends, it's Jenny and welcome back to the struggling archaeologist's guide to getting dirty. This is episode 25 and I think I'm going to call this one Pico LaPrade because y'all, and I am from the Northeast, I do not say y'all. So when I say y'all on this podcast, it's purely sarcasm.
00:00:45
Speaker
No offense to any of you people who say y'all. But I am saying
Jenny's Journey to Pensacola
00:00:50
Speaker
it ironically, just so you know. So y'all, it's time to talk a little bit about the part of the country where I used to live and where I went to grad school, which is Pensacola, Florida.
00:01:03
Speaker
I ended up there through a weird, you know, circumstance because my husband is in the military, we got stationed nearby, and so I didn't really have much of a choice in living in Pensacola area, but once I was there I was like, dang, this is a pretty cool little spot, and I got pretty excited about the fact that there was a school there with a really
00:01:26
Speaker
great anthropology graduate program and so I applied and got accepted and before I knew it I was in grad school at the University of West Florida and I didn't know very much about this part of the country before moving there but once I started school
00:01:44
Speaker
You know this department is very immersive in the local history and the archaeology of the area and so I learned just tons of really fascinating stuff about
00:01:59
Speaker
the American
Luna Colony Discovery
00:02:00
Speaker
Southeast in general, and then the panhandle-ish area of Florida, lower Alabama, as we like to call it, LA, and places like Mobile in New Orleans, this whole
00:02:15
Speaker
stretch of the Gulf Coast I would say between basically New Orleans and Tallahassee has a very interesting colonial history and that was a huge focus of my schooling and so because my alma mater has had some very exciting news recently going on I figured this podcast would be a great place to talk about that this new discovery and also just learn a little bit about the history of that area of the US during
00:02:45
Speaker
our founding because, you know, this part of the country is actually one of the very first places to ever be explored and settled by Europeans. And so, yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about that. Being from the Northeast, I have usually, you know, I'm kind of focused on the Northeastern history of American culture and politics and all of that.
00:03:14
Speaker
which is a lot more of what you hear about in school when you're growing up because the founding fathers and the Revolutionary War and all of this stuff, it's all taking place in the 18th century in the Northeast, in New York, in Philadelphia. My hometown of Albany was very active in this era of our history. I just always thought about colonial history in terms of what was going on up there, but there is a whole
00:03:42
Speaker
Another part of the country, people. News flash, Jenny, it was not all about you. So yeah, so it was very interesting for me to learn about the Southeast.
00:03:56
Speaker
and its colonial history as well. And so that is what I'm bringing to you today. And so without further ado, let us begin with today's lesson in history and other things important and exciting and good.
00:04:14
Speaker
So first off, let's talk about the recent news coming out of Pensacola and the University of West Florida. And that is, if you've been paying attention to archaeology news, which I mean, of course you all are, what else are you doing with your lives? That would be the discovery of the Luna colony.
00:04:35
Speaker
And what does this mean? Well, the Luna colony was discovered in downtown Pensacola in late 2015 and this site has been confirmed at the moment as the first multi-year European settlement in the U.S.
00:04:55
Speaker
Before this, the earliest multi-year European settlement in the US was considered to be St. Augustine, but we knew that the lunar colony existed in Pensacola. We knew that they were there for
00:05:10
Speaker
for a certain amount of time and we just had not been able to locate them. And now we have, we found them. And so yes, let us delve a little bit into this. So the Luna colony refers to the Spanish explorer Tristan de Luna. He arrived in Pensacola in 1559. That is right, 1559 long time ago.
00:05:39
Speaker
On an expedition from Spain via Mexico, he came with 11 ships and about 1,500 men, including Spanish colonists, African slaves, and even Aztec Indians.
00:05:52
Speaker
They landed in Pensacola. They established the first colony in the future US, which lasted from 1559 to 1561. It actually predated the St. Augustine settlement by six years, and it predated the Jamestown settlement by 48 years.
00:06:14
Speaker
So the Luna settlement may have survived, become the epicenter of New Spain in North America had they not been devastated by a hurricane a month after they arrived.
00:06:29
Speaker
Bad luck. So yes, there was a hurricane right after they got there, unfortunately, which does happen in the, you know, Gulf states quite often. But this was a poorly timed hurricane because
00:06:44
Speaker
It managed to sink most of their ships in Pensacola Bay along with much of their supplies. Yeah. So they hadn't been able to empty their ships of a lot of stuff. They lost a lot of their supplies when their ships went down. Obviously, this also presented several other challenges as far as what they were going to do.
00:07:09
Speaker
And so it was, yeah, just kind of a big disaster. So because of the repercussions of this event, along with things like threats from local native groups, the colony basically had to be rescued. And they egressed very quickly on other Spanish ships that came to get them, and they returned to Mexico.
00:07:34
Speaker
So when they did that, the Luna colony in Pensacola was done for as of 1561 for a little bit until the Spanish could come back and recolonize Pensacola basically.
00:07:50
Speaker
So yeah, they obviously decided to try again. They were more successful at first in other parts of the state. So yeah, that was when the St. Augustine settlement was founded right after that, and then that was much more successful.
00:08:10
Speaker
And then later they came back to Pensacola. But yeah, anyway, that is how the first multi-year European settlement in America happened. It was in Pensacola.
00:08:21
Speaker
Florida. Although, Pensacola was not their first effort. This wasn't the first time anyone had ever come to the North American shores and tried to colonize. And I'm not, just for the purposes of this topic focused on the southeast, I'm not going to go into any of the
00:08:40
Speaker
settlement or exploration in the Northeast by Vikings because that's a whole other deal but just yes in case you were wondering if I was going to mention that yes Vikings were in the Northeast basically the very far parts of Eastern Canada and
00:09:00
Speaker
Greenland and all of Iceland in these places. But no, for now, we're just talking about mainland Europe. So yes, we will be focused on their efforts to colonize North America. So yes.
00:09:16
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, back to the Spanish. This wasn't their first effort to colonize North America, obviously, but all of their previous attempts had also failed. The most famous of these include expeditions by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513, again in 1521. Lucas Vasquez de Leon, which I speak French, not Spanish, so I'm very sorry if I mispronounce these. He came in 1526.
00:09:43
Speaker
And his expedition, I believe their settlement has not been discovered yet, so that's another thing we should hopefully be looking out for on the horizon of Floridian and Southeastern archaeology.
00:10:00
Speaker
And then there was
University of West Florida's Role
00:10:01
Speaker
Fernando de Soto, who went to the Tallahassee area during the winter of 1539 and 1540, which has been discovered and excavated. But as you can probably tell by the dates, most of these colonies were very short-lived and largely disastrous for those involved.
00:10:22
Speaker
Not many survivors, those new. So yes, that is a brief history of other Spanish explorations and settlement attempts. Again, in 1513, 1521, 1526, 1539. And then finally, being successful for a little bit between 1559 and 1561 in Pensacola.
00:10:49
Speaker
So let's talk about University of West Florida for a minute. So this school in Pensacola has been focused on the Spanish colonial history of Pensacola since the anthropology department's beginning. Obviously, this is the history of their cities. So they're very heavily involved in all things history and archeology and anthropology having to do with Spanish exploration, especially in the Pensacola area.
00:11:18
Speaker
So UWF has already excavated the first three Spanish presidios in Pensacola from the 17th and 18th centuries. Also a Spanish mission from the 18th century and of course very famously two of the shipwrecks
00:11:34
Speaker
from Tristan de Luna's 1559 expedition, the Emmanuel Point 1 and 2 shipwrecks, which are right in Pensacola Bay, along with many, many other archaeological projects in the area. These are some of their top projects and things that they do.
00:11:57
Speaker
So UWF also has some of the world's foremost experts on Spanish colonial history and archaeology, such as Dr. Elizabeth Benchley and Dr. John Wirth, who happened to be the chair of my thesis committee. Hey, what up, Dr. Wirth? They were both involved in the investigation into the lunar colony's discovery and will also be heavily involved in the further excavations of the colony.
00:12:26
Speaker
So the anthropology department has obviously been aware of the Luna Colony and they've been on the lookout for this site for a very long time. Much of Pensacola's oldest areas have been developed, unfortunately though, which makes surveying in the area difficult.
00:12:45
Speaker
And documentary sources don't say specifically where the settlement was located. So I know up until this point most of the research had been done on documents and maps and things like that from the people who came back from the expedition. And I know Dr. Worth has spent a lot of time researching the documentary trail in Spain as well as Pensacola.
00:13:10
Speaker
And so there is a collection of documents from this period called the Luna Papers, which is the basis of this research that has illuminated a lot of the possibilities of where the Luna Colony may have been located in downtown Pensacola.
00:13:28
Speaker
So let's get on to the big exciting event. So what happened to change all of this and reveal the location of a lunar colony? So basically a local historian and amateur archaeologist who has contributed a lot to Pensacola archaeology by the name of Tom Garner took it upon himself to investigate an area of upturned earth
00:13:50
Speaker
on a residential lot near the harbor that he came upon one day in October. And he knew this could possibly be in the vicinity of the colony's possible location. So when he saw that there was work being done and that, you know, there was kind of
00:14:11
Speaker
Earth turned up and there was the possibility for maybe surveying a little bit of the lot to see if there was anything, you know, happening under there. He, you know, just kind of went for it. And what he saw on the surface, he was positive, were mid 16th century Spanish and Native American artifacts.
00:14:34
Speaker
So he spied these things. He notified UWF. He brought a surface collection to Dr. Wirth for identification. Dr. Wirth worked on these artifacts along with the lab director at UWF, Jan Lloyd, and the head of the department, who is Dr. Elizabeth Benchley I mentioned earlier.
00:14:54
Speaker
And all three of them concluded that these materials and the location of where they were found were all in agreement with what could only be the remnants of this 1559 expedition from Tristan de Luna's colony.
00:15:13
Speaker
And so this is, of course, very exciting news. And so they went to work seeing what they could do about further study in this location and the protection of these artifacts and the possible site beneath them.
00:15:30
Speaker
So yeah,
Plans for Luna Colony Excavations
00:15:32
Speaker
and if you're asking, if you're wondering how, you know, they just kind of look at these artifacts and they're like, oh yes, these are definitely mid 16th century Spanish native America. Well, the University of West Florida has a large body of materials and correlating evidence coming from the many, many years of
00:15:51
Speaker
study and excavation they've done in the area. So we have this huge record of Spanish colonial material stretching from the
00:16:04
Speaker
time of the Luna expedition in the 16th century through the 18th and early 19th centuries and so we know you know the people who are specializing in this area are very well you know familiar with the expansive material culture of the Spanish in America at this time and we also don't forget have the collections of the two
00:16:31
Speaker
Yes, sorry, I have my son strapped to my chest. So if there are any weird noises coming out of, you know, this podcast for the rest of it, then it's probably just him and just ignore it. I mean, he's adorable. So he may want to comment from time to time.
00:16:48
Speaker
But anyway, I was saying, we do have a large collection of artifacts coming from the Emmanuel Point shipwrecks, which were the ships that Tristan Deluna took with him to Pensacola. And so, yeah, they sunk in the harbor in 1559. And so this is the same exact material that you're going to be finding at the colony on land. And by comparing these two,
00:17:14
Speaker
collections, they were able to say definitively, yes, this is the same stuff. This is the time period. This is the place. This is everything that we needed to see in order to be positive that we were looking at the lunar colony. And so that is why they were able to make such a definitive, positive
00:17:36
Speaker
statement that this was the Luna Calling. So at the moment, this collection has been studied in the anthropology department at UWF. They've worked with the property owners where they were found to assess the site. They went back, they took another look at it. And along with the blessings of the and cooperation of the site owners, they have made plans to excavate
00:18:01
Speaker
the lot in the 2016 field school season which will be happening this summer and boy am I jealous that I don't get to be a part of that field school because that would be pretty exciting. So with any luck they'll be able to get an idea of you know all the site boundaries there, structures, potential structures, relationships between
00:18:23
Speaker
the colonists and the different groups of people that they had with them as well as the local native peoples because during this period of exploitation there was a lot of trading going on between European settlers and explorers and the native peoples of any area
00:18:41
Speaker
There's extensive trading networks that were at work in the southeast and the west at this time. So yeah, it'd be very exciting to see anything like that going on to indicate the type of relationship they had with the locals.
00:18:57
Speaker
And then also just for me, I think it's interesting to look at the cultural, the different type of relationships between the different cultural groups that made up the colony, because remember I said it wasn't just Spanish settlers, they also had slaves and they had Aztec workers. So what were those type of relationships like? And so of course we want to know, just these type of things, what was life like? What were the social dynamics?
00:19:27
Speaker
What were they doing to protect themselves from any outside threats? I don't know. There's just so many questions and things that you want to know. It's crazy. So I, for one, am extremely excited to see what happens this summer with excavations and what they turn up. So, good, exciting stuff. Well, at least if you're an archaeologist, it's exciting stuff. Anyway,
Spanish Colonial Artifacts
00:19:51
Speaker
I thought I'd talk a little bit about the archaeology of Spanish colonization.
00:19:56
Speaker
If you're wondering what the archaeology of Spanish colonization looks like, it's very reflective of the life ways that are the focus of most archaeological sites. So when we approach a domestic site, someplace where people lived, it's very much no matter what type of archaeology is, where you are, what time period you're looking at. We're asking a lot of the same questions and we're looking for a lot of the same things. So this will be just as true at the Luna colony as it is in
00:20:26
Speaker
I don't know, a worker's village in Egypt or a village in the forests of Germany from the first millennia. I don't know.
00:20:40
Speaker
just off the top of my head. So a lot of these questions revolve around very basic life ways, and life ways refers to an archaeology. Basically what and how they ate and drank, and what they wore, where they lived, what did they do?
00:20:59
Speaker
So in this case, in Pensacola, we also see the kinds of weaponry and goods that the Spanish believed were necessary when they set out on these ships to forge a new beginning and a foreign land and among foreign peoples. It's very poetic, I think. So UWF had previously uncovered things like
00:21:20
Speaker
armor, cannon, metal remnants from crossbows, swords, guns on these shipwrecks. So these are the same type of things you might be finding in the colony, as well as other goods like beads, ornaments, precious metals, glass, ceramic, bones, yes, we do find bones, and lots and lots and lots, in the case of colonial Spanish archaeology, of olive jars.
00:21:48
Speaker
Olive jars are perhaps the most iconic artifact of the Spanish voyages of discovery and that is basically just a utilitarian course earthenware storage vessel that has a very distinctive shape. You see the olive jar and it's very evocative of the Spanish colonial era because you know this is what they were transporting things with on their ships to the New World.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so we do have tons of olive jars. If you're ever in Pensacola and you are interested in seeing some of this stuff, much of these type of artifacts are on display already in Pensacola museums and the UWF Archaeology Institute, which has its own little museum inside. So if you ever get a chance to visit, head on over there and check them out.
00:22:38
Speaker
Because yeah, pretty exciting stuff. So the new site of the Luna Colony looks to contribute a lot to our knowledge of the first colony to almost succeed in America from mainland Europe.
00:22:53
Speaker
artifacts to come from just this initial investigation. Remember, they haven't really excavated yet. They have went back and surveyed and just investigated kind of the surface and did maybe some probing and see what they were finding underneath the surface. But no serious excavations have happened yet.
00:23:12
Speaker
But just from what they've done already, they've gotten tons of amazing artifacts. So just these initial investigations have revealed more olive jars, lead-glazed earthenwares, Spanish Mahalika, which is a certain type of ceramic,
00:23:31
Speaker
local Native American ceramics, Aztec red film ceramics, metal objects like bells, rosettes, weights, a lacing tip, as well as raw iron nails and even glass beads. So, you know, pretty exciting stuff.
00:23:49
Speaker
Stuff that unfortunately I didn't get to work with a lot when I was there because my focus was not the Spanish stuff, unfortunately. Although I did always love seeing the pottery in the lab. Pottery was kind of my thing, big fan. So yeah, I always loved looking through all that stuff. I got to work with that teeny bit, but not too much.
00:24:10
Speaker
And so, yeah, I feel like I may be able to identify some of that stuff, although it's not my specialty or unfortunately. But, you know, I see a piece of olive jar and I'm like, oh, hey, olive jar. Olive jars are not very exciting to look at, but as I said before, it's very plentiful on these Spanish colonial sites. So that's a cool thing. If you're interested in some of this other kind of stuff,
00:24:37
Speaker
Mahalika is pretty indicative of the Spanish colonial area as well. It was always pretty cool if you're into ceramics, if you're a big nerd like me.
00:24:49
Speaker
And if you've heard of Mahalika before and are confused as to what it is, it is a pretty distinctive style of ceramics. It's famous from the Italian Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries. Although it actually originated in the Middle East, it was sort of traded slash imported through Spain into Europe from the 13th century on when they began making it there too.
00:25:15
Speaker
It's generally pretty colorful, hand painted, and it's made by firing and tin blazing. Yes, prior to decoration. So it actually gets the name Mahalika from the fact that it was originally imported through Mallorca. And the Italians actually believed when they got it that it had been made in Mallorca. So that's why they named the style Mahalika. And I don't know if the original pronunciation was
00:25:44
Speaker
Mallorca. I have no idea how that works because, again, I don't speak Spanish. I just know what it's called today. So it has basically been made by a lot of countries since then, but it maintains the Spanish name to this day and it is tied to both Spain and Italy, especially coming from this period in the 16th century.
00:26:12
Speaker
So, yeah, lots of colonial sites from the 15th through 17th centuries will probably have some form of Mahalika, like the Spanish variety found in Pensacola.
00:26:23
Speaker
So I figured we'd talk a little about the town of Pensacola itself, which if you were interested was originally named Santa Maria D'Ocuz, which I think is how it's pronounced, by Luna when he got there. But it was renamed Pensacola by the British upon taking control of Florida after the Seven Years War in 1763.
00:26:45
Speaker
Now the word Pensacola came from, as it usually does, the Native Americans who inhabited the area in the 17th century, who told the Spanish that the bay and the area were called something, we assume that is similar, to Pansacola. And so the Spanish actually named them the Pansacolas, like the Pansacola Indians, and later named one of their settlements the Presidio San Miguel de Pansacola,
00:27:14
Speaker
in 1756. And then of course the word pansicola was anglicized by the British, as they do, though the Spanish continued to call it pansicola during the interim rule of La Florida between 18 I'm sorry 1781 and 1821.
00:27:33
Speaker
when Florida's finally made a U.S. territory. And then people just kind of gave up and called it whatever the U.S. wanted, which was the Britishized, Anglicized Pensacola.
00:27:47
Speaker
So back
Spanish Influence in the Americas
00:27:49
Speaker
to the Spanish. Poor Spanish. They don't usually get a lot of crud for their contributions to the founding of America. But you've got to give them points for persistence because the Spanish made it to many parts of the southeast. They made it up into the west and the southwest before many of the major settlements of the English, French, and Dutch had even been established.
00:28:12
Speaker
So, yeah, the Spanish had sent nine expeditions and finally succeeded in St. Augustine. By the time the English settlement of Roanoke and Jamestown even happened, you know, it was like they had been there and done that before the English even got here. So,
00:28:33
Speaker
Unfortunately, the Spanish ultimately pulled out of the eastern US. They still remain a huge cultural influence in parts of the south and much of the west. The Spanish actually laid the basis for much of the economic system we recognize today is fundamental to America.
00:28:50
Speaker
They introduced cows, horses, sheep, goats, lots of plants and vegetables to the continent that we just considered take for granted today as having kind of always been here. Well, they weren't. The Spanish also sent many missionaries to spread Catholicism. So that's a huge influence in why such a portion of the country is Catholic today.
00:29:15
Speaker
And they also imposed Spanish models of mercantilism on all of the places they colonized in North, Central, and South America. And also, as if you didn't know, the Spanish interbred with the native peoples of the Americas. So they spread a new mix of ethnicities across the country as they traveled.
00:29:38
Speaker
And these mixed individuals called mestizos became more and more populous in the South and the Southwest. So at the same time, as the Spanish and the mestizos were becoming a larger part of the population of the continent,
00:29:56
Speaker
The Native Americans and Native South Americans and Latin Americans, basically anywhere the Spanish went, were becoming much less populous because as most people know, they kind of decimated the communities and way of life for many Native peoples.
00:30:16
Speaker
across these two continents, toppling empires, you know, through violence and the introduction of new diseases which kill thousands upon thousands of people. Good job, Spanish! Way to go! Yeah, what a bunch of winners.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, so despite some of the more negative aspects of their influences over the Americas, the Spanish, you have to admit, were just hugely influential in the founding of culture and way of life for a lot of the modern North Americans, South American, and Latin American peoples and countries.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah, just a very interesting part of American history and Pensacola itself is in many ways the history, a really good example of the history of the Spanish in America in general. And so, yeah, just a real pleasure to learn about in my experiences in the area and
00:31:21
Speaker
something that I don't think a lot of people are necessarily very well versed in or exposed to in their research or learning about the history of America's colonization. So at least, you know, after Columbus and 1492 and all that. So which is also an interesting story. Maybe I'll talk about that sometime. But anyway, yeah, I just wanted to
00:31:46
Speaker
give you guys a bit of background about Spanish colonialism and then talk more about the Luna colony discovery because I'm so excited for University of West Florida, my old professors and alumni. And so I'm just going to be really excited to see what comes out of this. And so I will definitely keep you guys. Yes, I will definitely keep you guys posted as more news happens.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yes, and someone else is extremely excited about it as well. We will be sure to be talking about this after excavations happen this summer. And of course, because I'm still connected to the university, I have a lot of friends who are still there. And I'm still, you know,
00:32:27
Speaker
talk to my professors and all that. Hopefully I'll be able to get you guys more of an insight scoop as the summer goes on what is happening there. So keep tuned for more on this. It's very exciting, very exciting stuff. And I'm just really happy for everyone who's been involved so far.
00:32:45
Speaker
So yeah, that is the Tristan Deluna colony discovery and all of that. And let's see. Well,
Podcasting Experience
00:32:55
Speaker
I've talked for quite a while, but I'm sure I can find something else of interest to blabber on about for a little bit. So let us change the pace just a tad and talk about some other news going on right now.
00:33:09
Speaker
Hey there, hello, hi, how are you guys? It's Jenny. Welcome back to the second segment of the podcast. It's gonna be started in just a second here. I gotta get my bearings and think about what I was talking about, oh, you know, like three weeks ago when I recorded the first part of the podcast. Not to ruin the magic of podcasting for anyone out there, but in case you did not know, editing of podcasts,
00:33:36
Speaker
with the fantastic software available to one these days does make it possible to record different parts of the podcast at different times.
00:33:46
Speaker
And yeah, so this sort of happened to happen to me since I've given birth that I, you know, finished recording a session and something comes up or I got to put the baby to sleep or something. I don't know. As you could tell last, he was getting a little antsy. And then I put the, you know, I turned the computer off and I just kind of don't get back to it for a little while. So
00:34:15
Speaker
in the interim period since I finished the last segment, I know I had said in the middle of it that I wasn't going to talk about Vikings or the Viking settlement of North America on this podcast. Well, I lied because in the time in between recordings, I thought, hey, that'd be a perfect thing to talk about.
00:34:33
Speaker
So that's what we're talking about. I figured, why not? We talked about the Spanish colonial period and the American southeast. Why not talk about the early exploration of the North American continent, the northeastern part?
00:34:52
Speaker
uh by
Viking Exploration of North America
00:34:53
Speaker
the Norse um because I think it's only fair to give them their due seeing as it is proven pretty much beyond a shadow of a doubt at this point that it was not actually the Spanish who discovered America or North America
00:35:11
Speaker
Spoiler alert, Columbus was not the first European to set foot on the North American continent or Latin American land or any, you know, just any part of the Americas. The North speeded him to it by a long ass time.
00:35:33
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's only right to give them their moment in the sun. So I'm just going to give you guys a little rundown of the north settlement of North America. And we'll talk about the archaeology that is connected to that and basically what gives us our knowledge of these happenings and what the recent news is regarding archaeology of Viking settlement on the North American coast.
00:36:03
Speaker
So let's get started and learn a little bit about how we know all this stuff about the Norse. Vikings are always exciting. So yeah, let's talk about some Viking stuff. It's going to be badass. So we know a lot of the information we do about Viking exploration because of the Norse sagas. Many of these come from the times
00:36:28
Speaker
When they were settled in Iceland, they had a pretty booming settlement going in Iceland. And so the Icelandic sagas were written about a lot of their adventures out in the North Atlantic.
00:36:40
Speaker
And so many of these tell tales of the exploration and settlement of Greenland, specifically, and Iceland, obviously. But when they moved away from Iceland, they started exploring and they found Greenland, starting around 980 AD, or CE, depending on which system you like to use. And they did all their exploration west.
00:37:04
Speaker
of Iceland from that base. Obviously they came to Iceland from Northern Europe, from the lands of Norway where the Norse came from, but also there's a sort of conglomeration of Scandinavian areas, also including Sweden and Denmark and
00:37:24
Speaker
this stuff that kind of all contributed to the Scandinavian culture that is also sort of identified along with a lot of this Norse stuff. So it has also influences from places outside of Norway itself. But for all intents and purposes, when I say Vikings, I mean Norse from around the area of Norway. So
00:37:46
Speaker
Yes, they came to Iceland from their base in North America. They had been exploring the coasts of northern Europe for a very long time. We have a long history of settlement and exploration by the Norse in especially the UK and the northern coast of mainland Europe in
00:38:07
Speaker
obviously Denmark, France, those type of areas and then of course we have Ireland, Scotland and England which have tons and tons of evidence of Norse travel, occupation, raiding, that type of thing and so yeah the Norse history is thick in the UK and from the UK they spread out to Iceland
00:38:31
Speaker
which was a pretty big hop, pretty exciting. So obviously the Norse are people who are really adept at seafaring. Their ship building is world-renowned for its ingenuity for the time period and so this allowed them to travel further through the Atlantic Ocean than anyone had ever done before them.
00:38:55
Speaker
So they ended up in Iceland. Hey, hanging in Iceland. Pretty cool place, full of glaciers and epic and all this stuff. Right. And so they're like, oh, this is pretty cool. But unfortunately, we don't have a lot of resources on Iceland. So we're going to need to keep going until we find some. So this is when they started exploring west of Iceland and they find the Greenland
00:39:21
Speaker
area around 980. So the main figure associated with the discovery of Greenland is Erik the Red, and he is this big boobing figure in the tales and the sagas. So he explores the coast of Greenland for several years during a period of time when he's actually banished from Iceland. Oops, Erik was a bad boy. But it led to the discovery of, you know, a
00:39:48
Speaker
a really big island. So that was cool, I guess. Good for you, Erik the Red. So the Greenland colony was actually relatively small. It was largely spread out after that point into two main areas of settlement. And so there was a decent population of Norse on Greenland, but it wasn't huge. So when I talk about settling, it's not like
00:40:13
Speaker
It's in between what we think of now as a population taking over this huge swath of land and peopling it all around. That's not exactly what happened. But it wasn't also like 20 guys in a hut or two sitting on the coast fishing for two years.
00:40:32
Speaker
Not exactly where we're talking about either. It's in between. So there's a couple thousand people living in between these two kind of areas where they settled and they pretty much stuck to those type of places. And so there's been archaeology on Greenland ongoing for a long time in these areas and it's actually used
00:40:51
Speaker
to supplement and support the written accounts of their time in Greenland and both of them show that this Viking presence in Greenland extends from basically the 10th century up until the 15th century when Norse culture starts to decline and then eventually it just kind of disappears from the shores of Greenland. It was good while it lasted.
00:41:17
Speaker
And so from Greenland, they eventually, of course, kept going west until they found, ta-da, North America, because it's not really that far, people. And I'm just going to say this now. For some reason, people get kind of suspicious or squirrely sometimes when you talk about the Vikings discovering America.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I don't know why this is. It's kind of weird. I think some people only consider the settlements on the North American coast literally, like the Canadian coast, to be evidence of anyone discovering America.
00:41:55
Speaker
which technically it is, but you know, Lanza Meadows is a pretty well established site, archaeological site, so that for one is kind of like, okay well we have the evidence, but also the north settlement of Greenland is a really well documented thing, like we really know that it happened and it happened for a long time. We have written archaeological evidence
00:42:18
Speaker
And it's not like people in mainland Europe didn't know that this was happening. The Norse settlement of Greenland and Iceland was known especially well by the church at the time because that was part of the church's grand effort.
00:42:34
Speaker
to spread Christianity to the world. And so part of that was through the Norse colonies because the church sent emissaries with them and they wanted the Norse to spread, you know, Christianity. So they knew that they were taking it out to the lands west of Europe, to Iceland and Greenland. It's just like it's not a question that this happened. It happened for a long time.
00:43:02
Speaker
And their colony on Greenland was basically like done before Christopher Columbus even left for the Americas. So are the West Indies technically. So yeah, no, no, that's right. That's a weird soapbox thing of mine. But just there's no reason to be weird about the Norse discovering America because they did.
00:43:23
Speaker
until we find any evidence that proves that someone else did it before them, then it's like, just accept it, because all of the evidence is there. So anyway, that's my thing. And I just don't understand why people don't count Greenland sort of as part of this discovering of America. I know it's not technically America, but it's pretty damn close. So, okay.
00:43:52
Speaker
So moving on, let's see, okay, so yes, the North spread out from Greenland around basically not too long after they settled Greenland, and they started to look further west, I'll explain that later, and like I said earlier,
00:44:07
Speaker
It's speculated that a large part of their need to explore further west was for resources and most specifically for wood because Greenland and Iceland are pretty barren landscapes. There's not a lot of really easily forested area there and so this is probably what brings the Norse to North America.
00:44:30
Speaker
for the vast supply of wood and trees with which to take back to Greenland and Iceland and to build for the colonies and the general settlement and goodness of all things Norse.
00:44:44
Speaker
So if you're wondering how we're able to sort of track where the Vikings were if we don't have a lot of archaeological sites because they didn't actually settle many areas of the northeastern coast of Canada, or at least nothing that was sticking because we did not have any long-term settlements,
00:45:08
Speaker
on the northeastern coast. We also track them through, around the globe actually, through their extensive trade networks. Vikings are extremely well known for trade. So it's not only what Viking artifacts are found around the world, but what items from other cultures are found at Viking settlements.
00:45:25
Speaker
And you sort of trace this back and forth and through all of this we kind of get a really cool map of who the Vikings were interacting with and where those people went off to after they had traded with the Norse. And so where all of those Viking artifacts end up and also where all of the artifacts that the Vikings had came from to get there.
00:45:48
Speaker
So this kind of gives us a little map of all the different places that they went. We do know that they traveled extensively in mainland Europe and the UK. They traveled actually quite far south in mainland Europe, much more south than you would have ever
00:46:04
Speaker
ever thought. And we've got recently, oh my gosh, I know there is recently a discovery of an Egyptian jewel that was found in a Viking settlement. We know we have evidence even in Western Asia of Viking items and things from that type of area being taken by the Vikings back to the Northern Europe. So yeah, they just have this huge imprint
00:46:32
Speaker
in culture around the known world at the time, which is so cool. And so this also extends to North America, which is one of the most exciting things that we study about the Vikings in North America is their interactions with the indigenous peoples that they encountered.
00:46:52
Speaker
So because we have a pretty good idea when we see an artifact in the Native American settlement in the northeast of Canada or in the Arctic or something like that, of what their cultural materials look like when we see something that's Viking or that's not their cultural material, it's pretty exciting to be able to place that among the materials used or made by the Norse at that time period because that gives us a connection there.
00:47:22
Speaker
And so, we know that the Norse traded with several different indigenous groups from Greenland and the Canadian coastal regions, and they called these people the Skralings. Yes, it's a very famous term. We've now identified several different groups that that term applied to early on in their contact that include the Dorset, the Tuul, the Inu, and the Beethuk peoples.
00:47:48
Speaker
But apparently the term was used more broadly in the early years of their settlement, but later on the term was applied more exclusively to only the tool who are now associated with the early Inuit peoples.
00:48:04
Speaker
So we've got materials going back and forth with these folk and we've also got tales in the Norse sagas about their interactions with them and then we also have folk tales told by the indigenous groups about their interactions with
00:48:20
Speaker
the Norse from this period. So there's a pretty cool trail here of both material and both written and oral tradition, which is pretty neat to follow. Anyway, so the
00:48:36
Speaker
Tale of the Norse first discovering North America. At this point, it's basically considered to be that the first sighting of North America took place either in 985 or 986 when a guy from Iceland named Bjarne Harriafsson
00:48:56
Speaker
by Barney. Barney Herfelsen we'll call him. So he was trying to make it to Greenland from Iceland but he drifted off course on his way and so he saw land and he said, hey that doesn't look like Greenland. I must be somewhere else.
00:49:16
Speaker
And so he stopped to check it out and then he headed back. So that was the very first time that it's ever recorded that the Norse saw this new land. And then it wasn't really until the exploration of Leif Erikson that the Norse tried to settle any of the lands in this new area.
00:49:36
Speaker
And if you were wondering, and I just put this together, yes, Leif Erikson is the son of Eric the Red, whom we spoke of earlier. Yes, he is. His last name literally is Eric's son. So yeah, I'm not sure how I missed that. But I'm smart, so I put that one together pretty quick. But yeah, so exploration was a family tradition. It's very exciting.
00:50:02
Speaker
Very exciting for them. And then Leif gets all the credit, but after his attempt to settle the Canadian coast, he actually sent his brother back to do more settling. So
L'Anse aux Meadows and Viking Presence
00:50:14
Speaker
it's a whole family thing. This family, it's like the first family of North American discovery. So Leif was sailing around the Canadian coast to go back and explore this area after the preliminary reports on it.
00:50:29
Speaker
And so he identifies three distinct regions on this new land, which he calls Hellaland, Markland, and Vinland, which we think correlate to around the Baffin Island, Labrador Coast, and Newfoundland areas. And on the northern tip of Newfoundland, he supposedly established
00:50:47
Speaker
the first colony, which we believe to be the archaeological site of Lance O'Meadows that was founded around 1000 CE. Or so we'd like to believe at least. There isn't like any, Lee Faragson was here graffiti or anything like that. So it's just speculation that he was actually there, but it's also the lack of other contemporary archaeological sites on the coast, which sort of leads us to that common assumption.
00:51:15
Speaker
And the name of the site, obviously that's not what the Norse called it, but anyway, the first time it's referred to, the name of the site, L'Anse au Meadows, I think was originally recorded as Anse à la Medée in French, which is actually referring to the Greek figure of Medea. So it was probably called Medea's Cove originally, but it was anglicized to L'Anse au Meadows to reflect the lovely meadows that you find throughout the region.
00:51:44
Speaker
So that's how the name came to be, although there is another theory that it also could mean jellyfish cove. But, you know, I'm going with Medea because I think that sounds pretty cool.
00:51:58
Speaker
So anyway, the archaeological site was discovered in 1960 by two Norwegian researchers and husband and wife, Helga Instad and Anne Stein Instad. And they sort of based their exploration and search for Viking settlements on where they believed the Norse description of Vinland was describing and where it would be most likely to find these settlements on the eastern coast.
00:52:24
Speaker
And so, yes, they got very lucky and someone from the local community sort of pointed out this possible site. They thought it was a North Native American mounds, but when they went to investigate, they found out that the mounds were not Native American. They were actually
00:52:42
Speaker
biking buildings and so they excavated for a long time this is you know have been ongoing there since 1960 our research and so yeah the camp was kind of confirmed based on correlation between the type of buildings and artifacts found there to what you find at the north settlements in Greenland and Iceland at the exact same time
00:53:06
Speaker
And so, yeah, they've got Viking halls, a couple different Viking halls, and then there's huts where they had different activities going on, like they were working on their ships, they were working on doing ironworking, they were weaving, doing all this different type of stuff.
00:53:22
Speaker
and so the settlement is probably dated to somewhere between 989 and about 1020 CE and obviously it didn't last this didn't become like the huge Viking American settlement from which where from where they took over North America but it was settled and lived in for a little while so hey that's pretty exciting.
00:53:45
Speaker
And so that's Lancel Meadows. There are other spots on the North American coast, the Canadian coast, where we have investigated what may or may not be Viking posts or sites of some sort, but it's kind of
00:54:02
Speaker
tough in some instances because we also have Native American sites or First Nation sites where we have Viking artifacts that have come through trade, but sometimes we find those artifacts and it's also possible that there is some sort of Viking site there, but it might not always be as obvious as Lanza Meadows because it was not a full blown settlement.
00:54:28
Speaker
Anyway, this is the type of ongoing excavation and research and exploration that's still going on on the northeastern coast right now, trying to pin down more evidence of Vikings in North America. And excitingly, there is a new story in the news right now about a new Viking outpost on Baffin Island that we believe now probably has enough evidence to be identified for sure as Viking Post.
00:55:00
Speaker
So this is pretty exciting news. It doesn't look like it was a huge settlement. It doesn't look like it was long-lasting. But it was probably just an outpost of some sort that was inhabited briefly by the Vikings during this period.
00:55:15
Speaker
And so
Future Discoveries and Podcasting Plans
00:55:16
Speaker
that's cool. I believe it's kind of being tied down to the Vikings due to the type of artifacts they're finding. I know they're finding wet stones where they were working on tools by wearing them through on the stones. And there's traces of the metals that the Vikings were using at the time on the stones. So there's copper, bronze, and that's the type of thing that Viking metalsmiths would be using, not
00:55:44
Speaker
Native Arctic inhabitants. And so that's one thing. And then there's also one of these things that have been found in these other type of sites and on the Baffin Island site is
00:56:01
Speaker
a very distinct form of basically Viking cordage or yarn, like a very thick yarn, something that was not really being made by the native inhabitants but was being made by the Vikings and it's pretty amazing that it survives but we found this yarn in several places and so this seems to be also pointing to the Vikings being at this location on Baffin Island
00:56:26
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's kind of exciting. There's going to be ongoing excavations there, and we will keep up to see what all of that turns out. Yes, that is basically all I wanted to talk about the Vikings today. I will include the link to a National Geographic article on that news site in the blog post for this, and it will also be on the APN.
00:56:53
Speaker
So you can look into that. And I also posted the link to it on my Facebook page. So yeah, I mean, obviously I could go on and on about the L'Anse aux Meadows site and tell you some more in-depth stuff about the archaeology there. If you're interested in that, let me know on the post when I put this on Facebook or the blog or the APN or wherever, if you'd like some more details on it. And I can actually do a separate blog post all about the L'Anse aux Meadows archaeology site.
00:57:20
Speaker
archaeological site, sorry. But this podcast is already an hour long, so I think it's time to wind down. And I hope you enjoyed that very fun, exciting, and very fast-paced trip through the history of Viking exploration on the northeastern coast. Yes!
00:57:39
Speaker
So there you have it, the Vikings who actually discovered America and the Spanish who kept on keeping on like the little engine who could until they got that settlement started up in Pensacola Bay and were immediately thwarted by Mother Nature and the terrible hurricane that sank most of their ships and doomed their attempts to settle on the North American continent.
00:58:07
Speaker
So, but then again, they also went on to do other wonderful things for America, not just for our history, but for the history of the many peoples of the North American continents, North American and South American and Central American areas. And so yay for the Spanish and yay for those Vikings. They did a heck of a lot to, yeah, to get America going.
00:58:37
Speaker
sort of, not I guess really, but kind of, sure. I speak well sometimes. Sorry guys, I'm a little sleep deprived these days if you couldn't tell. And so that's why I am going to get out of here and stop mumbling about things in your ear.
00:59:00
Speaker
But I thank you very much for sticking along with me on this ride and for tuning into this podcast. It's been really fun to record in the few moments I've been able to slip away or get the kid to shut his trap for long enough so I could record it.
00:59:18
Speaker
And I will hopefully be coming back with another podcast very soon for you, and I will also be putting up my review and discussion on YouTube of the Red Pyramid for you from the Struggling Archaeologist Book Club very soon. So I hope everyone has been enjoying the second book in the series, The Throne of Fire, and I will be back to talk about my review on the next podcast of that book.
00:59:46
Speaker
So this
Conclusion and Sign-off
00:59:47
Speaker
is Jenny from the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Gendry saying goodbye. Thank you so much for coming and we will catch up with you next time. Be good. Be explorative. Be something else. And that's it. Bye bye.
01:00:27
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com