3/16/26 Report - Early Florida Contact Period Sites and Artifacts. Religious Symbols on Shipwreck Artifacts. Surf Prediction Fade.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

Map Showing Early Contact Sites in Florida.
Source: See link below.

Here is a map showing where artifacts of early indigenous European contact sites.  It was published in a Florida Anthropological Society journal (line below).  The contents of the article is shown immediately below.

The types of artifacts at various sites for each site and period are described in the article.

Here is an excerpt just to give you an idea about what is in the article.

Here is the link so you can read the entire article.

The European and the Indian - UF Digital Collections

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Here are a few excerpts from a great article on some artifacts found on the Tortugas Wreck site.

It is Papal Plates & Propaganda on the Deep-Sea Tortugas Shipwreck, Florida (1622) by Sean Kingsley, Wreck Watch Int.

Why was such highly exalted, specific imagery painted onto Blue on White plates manufactured in Seville and why did they ultimately end up on a small merchant vessel returning from the Americas to Andalusia? Given the plates’ very specific religious iconography it seems reasonable to suggest that its owner did not simply buy the product over the counter in the open market, where it had been manufactured based on popular schemes found in a pattern book. These plates are more likely to have been commissioned specifically for the Church and conceivably for a very particular purpose. 

 When the crossed keys and triple crown are represented with a shield, the insignia is identifiable as the personal arms of the pope. When the emblem is depicted in isola tion it represents the papacy as an institution (Galbreath, 1930: 23). Since the arms of Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) – gules three bends silver retraits in chief – are not associated with the Tortugas plates, its design was clearly intended to signify the broader papal authority of the Catholic Church...

Here is the link for the entire article.

be6d77_456f80cc973a4d97befc700b2c92ea47.pdf

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Jensen Beach Monday Morning
 from the Jensen Beach Web Cam

You can see the slight south angle at the beach at Jensen as well as the dip between the beach and the bar.  

There are a lot of beachgoers.  Some things will be lost.

View of Fort Pierce South from the SurfGuru.com Web Cam.

This was earlier, but there were already people on the beach.

Surf Chart for the Fort Pierce Area from Surfguru.com.

Yesterday I said, The past couple of days I didn't take the predicted high surf too seriously.  Very often those kinds of predictions when made several days out eventually fade away.  This time the predicted high surf has been steady for three days now and has even become a little bigger - now up to nine feet.  It could still fade but be prepared.  It might happen.

I was surprised the eight or nine foot surf was holding.  Well, I was one day early on thinking the fade was not going to happen.  Today, it happened.  The surf chart is now showing nothing bigger than four feet - half of the peak predicte earlier.

That used to happen a lot.  They'd show a big surf out six or seven days, and then it would end up being much less.  That is what I came to expect, but they have improved on that.  They don't predict a disappearing big surf nearly as much as the used to, but it happened again this time.

Good hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net