New College of Florida Archaeology Professor Awarded FHC/NEH Research Grant

Uzi Baram, professor of anthropology at New College of Florida, has received a $15,000 grant for a research project, “Tragedy and Survival: Bicentennial of the Southward Migration of Black Seminoles on the Florida Gulf Coast.”

Funding was provided through a grant from the Florida Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The “Tragedy and Survival” project stems from Baram’s successful public anthropology program “Looking for Angola,” which successfully identified traces of the 17th century Angola community of escaped slaves, known as maroons, near Manatee Mineral Springs.

Baram will work with Digital Heritage Consultants and a team of maroon scholars over the next fifteen months to develop digital reconstructions of the early 19^th-century maroon strongholds on the Florida Gulf Coast, along the Apalachicola and Manatee rivers, and then present the results at public forums.  The reconstructions will be presented to the public in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the destruction of the maroon fort on the Apalachicola River in July 1816, Baram said.