Death by gunshot: Biocultural implications of trauma at Mission San Luis

Contrary to the popular myth known as the Black Legend, very little evidence of traumatic injury and death of Native Americans at the hands of Spaniards in the southeastern USA has been uncovered in the archaeological record. This paper reports on the circumstances of death of an individual from Mission San Luis de Talimali (AD 1656-1704), located in northern Florida. A determination of biological affinity of the victim is not possible based on currently available skeletal and contextual evidence. Presence of .44 calibre lead shot in the region of the lumbar vertebrae indicates that the individual probably died from a gunshot wound or complications that followed. To our knowledge, this is the only instance of death in this manner known from Spanish Florida. Bioarchaeological evidence indicates that death resulting from the use of firearms was apparently minimal in this region of colonial America, and other factors—including infectious disease, malnutrition, and forced relocation—were of far greater importance in explaining the precipitous decline and depopulation of native groups in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, at least in Spanish Florida.     

The character of creativity: Two traditions

Throughout Western history there have been two sharply differentiated beliefs about the character of creativity. However, one of these beliefs—Judaeo-Christian and neo-Platonic—has occupied such a dominant position that the very existence of the other has been obscured and ignored. Yet the evidence for this second belief is no less extensive or vivid. It has never been formulated in the same way as the first and so has never constituted a tradition as such; yet it has existed over as long a period of time and can therefore be called a tradition. Moreover, this second belief seems to bear a closer relation to the character of creativity displayed by people regarded as ‘creative’, as well as to what we have learnt about creativity in this century from psychologists. Attitudes to creativity in the modern period have generally been based on the first tradition, but the activities of creative people have borne out the validity of the second tradition. The attitudes, in other words, have been based on false expectations. To recover the lost tradition, therefore, may enable us to see more accurately what we may or may not achieve by being creative.