Interview with Bill Burger, M.A., RPA
Discipline: Archaeology
September 2005

Q: What is the significance of Angola, and what role does archaeology play in the search?
A: The story of Angola is not just significant to Florida history but our national history as well. Even international history. Archaeology's role in the search is to find physical evidence of what we're proposing occurred along the Manatee River.

Q: What can archaeology tell us about the lives of the pioneers who lived there?
A: You can tell a world of things about the daily lives of people - how they lived, how they adapted to their local environment.

Q: The remains of people found during the African Burial Grounds Project showed stress and the hard work the people were forced to endure. Archaeology revealed this. Do you agree?
A: Oh yes definitely. Such labor is reflected in the skeletons very clearly in a number of populations of the past. Similar studies have been done on American Indians who were enslaved prior to the introduction of slaves from Africa. So bones can exhibit this kind of information.

Q: How will archaeologists know when they have found the site? What types of artifacts will alert them to possible success?
A: Well, the definitive evidence as far as archaeological evidence of Angola will be an assemblage of materials that would include British trade ceramics and other materials; also trade materials from Cuba and quite likely some items that were made locally, that is to say ethnic materials that could be identified as African.

Q: Ethnic materials like what, for instance?
A: Well some years ago a wooden drum was found along the Little Manatee River that is clearly of an African design. It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that Blacks would have used local clays of which there are high quality deposits along the Manatee River to make their own ceramic pots, cooking pots. And insofar as some of these people were Africans, I mean first generation here, Africans, they might then have made pots in African style that would be identifiable as African.

Q: Are there specific research questions that the team hopes to answer through archaeology?
A: Primary research questions that we'd be addressing of course would be identifying an archaeological site as Black African fugitive. In addition, depending on the nature of the site, how they lived, how they adapted to their environment in this part of Florida after escaping from North Florida which was a very different sort of environment than down here around Tampa Bay. Again, how they lived their lives in freedom down in the Tampa Bay region.

Q: What are some of the challenges you have faced in the search so far?
A: I would say the chief challenges in this project have been the more than hundred years since the event we're trying to document. That is to say all the subsequent development that's occurred - housing, commercial development, roads, etc.- these developments have impacted the record wherever it is. We're still looking for it. It does make the search more difficult as well as what that development has done below ground: sewer pipes, water lines, power lines. It's much more difficult to do archaeological work in an urban context because of those hidden dangers that are underground.

Q: Are these the same challenges that lie ahead for continued archaeological investigations in the future?
A: Yes, these are the same challenges with an urban context. There are additional areas in East Bradenton that we'd like to intensively examine. These are areas around Tampa Bay not as developed which would be relatively more easy to examine, but again another factor in the project which has not been a problem to date would be getting the permission of private property owners to examine their property.

Many people have the mistaken idea that if something is found on their land then they can no longer develop it. Well this is untrue. But this prevalent fear is something that regularly has to be addressed when an archaeologist tries to get permission to dig on privately owned properties.

Q: I've heard you say in the lectures you dig a hole or holes on someone's property, but you fill them and the lawn does return to its normal state once it rains and the ground settles. You won't ruin the lawns of property owners?
A: Another aspect of working on private property is, it is non permanently damaging. Shortly after we've done our work you can't tell we've been there plus another aspect of this is whatever we find on a private property belongs to the private property owner. Typically, the evidence we find has no real intrinsic monetary value. The value is in the knowledge it represents. Bottom line what we find belongs to the property owner. And depending on what is found this can actually help to generate a sense of pride in the owner for the local history of a property and region regardless of the color of the private property owner.

Q: How do you think white property owners will feel about the Black Seminole story?
A: Times have certainly changed in terms of racial attitudes. Some people are more enlightened and some are not. And all individuals will have to be approached individually. Some people are intractable. Some people are more easily convinced of the value of the big picture, that the story is much more than just what you read in standard history books.

Q: What does the story of Angola have to teach us today?
A: The value of the Angola story is that it elaborates the important aspects of American history, the big picture, that are attributable to a racial minority. Blacks had a part in this country's history, more than "just slaves."

Further, this particular story has so many different levels besides the local, the regional and state; it also has aspects of national importance and international importance insofar as it directly relates to the War of 1812, which has been described by some as in fact the second American Revolution.

Q: What about the courage of the people? Does that touch you in any way?
A: Certainly having worked in many of the wild areas of Florida as an archaeologist I think I can appreciate more than many others the difficulties faced by people of whatever color going into an unknown, wild territory and managing to successfully exist and make a living out in the wilds.

Of course even more so when you do put color on the story and you reflect on the fact that these people were running away from slavery; they were, in my opinion, pretty regularly living with one eye looking over their shoulder since they were fugitives and always had to be mindful of the fact that they were repeatedly escaping from one danger to another. It was a remarkably difficult life, but successful for many of the fugitives in Central and South Florida.

Q: What else should our readers know about the archaeology of Angola?
A: I would just add the point that we are looking around Tampa Bay. We have some sites in particular but we don't have documentation that points us to a particular spot. And when we speak of Tampa Bay we really mean the west coastal area of Florida, inclusive of parts of Sarasota in all likelihood, so it's a large region. It's very likely to have very thin evidence impacted by 100 years of development which is increasing as we all know, particularly in this part of Florida. So it's a very challenging project but a very fascinating project which I think has great ramifications for the story of America.

Q: What if a developer's project unearthed something in Manatee in the area you're talking about and discovered something intriguing that looked like an artifact from the Angola Settlement. Wouldn't that be amazing? How likely is that?
A: To be honest, I think that's very unlikely because the evidence is very slim and not particularly noticeable to anyone without a trained eye. It would not be like the recent, accidental, fortuitous discovery of mammoth bones by a developer in West Bradenton where you have a 4 or 5 foot long thigh bone. It's pretty obvious when you find something like that. As far as the discovery of human remains, it's required that work stop and such remains be reported to police authorities. The medical examiner determines whether they are 50 years old or older. If they are older, then the state archaeologist comes in to investigate. But the bottom line is all human remains are protected under felony provisions of law no matter how old the bones are, what color the flesh was on the bones in life.

Q: Anything you'd like to add?
A: The discoveries that have been made along the Little Manatee River really have me interested in the Ruskin area, both the African drum and a curious metal spear point that I examined back in the 80's during the Desoto Trail project that was found by a resident along the Little Manatee River in Ruskin. The spear point was definitely not 16th century which was the subject of our work at that time looking for evidence of Fernando Desoto. Something more recent than that, something historical, something manufactured, a substantial metal spear point. There's still a puzzle.

Q: Where are they, the drum and the spearpoint?
A: The drum is in the collection at Gainesville, the Florida Museum of Natural History. The spearpoint is still in private hands. In doing the research I've done on early maps of Tampa Bay, it struck me that the Little Manatee River is really emphasized in many of these maps.

It's shown in quite exact detail as early as 1757 as opposed to the Manatee River, the Alafia, the Hillsborough, the other major rivers into Manatee. The Little Manatee sees this great amount of detail 7, 8 miles up its course inland, deep navitable water inland, with high banks going inland. These are different pieces to the puzzle. I think there's good potential there.

I'm sorry to say the likelihood here in Sarasota is probably less because of the impact of development. Also in John Lee Williams' book, he relates seeing ruined structures in an abandoned field which was very clearly Yellow Bluffs, right here in Sarasota, which is covered in condos. But in between the condos is a little green space. I'd still be able to put in a couple of holes here and there.