ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE WORLD AROUND US An Interview with Bill Burger by Hermann Trappman
There are cultures which celebrate their creative people. Japan has an honored status for its best artists. They are considered national treasures. Although American popular thought often covers them in mystique, many of our most creative people are left on the periphery of mainstream society. I have a friend who tells me that suffering is part of the creative process. It’s just an old German paradigm of strum and drang. The notion of genius is a dangerous pedestal which all to often leads to grim frustration. Instead, I think, it’s more appropriate to celebrate diversity and appreciate its flavor as part of our cultural experience. Sameness leads toward a tasteless quality which reduces the individual to a valueless commodity. “Anyone can be replaced,” is the attitude which sees no mountain vistas with dazzling sunsets, which doesn’t recognize the wonder of an extraodinary musician, which can’t thrill at the abilities of a special sports figure. Florida has some of the most fabulous talent that you could ever want. Often they are hidden in the sound of the local background. I’d like to bring these wonderful people to you in this and future issues. Bill Burger is an archaeologist on Florida’s Central West Coast. For me, Bill is an expression of personal vision, a celebration of our connection with an ancient past, a dance in the art of this fleeting moment. I think that you experience Bill. I hope that comes out in the interview which follows. We met for the interview at Terra Ceia Island in the Women’s Village Improvement Association Hall which had been built in 1907. The Women’s Village Improvement Association was the first womens group incorporated in the State of Florida.
Hermann: Bill, what sparked your interest in archaeology? Bill: Archaeology and paleontology were kind of lumped together as an interest in the past. I think that, like a lot of kids of today, I was into dinosaurs. In both Michigan and Florida, I had the opportunity to collect fossils. In Michigan we lived on a hill. The side of the hill was a gravel pit, and so, a lot of fossils came out of there. Down here, my father had purchased property in Bishop Harbor, which he developed. He did a lot of dredge and fill. That of course exposed a lot of fossil material. And there was a scattering of archaeological mate-
rial too. You know, a few projectile points every now and then. My parents probably would not like to recount how many tons of rocks they transported back and forth. Hermann: Any brothers or sisters? Bill: I’m the youngest of five. I have two brothers and two sisters. My closest brother and I pretty much grew up together. That’s closest in age. We were in Bishop Harbor when the last of the mosquito ditches were cut in Manatee County, and so we had the opportunity to search the spoil piles when they were fresh. It was amazing the amount of shark teeth and horse teeth that came out of there. And of course, when you’re little like that, you kind of have a vacuum cleaner mentality, picking up every fragment. Now I share those fragments with kids who are just starting their interest. Hermann: How did you develop that interest into a lifetime work? Bill: After high school, I went to New College in Sarasota. At that time there were no anthropologists on faculty. So, I settled on environmental studies. As you may know, New College is based on self-directed teaching and so I actually did a lot of archaeology, but stressing the environmental side of things. It’s reflected in my present work, interest in environmental archaeology. That’s what I’m really all about. Hermann: Where did you go for your masters? Bill: From there I went on to USF, applied anthropology, public archaeology. Hermann: What kinds of discoveries are most meaningful for you? Bill: I did my internship with the Planning Development department of Manatee County. I was one of the first in USF to be involved with computer archaeology. There were five or six of us in class. Under Dr. Grange the idea came to crunch all the environmental data from the master site files. We were looking for patterns, distance to water, soil types, to develop modeling. I find the interactions between human beings and their environment most interesting. Shellfish record in their structure so much information about the past. We see patterns of growth in the shells and the otoliths, earbones of catfish. They put on regular growth additions each season. With modern technology, we can actually do research on a single layer. Hermann: Looking at places which are washed out of coastal middens (piles of refuse left by ancient people) by wave action, it seems to me that I have seen a pattern on harvesting large quantities of certain shellfish. Some of these shellfish are lacking from our present waters. Bill: There are deposits on some of the sites on Snead Island which are entirely made up of them (Fighting Conch). Most of the shells are whole and suggest to me that they were steamed to remove the animal. Many of the shells look brand new. It’s amazing. The only Strombs I’ve seen over the years have been a couple at the north end of Anna Maria Island, and a couple off of Rattlesnake Key, which is just off Terra Ceia. Rattlesnake Key forms the mouth of Terra Ceia Bay. In both locations there is good flushing and high salinity which may account for them (Fighting Conch). Although, I’ve never had occasion to try one, perhaps they taste like the bigger Strombus (Conch) of Key West that they crack and fry up which is great. I wonder if they require as pristine water conditions as scallops do for reproduction? That’s basically why we don’t have scallops any more, is because of water quality. Hermann: You have a special way of expressing your love of the subject. It’s not common within the academic community to portray one of their subject peoples. What got you started in that direction? Bill: Actually it was a woman. Many many years before I came to Terra Ceia, it was the custom of a number of the older women of the Village Improvement Association to give a talking tour at the Bickel Mound
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here on Terra Ceia, which was the States first archaeological monument, established in 1949. They had their annual turkey dinner, here in the hall, which was the major annual fund raiser for the organization. It would raise maybe twelve hundred dollars. As time went on the ladies grew older and began to die off. Not long after I moved to Terra Ceia, I had occasion to go over. Believe it or not, I was very polite. But, it came to the point where there were none of them left. It was a tradition here that I wanted to carry on. So, I took on the role. What I did initially was a talking tour, show and tell with some artifacts, and so forth. After doing that for a few years, my then lady friend, suggested that we should dress up like Indians. The more I thought about it, the more interesting it seemed. Hermann: Is it fun meeting people when you do a program? Bill: It certainly attracts attention. In the first year we had a newspaper reporter out here, and of course, their desire is to get
the reaction from the general public. He was talking to a couple of visiting women and he asked them, “Are you interested in the story of history? Why do you come to this?” “Oh, we just like to see the halfnaked men,” was their response. As long as they’re listening, I don’t mind. I’ve found it to be an extremely effective educational tool and it’s fun. Catch the attention of the kids, it’s not the boring da-da-da, they really get involved. It is an alternative approach to education to really get kids interested in history. Hermann: Why should they be interested? Bill: It kinda’ sounds hackneyed, but, we always allude to George Santayana’s line, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And, there are many things we can learn. You learn that resources are finite and that the resource information locked in ancient sites is rare and precious too. It brings a real perspective to your life, something that you can judge your personal sense of humanity against. It makes you understand the need for protection and preservation. •
Taken at the Snead Island Site, Bill Burger is flanked by Gale Klein and Frank Bizzone. They portray the native people who would have met the first European expeditions landing on these shores. Bill’s perspective comes from his love and his scientific training as an environmental archaeologist. His portrayal is based on evidence carefully taken from the earth. Although we may never truly know how the native people here lived, we should never forget the gift of heritage they gave to our beginnings and the understanding of the landscape they still offer. •
Fighting Conch (Strombus pugilus)
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