Cataloguing the Spanish Missions of La Florida

In 2016, with funding support from the National Endowment of the Humanities, we began a major collections analysis project, Cataloging the Franciscan Missions of La Florida. Based on a model developed by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) at Monticello, we are developing an online digital database of artifact and image collections related to the excavations of several Franciscan Mission sites conducted by the Florida Museum of Natural History. This site has gone live effective December of 2019 (https://cmap.floridamuseum.ufl.edu) and is formally known as the Comparative Mission Archaeology Portal (or CMAP, for short). Currently CMAP contains artifact and contextual data from three mission sites: Baptizing Spring (San Juan de Guacara), Fig Springs (San Martín de Guacara), and Fox Pond (San Francisco de Potano). Starting in 2020, we will be adding a fourth mission to CMAP, San Juan del Puerto, thanks to funding from the Save America’s Treasures Program. (funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities [PW234762] and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences Save America’s Treasures Program [ST-03018-0009-18]).