For archaeologists accustomed to lifting broken fragments from the soil, the moment a small clay pot emerged completely intact raised an unexpected question: why would anyone deliberately leave behind a vessel that could still be used? That mystery is now becoming part of a much larger story about life, movement, and changing traditions at a centuries-old Indigenous village and Spanish mission in northern Florida.
The vessel was excavated earlier this year by students from the University of Florida while working at Mission San Francisco de Potano, a 17th-century site in northwest Gainesville. Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, the plain gray pot has a simple rim, no decoration, and remains fully intact despite spending centuries underground.
“It’s very unique. Typically, we find things that were broken and discarded,” said Gifford Waters, collections manager for historical archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “You don’t leave things behind that you can still use, so why was this purposefully put into a pit?”
Waters, whose work has also included collections from shipwreck sites where complete artifacts are more common, said this is the first time in his career that he has worked with a team that uncovered an intact pottery vessel from an archaeological excavation of this kind. Even when entire pots are discarded, centuries of underground pressure or disturbances caused by development and agriculture often break them long before archaeologists arrive.
A teaching excavation uncovering centuries of history
The discovery was made during a spring-semester field course led by Waters and Charles Cobb, curator of historical archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Every Friday, students learn archaeological field techniques while excavating the remains of Mission San Francisco de Potano.
Today, the wooded site contains a series of carefully excavated one-by-one-meter units where students remove soil layer by layer in search of evidence from the past. The excavation has revealed the remains of a 17th-century kitchen, the friar’s residence, and the surrounding Potano village.
The Potano, a group of the Timucua people in northern Florida, moved to the area in 1585 after Spanish forces pushed them from their earlier homeland, which was likely located between present-day Payne’s Prairie and Orange Lake. In 1606, a Spanish friar established a mission in the village as part of a broader network of Catholic missions that supported Spanish rule in Florida. Mission San Francisco de Potano remained active until it was abandoned in 1706, and evidence of the settlement did not begin resurfacing until artifacts were discovered during the 1950s.
At its height, the village was home to a few hundred Potano people, while the mission itself had only a single European resident—the friar.
The value of where an object is found
Since 2006, archaeologists and students have recovered more than 7,000 artifacts from the site. Most are fragments of Native American pottery, but excavations have also uncovered glass beads, stone tools, nails, and animal bones from meals that included turtle, freshwater fish, and turkey.
For Waters, the significance of these discoveries depends not only on the objects themselves but also on where they are found.
“What tells us the most is not just the artifacts but the evidence of activities. Knowing that we have a bunch of pieces of bone at the site is great, but the fact we know that nearly all of them came from one spot tells us it was a cooking area and trash pit,” Waters said. “It’s not just the artifacts themselves but where they were on the site, how they were distributed and what they were associated with that tells the story.”
That same principle shapes the interpretation of the intact pot.
Although the vessel itself yielded few direct clues, its location provides valuable context. It was recovered inside a Spanish-built structure whose purpose has not yet been determined.
Historical records indicate that a small garrison of soldiers was stationed at the mission after British raids against missions became more frequent during the early 1700s. Archaeologists consider it possible that the building served as barracks, a possibility supported by the discovery nearby of a gun’s rear sight and the side plate of a musket. Determining the building’s function, however, will require additional excavation.
A mystery that remains unsolved
Based on the pot’s depth and position within the site, archaeologists think it was likely made sometime during the century-long occupation of the mission.
Even so, the vessel raises several unanswered questions.
Its style is unfamiliar to the archaeological team, and its original purpose remains unknown.
Cooking vessels often preserve burned food residue and charcoal on their interior surfaces, but this pot lacks those traces. That suggests it was not placed directly over a fire for cooking. Even so, archaeologists think it may still have played a role during meals. The faint scorch marks visible on the vessel could have formed during the firing process when it was made, or they may have resulted from placing the pot near a fire to warm individual portions of food.
Artifacts recording changing traditions
Not long after the intact pot was uncovered, students found fragments of a much larger vessel with a very different appearance.
Unlike the smooth gray pot, this pottery had a rough surface and a composition that does not appear to match local pottery traditions.
Archaeologists suspect it may have reached the village through trade with communities in St. Augustine or present-day Jacksonville, or it may have been brought by someone who arrived carrying different pottery traditions.
Together, the artifacts point to a community where people, goods, and ideas moved across the landscape, leaving evidence that still survives beneath the ground.
“During the later years of this mission, folks from different parts of Florida and Native Americans from different areas moved into and around the site. It’s really neat to see these differences and connections in the artifacts,” Waters said. “It shows both the persistence and change of traditions over time.”
