Michael K. Faught

Michael K. Faught is a prehistoric archaeologist specializing in the human use of the continental shelf of North America, particularly as it relates to the colonization of the Americas in the late Pleistocene. He is currently the Senior Maritime Archaeologist for Panamerican Consultants, Inc. as well as a board member and the Treasurer for the Archaeological Research Cooperative, a not-for-profit corporation. His professional expertise include predictive modelling for submerged prehistoric sites, methods of underwater site survey and excavation, side scan and sub-bottom profile remote sensing, chipped stone analysis, and projectile point typology.
Introduction
Starting even in his days as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, Faught’s focus has been on early occupation in the lower Southeast and Florida. He completed his doctorate at the University of Arizona in 1996 with his dissertation, Clovis Origins and Underwater Prehistoric Archaeology in Northwestern Florida, which focused on the origins of the Clovis people in Florida, specifically in the Northwestern section of the state specifically in the area around the Apalachee Bay and the Aucilla River. He has also conducted field work in Arizona which included a mission site as well as some pueblo and desert sites. His research is centered on delimiting where Clovis occupation began in the Florida area, in the interior or on the continental shelf and worked their way inland. Since the late 1990s, Faught has been very involved with the PaleoAucilla Prehistory Project which is an educational and multi-disciplinary scientific research offshore site in portions of the Aucilla that are now submerged on the continental shelf. He is a specialist in maritime or underwater archaeology. Over the past several years, starting back in the 1990s, he has conducted many underwater surveys of the Aucilla River area through underwater archaeology documenting evidence for early occupations. Flooding caused by melting ice caps has submerged much of the continental shelf, and his research has shown that there are important prehistoric sites are now covered by the Gulf of Mexico. About nine miles off the north coast of Florida, while excavating in Apalachee Bay, Faught and his team discovered a Suwannee spear point that was likely made some 12,000 years ago, the oldest artifact ever discovered on the Gulf continental shelf by trained archaeologists. The artifact is thought to have been made by direct descendants of the Clovis peoples.
Not only does Faught specialize in the early Floridian cultures, but he is also very involved with an on-line database called the Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA ). This is a database that compiles records of all Paleo-Indian projectile points collected in North America. Currently he, along with fellow archaeologist Dr. David G. Anderson of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, serve as founding directors of this project.
Background
Faught received his BA in Anthropology along with a minor in Geology in 1978 from the University of Arizona. He graduated with University Honors and was a member Phi Beta Kappa. He received his master’s degree in Anthropology in 1989 from the University of Arizona, Tucson, as well as his Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1996 from the University of Arizona, Tucson with his dissertation being the Clovis Origins and Underwater Prehistoric Archaeology in Northwestern Florida. Throughout his career, Faught has conducted field work and led field projects in many locations in Florida as well as projects in Arizona and Puerto Rico.
Employment History
While an undergraduate student in 1976, Faught worked as an archaeologist and staff photographer at Fundacion de Historia, Antropologia e Archaeologia de Puerto Rico. In 1978 he was on staff for the University of Arizona Field School at Grasshopper as well as being on staff at the Arizona State Museum in various cultural resource management projects; participated in artifact processing, soil flotation, and pollen extraction. He was an archaeologist at Tumacacori National Park where the Spanish Colonial Mission excavations were being conducted in 1980. Also, Faught was a self-employed illustrator and photographer from 1980 to 1986. He was then named the Chief Archaeologist of "Project Origins," which was a project designed to involve people with physical and mental handicaps in serious archaeological research projects. This was sponsored by the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona from 1987 until 1991. He was an Underwater Archaeologist at the Page Ladson Paleoindian Site at Aucilla River in Northwestern Florida from 1987 to 1989, a civil draftsman for Tucson Water in the city of Tucson. Then he was a Co-Principal Investigator of underwater archaeological survey at Fanning Springs in Levy County, Florida for Southeastern Archaeology, Inc. in 1996. He served as the underwater archaeology field director of the Aucilla River Prehistory Project in Jefferson County, Florida in 1995, a Project Director at Desert Archaeology, Inc in Tucson, Arizona, CRM from 1991 until 1996, and the Project Director at Old Pueblo Archaeology Center in Tucson, Arizona, in 1994. From 1999 through 2004 he was a principal investigator on both the PaleoAucilla Prehistory Project and the Dog and Shipwreck Survey, the underwater archaeologist at the Santa Fe River Survey for the Florida Department of State which is a part of the Bureau of Archaeological Research in 1997, the underwater archaeology Director at Bay County Shipwreck Survey for the Bureau of Archaeological Research in Panama City, Florida from 1996-1997. From 1997-2004 he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University. He is currently the Senior Maritime Archaeologist for Panamerican Consultants, Inc. where he started in 2004.
Key Excavations
Faught has excavated several important sites in his career including at Tumacacori National Park, Spanish Colonial Mission excavations (1980). He’s also worked on the Page-Ladson Paleoindian Site on the Aucilla River in Northwestern Florida (1987-89). Faught was the underwater archaeology Field Director of the Aucilla River Prehistory Project, located in Jefferson County, FL (1995). He also led projects at the Fanning Springs and the Bay County Shipwreck sites (1996-97). Most recently he worked on the PaleoAucilla Prehistory Project and was the Principle Investigator on the Dog and St. George Islands Shipwreck Survey (1999-2004).
Selected Books & Monographs
* Archaeological Testing, Limited Data Recovery and an "In Place" Site Preservation Plan for the Madera Reserve Development in Green Valley, Pima County, Arizona.(Faught, Michael K). 1995. Archaeological Report No. 2 Old Pueblo Archaeological Center, Tucson Arizona (Series No. 94-2) (100 pp)
* Beneath the Streets: Prehistoric, Spanish, and American Period Archaeology in Downtown Tucson. (Thiel, Homer, Michael K. Faught, and James Bayman). 1991 Center for Desert Archaeology Technical Report No. 94-11 (309 pp)
Selected Papers
* Faught, Michael K. 2008. Archaeological Roots of Human Diversity in The New World: A Compilation of Accurate and Precise Radiocarbon Ages from Earliest Sites. In Press, American Antiquity, Volume 3 Number 4
* Faught, Michael K. 2006 Paleoindian Archaeology in Florida and Panama: Two Circum-Gulf Regions Exhibiting Wasted Lanceolate Projectile Points. Ice Age Occupations of the Americas: A Hemispheric Perspective, J. Morrow, and C. Gnecco editors, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp 164-183.
* Anderson, David G., D. Shane Miller, Stephen J. Yerka, and Michael K. Faught. 2005, Paleoindian Database of the Americas: 2005 Status Report. Current Research in the Pleistocene, 22:91-92
* Faught, Michael K. 2004. The Underwater Archaeology of Paleolandscapes, Apalachee Bay, Florida. American Antiquity. Volume 69, Number 2:235-249
* Faught, Michael K., Michael Hornum, Brinnen Carter, R. Christopher Goodwin, S. David Webb. 2003. Earliest Holocene Tool Assemblages from Northern Florida with Stratigraphically Controlled Radiocarbon Estimates (Sites 8LE2105 and 8JE591) Current Research in the Pleistocene, 20:16-18.
* Marks, Brian S. and Michael K. Faught. 2003. Ontolo (8JE1577): Another Early Prehistoric Site Submerged on the Continental Shelf of NW Florida. Current Research in the Pleistocene 20:49-51
* Faught, Michael K. 2002/2004. Submerged Paleoindian and Archaic Sites of the Big Bend, Florida. Journal of Field Archaeology Volume 29, No. 3:273-290.
* Anderson, David G. and Michael K. Faught. 2000. Paleoindian Artifact Distributions: Evidence and Implications. Antiquity 74:507-513
* Anderson, David G. and Michael K. Faught. 1998. Distribution of Fluted Paleoindian Projectile Points: Update 1998. Archaeology of Eastern North America 26:163-187
* Faught, Michael K. and Brinnen Carter. 1998. Early Human Occupation and Environmental Change in Northwestern Florida. In As the World Warmed: Human Adaptations Across the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary, edited by Berit Eriksen and Lawrence G. Straus Quaternary International Volume 49/50:167-176
* Faught, Michael K. and Joseph F. Donoghue. 1997. Marine Inundated Archaeological Sites and Paleofluvial Systems: Examples from a Karst Controlled Continental Shelf Setting in the Apalachee Bay, Northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Geoarchaeology 12 (5): 417-458
* Faught, Michael K., David G. Anderson and A.Gisiger. 1994. North American Paleoindian Database—An Update. Current Research in the Pleistocene 10, pp 32-35
* Dunbar J.S., D. Webb, and Michael K. Faught, 1992 Inundated Prehistoric Sites in Apalachee Bay, Florida, and the Search for the Clovis Shoreline. In Paleo-Shorelines and Prehistory: An Investigation of Method, edited by L. Johnson and M. Stright, Telford Press, pp 117-146.
* Faught, Michael K., James S. Dunbar, and S. David Webb. 1992. New evidence for Paleoindians on the Continental Shelf of Northwestern Florida. Current Research in the Pleistocene, Volume 9, pp 11-12
* Faught, Michael K. 1988. Underwater Archaeological Sites in the Apalachee Bay of Florida, Florida Anthropologist 41(1) 185-190

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