This episode initially airedon August 28, 2023.
Found on the northern finish of Marco Island in 1896 throughout an expedition led by a famend archeologist named Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Key Marco Cat is taken into account a real gem — a as soon as in a lifetime, or extra, discover — found throughout the early days of the science of archeology. Just six inches tall and carved out of some form of hardwood, the Cat, and the various different objects that have been found alongside it, characterize probably the most complete and spectacular assortment of pre-Columbian Native American materials tradition ever found in Florida. The time period pre-Columbian refers to pre-European contact — so earlier than the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Over the 127 years which have handed since its discovery, the Key Marco Cat has been seen by tens of millions of individuals — largely on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. And it “has been admired, fought over, inspected, mounted, studied, transported, and handled by a century’s price of museum professionals.” That is a quote from our visitor’s guide, The Nine Lives of Florida’s Famous Key Marco Cat.
Austin J. Bell is curator of collections for the Marco Island Historical Society, and consulting scholar on the Penn Museum. He joins us to speak in regards to the Cat and its affect on the world round it — together with him — in addition to a Deer Figurehead that was found throughout that very same expedition again in 1896 that’s now on show alongside the Cat figurine on the Marco Island Historical Museum (MIHM).
The Key Marco Cat, on mortgage to the MIHM from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, is on exhibit at MIHM now by way of April 2026.
The Key Marco Deer, on mortgage from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum), is on exhibit now till June 2024.
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