Click to watch the documentary. Photo courtesy of WFSU-TV.
With an extensive background in anthropology and underwater archaeology, exploring the world of filmmaking was new territory for Dr. Morgan Smith.
That changed when Smith stepped into the role of co-producer for a feature-length documentary, “Finding the First Floridians,” which aired in December 2024 on WFSU-TV—a PBS affiliate in Florida.
“The PBS documentary was a really fun project,” said Smith, a UC Foundation associate professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and director of the Geoarchaeology and Submerged Landscapes Lab. “About a year and a half ago, a buddy and I were having a conversation and we were like, ‘There are so few of us who do submerged landscape archaeology compared to shipwreck archaeology.’
“It doesn’t really come to mind; it’s not really taught in schools. There’s just nothing really out there highlighting it.”
Submerged landscape archaeology may sound like a mouthful, but it is really just the study of underwater archaeological sites—which is useful for understanding the people and societies that came before us.
For the project, Smith reconnected with Rob Diaz de Villegas, the author of the WFSU ecology blog in Tallahassee, Florida, with whom he had first worked during his dissertation in 2015. With Diaz de Villegas’ help, they were able to receive funding from the Florida Division of Historical Resources.
Dr. Morgan Smith is the UC Foundation associate professor of anthropology. Photo courtesy of WFSU-TV.
A major focus of the documentary is the Page-Ladson archaeological site, where Smith, as an undergraduate at the University of West Florida, discovered a 14,500-year-old stone knife in 2013—challenging previously accepted timelines. He continued his research at the site as a graduate student at Texas A&M University.
“That became kind of a flashpoint in submerged landscape studies because it just so happened to be one of the oldest archaeological sites in North America and one of the most securely dated sites in the hemisphere. It’s that early,” he said. “It also happened to be underwater.”
The documentary discusses how underwater discoveries reveal the lives of ancient Floridians, their tools and how they adapted to a changing environment.
“It’s been cool,” Smith said. “I got to interview a lot of these students that I employed on projects when they first started—and they’re now directing projects in Florida themselves. We got to showcase some of the next generation coming on.”
Organizing multiple boat trips and managing researchers from across the country made executing the project challenging, but Smith did his due diligence in coordinating logistics.
“I did my best to rally my network,” he said. “At the Society for American Archaeology Conference, which just so happened to be in New Orleans while we were doing the documentary, Rob and I drove over—and I basically shanghaied a bunch of my colleagues into sitting in a hotel room and being interviewed for 30 or 40 minutes at a time.
“That was great because we got a lot of really, really well-respected people on the documentary.”
The goal of the documentary, he said, is to help educate high school and undergraduate students about submerged landscape archaeology.
Although this was a completely new experience for Smith, he said it was both rewarding and successful.
“Something like this gets a ton of engagement online and gets people talking. It gets people excited about this,” he said. “It was a fun exercise in a totally different direction.”
Watch the full documentary here.
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Morgan Smith on the Aucilla River in Jefferson County, Florida, in “Finding the First Floridians.” Photo courtesy of WFSU-TV.
