By Victor Greto
It’s enough to make Indiana Jones cry.
If the fictional archaeologist lived and worked in southeast Florida, he would have run out of filmable adventures long ago.
There were about 500 good archaeological sites here before development took off after World War II, but now, “we’re down to less than 200 sites in Broward and Palm Beach counties,” says Bob Carr, an archaeologist and executive director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy.
To be an archaeologist in southeast Florida is to fight for the little that remains to be discovered. As development begins taking its last breath, archaeologists hope to preserve the area’s remaining historically important sites or to have their artifacts removed to Florida museums.
Many artifacts lie under acres of prime real estate.
About 2,000 years ago, a piece of land that sits high at Pine Island Ridge in western Davie probably was sacred: The fragments of two dozen skeletons lie below the dirt.
One afternoon in late January, Carr digs his fingers into the ground at the northern edge of the Laurel Oaks development, brushing off dirt from tiny fragments of ancient sea shells and animal bone.
“This is a very desirable place to build,” says Carr.
As he surveys the area, a builder named Carlo pulls up in his sport utility vehicle and asks if the land is for sale.
“Look at the elevation,” Carlo says. “Where else do you see a spot like this in the county?”
Carr looks grim and resigned.
But not desperate, thanks to county preservation laws.
As Broward County runs out of undeveloped space, archaeologists here and in Miami-Dade County often are right beside developers, trying to preserve what’s left.
And the sites they’ve found, when combined with others discovered over the past several decades in Palm Beach County, have revealed a very different Florida.
Twelve thousand years ago, a drier, vaster Florida resembled the African grasslands of today: long, grassy plains interspersed with clusters of trees. The thousands of square miles that now make up the Everglades once teemed with mammoths, panthers, jaguars, bears, saber-toothed tigers, wolves, foxes, deer, coyote and rodents.
But over the following 3,000 years, as the last ice age ended and glaciers melted, the water level around Florida rose more than 300 feet and drowned hundreds of miles of land, ruthlessly snapping many links in the food chain.
The first humans
It was about that time that human beings first made their way here. The Paleo Indians who first settled southeast Florida lived in small hunter-gatherer groups.
The Everglades did not start to take shape until centuries later. Cypress swamps and hardwood forests flourished by about 5,000 years ago.
At that time, Archaic Indians used to live on a chain of islands, or “keys,” where Davie is now.
Two of the larger keys included Pine Island Key (now known as Pine Island Ridge, around the area of Tree Tops Park), and Long Key, the extreme western part of which is west of Flamingo Road and north of Griffin Road.
Standing at the western edge of Long Key, one of the higher points in Broward County — 16 feet above sea level — Carr says he’s found evidence of Indian villages of 50 to 100 people.
In the past decade, the county and Davie bought the land on the ridge to help preserve it.
Holding a piece of brown rocklike material, less than an inch long, Carr says: “See this? It’s between 3,000 and 3,500 years old.”
During the time this pottery was made, Carr says, Indians were probably living in larger thatched-roof villages of up to 100 people on the key, and ate alligators, snakes, turtles, deer and raccoons. They also fished for bass, sunfish and garfish.
There are similar sites along the ridge, including one just west of Nob Hill Road, north of Griffin Road, where a housing development, Long Lake Ranches, is being built. The development begins at the western edge of Pine Island Ridge and connects to Long Key.
Housing construction and bulldozers jaggedly line the sides of the high point of the ridge. Even so, much of the site will be preserved. You can thank Scott Lewis for part of that.
Site surveys
Lewis has been Broward County’s part-time consulting archaeologist since 1994. He reviews hundreds of site and development applications throughout the county every year, using aerial photography, historical surveys and personal visits before he decides which sites need to be surveyed.
When GL Homes, which owns the development, approached the county with its proposal, the company had engaged Carr to check out the site because it was building on a well-known, archaeologically sensitive site.
Carr eventually found three archaeological sites, says Lewis. “The decision was made that the easternmost site would be preserved 100 percent. The western two [islands] would be mitigated through excavation.”
Though most of the development is occurring out west, the potentially best archaeological sites are in the east, Lewis says.
For example, the Atlantic coastal ridge, between Federal Highway and A1A, is a choice spot for sites, areas that Indians probably either settled or used temporarily.
History lovers need not despair, Lewis says. Most of the buildings along A1A were built using Stem wall construction, which left up to 85 percent of the land underneath the buildings untouched, he says.
So, when the buildings come down, Lewis is certain many of the sites will still be there.
Compared to the relative richness of archaeological sites in Broward County, Palm Beach County is an abused sibling. Though the county has basic preservation laws, it has no archaeologist to actively help preserve sites.
“Most of everything has been plowed over,” says Jerry Kennedy, an archaeologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
According to county planner Michael Howe, 91 archaeological sites had been identified in a decade-old survey.
Perhaps the greatest site surrounds the Boca Raton inlet, where ancient shells, potsherds and human remains from 500 to 3,000 years ago have been found.
An ancient complex of villages stood by a now-dried-up stream called the Spanish River, which dumped into the inlet from the Everglades. Two exceptional sites are in Highland Beach, on the north side of the inlet where a burial mound has been found, and Boca Raton, where shells, ceramic pieces and human remains also have been found.
Up to 100 graves have been found in the inlet during the past 50 years: “Unfortunately,” Carr says, “during construction.”
Miami Circle
As county archaeologist for Miami-Dade County, Gary Bider oversees more than 200 county sites.
But there’s no question which is the most famous.
Surrounded by the stark towers of the Ramada, Sheraton and Hyatt hotels near the heart of downtown Miami, Bider stands just outside the Miami Circle, a jagged ring of deeply pocked limestone that probably used to hold the posts of an Indian chief’s or a council house.
“We know [American Indians] were here 4,000 to 5,000 years ago,” he says.
At first sight, the 38-foot-round limestone circle and the 2.2 acres that it sits on are not impressive. The Circle is covered in black tarp, held down by bags filled with rock, and is surrounded by a chain-link fence.
But what has been most recently analyzed at the site is impressive.
A dolphin’s skull, as well as the remains of a shark and sea turtle, were discovered. Cuts in the dolphin’s skull indicate the ritual use of the site.
Carr helped discover the Circle in 1998. He theorizes it was carved by Tequesta Indians more than 2,000 years ago. The site was uncovered where a condominium project was going to be built.
A public outcry pushed officials to raise $26.7 million to buy the property and preserve it.
Thanks to a two-decade-old county preservation law, Bider says he monitors most groundbreaking activity.
“We require that the owner or developer have a professional archaeologist monitor while it’s happening,” Bider says of the likelier archaeological sites.
Because of the preservation laws, dozens of archaeological sites have been found, including the remains of a 19th century mill, an 1815 Bahamian-English settlement, and about 20 prehistoric sites containing ancient tools, bones and pottery.
If the developer decides to build directly on the archaeological site, archaeologists are given a length of time to excavate and retrieve as many artifacts as possible before the site is destroyed.
The bottom line, Bider says, is that private property is just that.
“People own this land,” he says, “so we can’t just take it.”
SOUTHEAST FLORIDA THROUGH THE AGES
PALEO-INDIAN PERIOD
12,000-9,000 years ago In a drier, vaster Florida that resembled the African grasslands of today, the first Indian settlers would have hunted huge mammals, including the mammoth and bison. As the Ice Age ended, the large animals eventually became extinct. Two sites with artifacts that go back to this period have been found in southeast Florida: the Cutler Fossil Site in south Miami-Dade County, and a site in Weston where arrowheads have been found.
ARCHAIC PERIOD
9,000-3,000 years ago As water levels rose with the melting of the glaciers and heavy rainfall began to change the South Florida landscape, Indians adapted by hunting smaller game, such as deer. The use of canoes became very important, and the Everglades, Biscayne Bay and the New River Sound formed. The oldest Broward County site is at Pine Island Ridge in Davie.
FORMATIVE PERIOD
3,000 years ago-1763 Characterized by undecorated, sand-tempered pottery. Various tribes of Indians developed a civilization that included social classes and public projects such as constructing large burial mounds. This civilization was abruptly and completely disrupted by the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century. Mostly because of disease, from perhaps a population of several thousand, the Indians were reduced to a handful.
SEMINOLE PERIOD
1800-today The Seminoles arrived to escape pressure from American settlers and troops in the Southeast United States. The earliest documented site in Broward is in Miramar, where Seminoles are thought to have settled on what was then an island in the late 1820s. Early artifacts include glass beads and other European items acquired by trade.