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(copyright by Ancient American , Vol 4, No. 28 1999.
Letters-To-The-Editor Column. Colfax, WI) A Rejoinder to James P.
Grimes * Bernie Powell North Miami Beach, FL
AS ONE of the archeological team who excavated 8DA12, or as it has come to be called, "The Great Stone Circle Site" at Miami, FL during the latter half of 1998 and the early months of this year, I would like to comment briefly on the article by James P. Grimes in Issue 27, titled "Florida's Stonehenge: Stone Circle Found at Miami." The article's title, in my opinion, is an example of designation by attribution, not demonstration. What I mean is that if everyone persists in calling rather than demonstrating this site a "Stonehenge," it ipso facto becomes one! Indeed, it has already acquired such a notoriety with much of the public. (I am sure this is all inadvertent on Mr. Grimes' behalf, but it is really a variant of what is sometimes inelegantly called the "Big Lie" technique: if an untruth or an un-fact is repeated often enough, it eventually comes to be accepted). There is absolutely no reason at all to refer to Miami’s circle as a "Stonehenge". Though Stonehenge is infinitely better known today than when the 18th and 19th century savants wrote about it - an argument could still be made that aspects of even that well-studied English site remain inexplicable. Thus, designating Miami's Circle a "Stonehenge" could be seen as an attempt to explain one mystery with yet another, and this is a technique that careful thinkers must avoid. The author also in his article makes mention of the "50 or more pillars" that once stood here - and there have been persistent rumors onsite that such pillars are about "somewhere". I suggest that at least one reason for their invocation is simply that pictures of Stonehenge in books always show stone pillars upright at the famed English Circle, right? Thus, that is "how" a Stonehenge is supposed to look. Ergo, there "must" have been pillars erect in the Miami site at one time or another, but for now they are ....misplaced. That "large slabs" (shafts?) may once have been stacked or seen (I have a reliable eyewitness who has told me the same within the month), piled near the water's edge here (there is now a seawall around the N and E perimeter of the site) is perhaps not all that strange in such a continuously occupied and built-upon area. Their total disappearance however, on such a barren, now treeless and building-less expanse as this flat 2.2 acre site, places them firmly in the camp of negative evidence for the time being. An abortive attempt to locate an unknown quarry for these "slabs" and/or the "mystery shaft" (i.e., a dug shaft, that is) referred to below, was made by backhoe briefly at the site one day not long ago and was totally negative. (This was not a project of the official excavation). Slabs or (better) stone columns or shafts of the size and conformation - and in total number - to fill the Circle "basins" Stonehenge-style, would in my opinion be an undertaking surpassing that of the creation of the basins themselves, which is really the issue here in the first place. Such shaft-stones would have to leave substantial scars somewhere (wherever they were worked free) and the percussive techniques, fracturing, forming, splitting and shaping and above all, transporting them to this locus intact is an order of magnitude greater yet than the possible anthropogenic origin postulated for the holes themselves. My goal here is not to say this isn't so - any of it - but to say that it has not been rigorously and logically shown, and I feel it is baseless to keep repeating it over and over and spreading the word, so to speak. Presumeably Grimes interviewed someone or some principal at the site, but much of what he wrote is factually off base. Further strictures I would place on such writing is the use (not only by Mr. Grimes) of the word "carved" for the basins. This may be a bit of a quibble on my behalf, but carved has a different meaning really - in art and archaeology - being more the "reliefing" out of solids rather than the negative removal of stock. These basins - if they were done that way - I would say are "incised" or "cut" perhaps into the bedrock. (The actual physical act can realistically, however, only have been a variant on percussive techniques). Their further gratuitous designation as "post holes" is another example of creating by naming (reifying!) since we don't really know if they were - or are - post holes yet. This is not an unreasonable assumption; I am just saying it is unreasonable to speak of them with finality that way at this stage. I object too, to the author's reference to the site as a "single massive structure". It is not a "structure" at all, and might just as accurately (perhaps moreso) be referred to as a "multiple, scattered arrangement" of basins in a circle. Again, the same sort of demurrer might be raised to his statement, "The making of the circle had to have been a major undertaking requiring knowledge of stone carving methods, proper tools, and considerable manpower." In fact, the only knowledge of "stone carving" and proper tools required onsite to replicate one of the smaller holes in a field demonstration, was the ability to pound up and down with a vertical wood lance, armed with a shell columella spud. Grimes overwrites in my opinion, as so many in this genre, (including the local newspapers!) - all (I suspect) to heighten the air of mystery and play to the mysterians among us who will never give up their notions that this site (and many others worldwide) are anything other than "sacred" grounds and evidences of "things" beyond our ken... Grimes also makes reference to a (the) shark burial recovered here as being "in" one of the cavities. In point of fact, it was not. Further to this shark "burial" (the midden is full of presumptive faunal remains from food preparation), it is said by Grimes "the animal points toward Bimini...". It doesn't "point" anywhere: it's tail not its head is to the East -and that way lies Spain and a lot of other places besides Bimini, too! (As Archie Bunker who once reasoned that "After all, someone has to live in New Jersey" might have said, "After all, a dead shark has to lie in SOME direction (!)". Grimes tries to relate the burial to one cited for the shores of Bimini 55 miles away - where in this case the "snout" (not tail) is held to have "pointed toward Miami". There has been much selective data manipulation in interpretations for this site and related phenomena.... Grimes further informs us that there is (albeit he admits) an unconfirmed report of a large cat or puma skeleton found near the Circle shark "burial". I am happy to be able to confirm his unconfirm: there ain't, and it wasn't. Again in writing of the enigmatic (to some) "Eyeball" stone, he refers to a "carved stone pupil". There isn't, and it wasn't. It is an unmodified cobble jammed into a cavity… Nor do the holes at cardinal points, as he states, "face" any direction: a hole in a horizontal surface can "face" no way but up (where I went to school at least, and where I dug on site!). Horizontal holes cannot, by definition alone, "face" north, east, west, or south. Finally his inclusion of the Valentine material is permissable since
there apparently exists documentation for these comments. (Documentation that is, as to
other literature, not documentation as to physical facts). However, the further
speculation about a 30-ft.diameter "hole" or shaft here (where?) being
reminiscent of the Carthaginian predilection for circular harbors (a 30-ft.diameter
harbor? Wow!) perhaps deserves no further comment, not the least on grounds as an
unwarranted invocation of Carthaginian presence in the first place. Submitted 4/25/99 | Home | Archeology | Art | Blacksmithing | Writing | Contact | Back | |