I personally am not aware of any discussion to date on possible chronological sequence
or a seriation for the manufacture of these basins. Whether the circle was created more or
less all at once or in a short time interval, or whether it represents a continuing
work-in-progress perhaps (perhaps even an ultimately unfinished such work…) has not
previously been commented upon. Hopefully some of the recovered data and their
interpretations could address this issue. I should probably insert here that very similar
basins (at least photographically) have been reported in non-anthropogenic marine
limestone shoreside environments at locales up to 800 air miles from Miami; I am pursuing
this finding.
Some of the basins show faint vertical "grooves" or channels,
(and similar groovings are seen in some but not all of the "solution pipes"
which will be addressed next). These are reminiscent of grooves attained in brief
experiments by one of the directors using replicated aboriginal "digging stick".
Grooves can also form in limestone cavities by aqueous flow and deposit, but at least one
geologist here has said he does not believe this is the case at Brickell Point.
Lamination
One of the central concerns is the role of "lamination" here. Lamination
refers to a crusty deposit that forms in patchy areas here and there upon the limestone.
At Brickell, this is a surface phenomenon (of the bedrock) and thought to be related to
the fact soil overlay the rock. Further south in the Caribbean, where it is hotter and
soils are absent, lamination crusts more typically are subsurface occurrences and form
mainly in association with root casts and other holes (Ginsburg, pers. comm., n.d.). Here,
however, the overlying soil is a reservoir for acidic groundwaters and they dissolve and
redeposit the mineral constituents of the limestone back upon itself.
Lamination can be dated radiometrically. (The carbonaceous component is dated). How
long it takes for lamination to form seems rather unclear: it is said that it might take a
very long time to start (i.e., as much as 5000 years) but that once started, it progresses
relatively rapidly. On the other hand, literature sources say "800 to 4300"
years (personal, D. McKinney) which seems to imply rather a more precise feel to the data
than perhaps they truly support (?)
Since lamination however, occurs patchily at the site over its surface (through which
some of the basins penetrate), and down their sides and interiors in some places (and
those similarly of the solution pipes) it is important to unravel this sequence, and its
dates and implications.
Most observers I think feel the basins "truncate" or break the lamination
where it occurs in the same areas. I believe there are a few exceptions to this -
specifically one to my memory being a basin on the NW perimeter of the circle (these
basins have all been numbered (earlier they were related to "zones") but no
numbered plan was ever provided excavators onsite), which shows both a broken (truncated)
edge on one side, and a worn and rounded lip on the opposite side, possibly with
lamination continuous from surface to basin sides. (I may be wrong here). I do recall,
however, the celebrated "Eyeball" socket basin, and this has a lamination on its
interior…
Much the same observation extends to the many solution holes, which truncate lamination
patches, or conversely have lamination formed (forming) on their interior sides and
bottoms. Cavities which truncate lamination must perforce be younger than said lamination.
However, where lamination overflows cavity walls and bottoms, the cavity must precede the
lamination. If the initiation of lamination here truly requires several thousand years,
this has specific implications for the cavities and their anthropogenic origins….
Lamination varies in color from a sometimes rusty red or tan to a mauve
and washed-out colorless deposit. It contains not only the mineral constituent of the
limestone from which it formed, but elements of the solutions which formed it and
mechanical embracements of organic matter from ancient roots, etc. I am not all that
familiar with dating this material. I would wonder about the inclusion of or contamination
with geologically - ancient carbons of the magnitude of millions of years - vastly beyond
the range of the date points sought here.
Dating Constraint?
That is, I know from my own experience on the Northeast Coast, some time
back, that sub-aerial as well as drowned coastal shell middens (my Spruce Swamp Site at
Norwalk, was one of the first latter-such described for the coast of CT) were once thought
to be datable from the carbon contained in the oyster and clam shells that make up those
celebrated deposits. But the dates were highly suspicious and not in line with other
observations. It was determined that while the oysters, true, had been coeval with the
creators of the middens, that their shells took up dissolved carbon in seawater - and some
of this carbon in turn derives from dissolved limestone and other fossil
shell sources that are releasing geologically very ancient carbon - and this vitiates this
route to dating by shell-dates for these manmade middens. I wonder if something analogous
to this could occur with "lamination", where the laminate is incorporating
(dissolved?) carbons from limestones whose geological age far outstrips the chronology we
are interested in here. I am however, assured by geologists (Wanlass, pers., n.d.) that
carbon equilibrates (I guess before re-uptake) but this whole process is not clear to me.
Solution Pits
Casual inspection of the exposed bedrock in and just outside the Circle and the two
exploratory trenches east and west of it, and various outlier units, shows the surface to
be literally peppered with holes which are mostly vertical tubes maybe averaging a foot
deep, and with variably rounded openings upwards of 6 inches or so. Their density on
inspection of an aerial view seems more-or-less uniform over the interior of the Circle,
with some tendency perhaps to fall off in density outside the circle.
Holes like these are very common in limestones along this and other
shores; they are in fact reported worldwide. Geologists and karst morphologists and
sedimentologists know them loosely as "solution pits" or solution pipes, and by
various other specialized designations. They seem to involve (variously) mechanical and
chemical causes in their origins, including the action of waves, currents, erosion by
sand, formation around fossils casts and shells, and chemical dissolution and leaching by
water, etc. Where sub-aerially exposed, they take up characteristic "weathered"
rock surface down into their interiors that seems little different from the exposed
portions of the bedrock they are in to me. Rims are characteristically rounded
("weathered"). Sometime there are integral bumps or projections of stone or
mineral on their sides and bottoms. They no doubt form a series of sub-types if one could
minutely grade them all; certainly they grade off at one end to a very ragged type of
opening, which may be rough and bumpy in outline and whose interior may wander way off
from vertical to horizontal and even interconnect with other openings sub-surface.
Sometimes they "capture" or merge with others of their kind and you get
"key hole slots" as I have heard them described, and other slot-like and
irregular openings.
Manmade Holes
Intermixed with these natural pits at Brickell, are very similar appearing holes -
which many may be de novo and others actual modifications of, the natural solution-pipe
type described above. But these latter type holes have certain discriminating
characteristics that often set them apart from the natural holes:
1.their rims or openings may show battering (I assume from
percussive blows by hammerstones?) which give sharp edges and
sometimes spalled patches in the surrounding bedrock. Photos extant.
2.vestigial "toolmarks" as vertical groovings on their
walls and sometimes as scallops around their rims.
3.Most particularly, some few show a central nipple or bump in the
bottom center of the hole. (This may not have always been recorded in the earliest
excavations at Brickell due to manner of removing hole contents, and keeping records and
the general difficulty of seeing these bumps in the dark holes, and otherwise missing them
if digging only with spoons or trowels). The bumps are most easily detected by hand if you
can get your fingers down on to them…. These bumps almost exactly duplicate the bumps
formed centrally in the incipient holes done in the experimental investigations noted
previously. To me, this is strong presumptive evidence that such hole is indeed
anthropogenic and not natural in origin.
4.Related to 3) above are only one or two holes which I
excavated myself, in the SW quadrant (Features 561 and 564 which I happen to recall) that
showed additionally a very narrow perhaps 1/4" wide or less and about that deep,
incised groove all around the bottom periphery of the hole. In the limited experimental
work, the blunt tip of the columella spud left a broad band or groove. What such a narrow,
precise groove as Fea. 561 and 564 both show could mean, I do not know - other than that
it simply records the use of a very refined and narrow spud…
Yet Other Types
Another variant is (are) the so-called "Figure 8" or double-holes. These
occur here and there within the circle and by dint of effort groups of them can sometimes
be said to show "lineations" or "runs". (But there is a big problem to
my mind to this whole subject of "connect-the-dots" here and see the palisades
emerge and the sightlines to Mars, etc.!). Perhaps I am just an arch-conservative in how I
read the data… Or maybe it is simply that I don't "read" it…
There are two very large, very circular and very deep holes here that exceed the
general size range by some bit: one lies in the central W half of the circle, and the
other is located in the East Trench Extension.
Finally, there are "surface depressions" and dimples and shallow
cups and whatal across the surface here, too - but these were generally not recorded into
the archeological Features lists. In several places, there are smoothed depressions
vaguely reminiscent of bedrock metates almost - but they lack the mechanical abrasion
marks and "crisp" form they would have if they were actually such; and must be
classed with the (many!) borderline phenomena at this site.
Alignments
One of the most striking things outside the precise circularity the creators achieved
here for the periphery of the circle, is the occurrence here and there of alignments or
runs of the smaller holes. A line of these marches along outside the basin ring and
adjacent right to it for much of the NW quadrant. It is seen again along the S to SE
perimeter.
Then again there are the double-holes mentioned earlier and some have thought they saw
a "run" of them in the E half of the circle just S of the Eyeball. Then there is
the central E-W "solstice line" or "Riggs Line" as I have called it
elsewhere. Though prominently marked out with inserted white-painted log ends during the
time of the dig proper, this line, to me, is simply a case of post hoc selection of data
(holes) that fortuitously fit the line and not the other way around. Ditto for the
"sighting lines" E and W. (No less than the "Amazing Randi" - a
well-known watchdog of scientific protocol, has commented on the unlikely use of handheld
poles in loose socketed ground holes here as part of any "sighting" arrangement
as the fudge factor is just too large…). I know I may be in the minority opinion camp
here, but this entire astronomical observatory notion is nothing other than selective data
manipulation at this stage, I feel. In fairness, however, I know it only from what I have
read in the newspapers as no interim information was ever handed out at the site by Riggs
or others, and I have never seen anything Riggs has written, or put down in the way of
compiled plats or demonstrations.
I would guess that everyone who has ever dug here, has his or her
"favorite" run of holes somewhere on the site that spell out or point to some
significant conclusion…
"Postmolds?"
To an archeologist, the circular disposition of so many subsurface holes forces an
almost irresistible inference that the holes are those of "postmolds" for a
long-vanished circular dwelling. When found (not always as circular configurations either)
but just as patterned "stains" in subsoil layers, "post molds" are
almost a kneejerk conclusion by field archeologists. Stains in soil from rotted-off
vertical poles for house supports and walls are a commonplace in archeology almost
worldwide. Certain they are well known throughout North America and at every time level
and culture. The round houses of the Texan Caddos and the centuries earlier round domicile
patterns left by the Ohio Adena all serve as illustration.
But let us consider this further here.
For one thing, the postmold patterns depicted in much of the archeological literature
often show very regular spaced and regular-shaped (plan view) round holes. As seems
evident, they were for insertion of vertical logs and/or saplings; thus they may also be a
window into the locally available materials to their builders (diameters, shape, etc.),
constrained as they all were in non-metallic cultures. Thus the postmolds usually show
diameters that are roughly what one or two men would need to in order to drop in a
vertical wall log of suitable height. Openings of ovoid shape and up to four-feet long
cannot have been to accommodate individual wall members! Nor does our tropical climate
here yield a profusion of regularly useful logs (palms?), or logs of such outsized
dimensions, such as more northerly latitudes have.
The holes then might have accommodated "bunches" of logs or
samplings, or wads of brush and saplings, etc. This is possible. Maybe with imbricated
wall weavings and wattle-and-daub plastering: all of this would not be unknown. But the
great variability in widths, heights and depths of all the basins here, combined with yet
an enigmatic "pattern" to many of them, challenges the notion they were
"just" receptacles for construction members. Again, there is no real
generally-agreed-upon gap in the circle that might have served as an entryway.
Post-Midden Basins?
Now some hold that the basins might have been "dug" at a much later date
after the midden itself was formed. (Yet others have held, and continue to hold, various
skeptical positions regarding the basins, including that they may even date to historic
times - perhaps the most notable such being the recently aired doubts of Jerald Milanich
of the Florida Museum of Natural History (Miami Herald, 4/11/99). I believe it was
Milanich who also first suggested the basins might relate to a septic drain field in
conjunction with the obvious septic tank intrusion at the S end of the Circle. A request
to Milanich for clarification of his views (4-7-99) has received no answer. I am told by a
third party (C. McKinney, pers., n.d.) that a "State Expert" in septic systems
testified in the recent proceedings that the basin configuration could not have anything
to do with drainfield practice.
A bizarre hypothesis, which has been aired on the Web and elsewhere, is that the basins
relate to a railroad "truss type" bridge foundation. The author offered
documentation and named presumably recoverable map locales (R.A. M. Stephens, NASA, and
pers. comm., n.d.). The burden is certainly upon those who would set forth these views and
among other things they would have to "explain" the 2000 ybp date for charcoal
from at least one basin, and the numerous aboriginal artifacts in and around the basins,
also. It is not thought that observations in the field were made that would bear upon
this, but it would be pertinent at this juncture to know if any of the basin deposit
material was water- or wind-laid, or reworked by these agents in situ perhaps…
Another view is that the presumptive aboriginal creators dug down through the midden
after it had already formed or was well along, and then when they hit the bedrock, they
just kept on going and thus dug out the basins in this fashion. This has been postulated
partly as a means for accommodating what may be an anomaly here, and that is the
occasional presence of late-date pottery in contact with the bedrock in several places: it
can only have arrived there by intrusion, as earlier ceramics occur stratigraphically
higher in the column here than these later types. I cannot say this is not so at this
stage. But intuitively, I don't find much for it. For one thing, it does not address the
possibility of intrusion along root channels or even rodent and reptile holes. Another
thought that had occurred to me was that if the holes per se were formed by percussive
reduction with a spud-tipped lance, then perhaps the reduced grains, still present in the
soil matrix here, might record this somehow under microscopic examination. Requests to
Wanlass for an opinion on this surmise, have gone unanswered.
For another objection, the basins (as now exposed) show an altogether too nice an
arrangement and proximity end-to-end as it were and rather precise placement within the
circular layout and vague suggestive repetitive shapes of such that one does not quite see
how this kind of order can have been held by digging them all sight unseen one to the
other at the bottom of holes in the overlying soil midden … And there are other ways
to explain the out-of-context sherds…
Such a hypothesis however, does overcome one (to me) glaring drawback to the holes
having been created in a cleared expanse of bedrock: that of providing a walkable surface
or living platform.
For if the basins were created in the exposed bedrock, and as foundation
holes for a building or even just a roofless walled enclosure, what kind of accommodation
would this have provided? The interior of the area is peppered with hundreds of the
solution holes and other cracks and openings - any one of which can trip the unwary in
merely walking across the "Circle" - as happened to so many of us on the dig! It
is truly an obstacle course there! Many of us twisted legs and fell one way or another
(the author included!) and it is just not the likely kind of surface to
"enclose," and upon which women, children, tribal dancers, elders or just about
anyone would (or even could) then congregate (in my opinion).
Raised platform?
Tropical and neotropical people often build raised platforms under their chickees and
thatched roofs to keep them above damp, swampy ground and snakes and insects. (In fact a
contemporary such, constructed by Bolivian Indians I believe, is part of the public
display at Fairchild Gardens a few miles south of the site…). Might the early
inhabitants here have utilized the many holes in the interior of the "Circle" as
prop-holes for a makedo platform of some kind?
Alternatively, perhaps they were for insertion of saplings and lances, the
latter perhaps displaying totemic devices, scalps, trophies of the hunt and the like? A
"forest" of such displays would be an impressive sight and "big
medicine" either viewed behind a palisaded wall or with the basins perhaps left empty
even and of some as yet undivined use.
Ceremonial functions?
The question arises if the solution-pit type holes (both manmade and natural?) might
have been for votive offerings. Of several hundred such holes excavated here, just one
produced a "Maya ax" and I know of no associated data to suggest it was actually
a ceremonial deposit, by contrast say, to just a convenient (but later forgotten) cache,
or even just a chance loss of a once-cherished object…. One might choose to think so
(as I have heard many diggers onsite so express themselves), but it might just as well
have found its way there through abandonment and inwash (?).
If the hypotheses in archeology are to pretend to "science", then they must
ultimately be verifiable and/or falsifiable, and not just "assertable".
Other holes, however, did yield plummets and celts (these were also found at random in
the midden proper) and other artifacts - but not really in any kind or quality different
from the midden proper. Save perhaps for one thing I noticed: there were several occasions
where the holes gave up "clutches" of tight-packed dense masses of a thin-
bodied clam valve. In several of these at the same time were also found just one large
plain body sherd. Was the sherd a "counter" of some sort? Or an offering? Were
the small clutches of clams edible offerings? They also frequently had their sharp edges
all upmost; this is reminiscent of placements of larger masses of shell in and around
human burials in the New England middens I am familiar with, and it was sometimes thought
there that this might have been a strategy to discourage digging-type predators.
Perhaps later lab review of our field finds and the integrated notes will shed more
light here.
Nor did the basins proper suggest ceremonial use specifically; no bundle
or secondary burials; no burning or ashes or broken or burnt pots, tools, celts or
otherwise. I don't know if the data will be reviewed for this relation, but the general
impression I have is that the basin and hole contents were contiguous with and largely
identical with the run of the overburden midden deposit itself. It might even be wondered
if the original deposits in the holes and the basins came about after some period of
essential abandonment - when their sacredness or utility or whatever had been forgotten,
and the next wave of sojourners here were using them solely as handy trash receptacles.
Some might have been filled simply through rainwash and wind from adjacent portions of the
ever-expanding midden.
Black Drink precursor?
Various other ideas have been put forth here: the basins, for instance, being said to
be "glyphs" and animal outlines. The burden would appear to be entirely upon
those who would entertain this notion (not the least because, as was demonstrable onsite,
the "plan" changes in outline as one goes down in the basins and what was a
"manatee" at the top might be a simple oval at the bottom…); there is as
noted though, a certain vague stylized "idea" apparent somehow behind the
basin-and-elongate-extension configuration noted earlier… Cache pits would seem
unlikely in such damp, humid climate. Cisterns would (presumably) serve no real need in
such a watery world. Pounds for game, fish, turtles, etc. would seem unlikely considering
the basins' sizes, depths, and general layout.
Horizon markers for prehistoric astronomical observations would seem capable of careful
verification, through resort to an Ephemerides or appropriate astronomical almanac and
computer program. I am unaware, actually, of just how carefully this has been done; the
various onsite verbal descriptions and indicating of general directions seemed more like
special pleading to me. The whole idea was rather warmly endorsed however, one day onsite,
by Jack Horkheimer, the popular TV personality and astronomer from Miami’s own
Planetarium. So perhaps we may yet see something definitive put down about this
astronomical observatory idea.
I myself first suggested onsite previously, and will repeat one more time here, the
overall "likeness" to some circumstances of the Black Vomit or Black Drink
ceremony of the Creeks and other Indians of Lower Georgia and North Florida. As first
reported by the early European explorers to the Southeast, the practitioners of this
ceremony drank a narcotic drink brewed from the Nux vomica or ilex bushes
native to the region. This induced a copious purge by vomiting. Near Macon, GA, at
Ocmulgee Old Fields, the National Park Service for many years had a reconstructed Black
Drink Ceremonial Lodge (semi-subterranean) maybe 40 or 50 feet in diameter, around the
perimeter of which was uncovered by excavation, a circular ring of basins (vomitoria) in
the ground. Just behind the basins ran a low spiraling dirt bench, which rose gradually to
end opposite its beginning end but about two feet higher, right at the solitary entrance
to the lodge. It is documented the Indians sat on this bench, ranked socially and
politically. The entire layout, save for the low earthen bench, is reminiscent of the
Miami Circle configuration.
Such a cultural practice might very well have had an ancient precursor in the general
region, and perhaps the Miami Circle records just such a one. I am not saying this is what
this is, only that in accord with scientific practice as I understand it, one ought to
have at least one hypothesis drawn from previous studies pertinent to the region, and
something other than unverifiable or uncheckable de novo assertions to tender by way of
explanations. The postmolds would be another such. The stumbling block (no pun!) there is
why would solid stone with an unwalkable surface be chosen for the much more
labor-intensive effort of erecting a structure over and into solid limestone?
Recently, I read that early white settlers in Florida noted the many numerous natural
(!) holes in the limestone bedrocks of the region. They often then scraped up the thin,
natural soils which overlay these limey basement rocks, and dumped them in these holes as
convenient, ready-made "flower pots" or tubs. They then planted various
horticulturally-valuable plants in them – palmettos for one, and bananas and other
food plants for another. Indeed, such holes in many areas today are still called
"palmetto holes" or "banana holes." Early settlers to a region often
adopt or modify practices of the indigenes: one wonders if perhaps the Indians might have
used the basins this way first themselves?
It is hoped that all the several scientifically-investigatable avenues that have been
so abruptly shut-down by the current legal disputes and claims here, will soon be
satisfactorily resolved and that truly scientific investigations can resume forthwith on
the Great Miami Stone Circle.
B.W. Powell ©
04/10/99
rev. 5/30/99
rev. 7/4/99
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Miami Circle