Miami Circle Archaeological Site, Miami, Florida - Response to J. Milanich Article 1

"A Rejoinder to Dr. J. T. Milanich"

AS ONE OF THE EXCAVATING TEAM of archeologists at 8DA12 (the Great Miami Stone Circle), I would like to comment on Dr. Jerald Milanich's very interesting current article in Archeology magazine (below). I shall try to be both pertinent and brief, but not to the point of further obscurity about this, as Dr. Milanich characterizes it: "...biggest archeology story ever to hit cyberspace".

I have used the device of red font color on my own interlarded commentary in Dr. M's overall article. This, to accomodate exingencies with Net browsers and electronic transmissions. For ease of following, I have further underscored parts of his copy preceding, which I then try to respond to specifically in my subsequent remarks.

The following material is not for commercial use. All of the material is copyrighted by its respective owners and is supplied here for education and discussion only.

(A copyrighted article from Archaeology, September/October 1999)

AMERICAN SCENE

Much Ado About a Circle

Could Miami’s heralded Indian site be a 1950’s septic tank drain?

by Jerald T. Milanich

NEW AGERS AND MORE TRADITIONAL CRANKS have all had a field day with what is now known internationally known as the Miami Circle. One can log on to any of nearly 200 web sites to experience the hype. The Miami Circle is the biggest archaeology story ever to hit cyberspace, and it's not only the fringe element that's clamoring for attention. The media, politicians, judges, attorneys, conservationists, anti-development types, and archaeology groupies are all having their say amid mounting pressure on county officials to buy the site and place it in public ownership. A purchase price of $20 million or even twice that amount is being bandied about. And the present landowner, who paid nearly $10 million for the property, stands to make more than 20 times that amount if allowed to develop his apartment complex. That is looking less and less likely. In late June, a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge ruled that the county could buy the land for a price to be set by a jury this fall. The state has vowed to help the county raise the money. Figuring out what the circle is or is not has become less important than preserving it at any cost.

The story broke in early January after a team from Miami-Dade County's Historic Preservation Division uncovered a 38-foot-diameter circle of holes cut into lime-stone bedrock.

At the outset then, it should perhaps be noted for the record that the story actually broke before early January with one of the earliest accounts to my knowledge being in the Boston Globe: "In Fla., circle in stone has historians talking" under date of 12/24/98. Four days later, the Miami Herald, never to be outdone, followed with screamer headline "Rock-Solid Evidence - Markings carved into ancient piece of circular stone reshape experts' theories about Miami's history".

The excavators, led by Robert S. Carr, a respected south Florida archaeologist and director of the historic preservation division, reported that the holes were used to anchor posts erected by Indians 1,000 or even 2,000 years ago. Begun the previous year, the salvage work started as a routine project. A little more than two acres had been slated for the construction of two high-rise apartment towers on prime real estate fronting the south side of the Miami River where it flows into Biscayne Bay in the city center. The building project would destroy whatever was left of the shell middens of the Brickell Point archaeological site, associated with the Tequesta Indians. Carr and his team were given permission by the developer to carry out limited excavations prior to construction. (Although a Miami-Dade County ordinance requires cultural resources to be taken into consideration before permits to build are granted, the developer was given such a permit before any archaeology was done.) Little did the excavators know what they would find, nor could they ever have anticipated the public interest their discovery would spark

This matter of the "building permit" and its supposed implications has often been mentioned in the developing saga of 8DA12. There may in any event, be several kinds of "permits" and it may be Dr. Milanich has other sources at his disposal, (free and uninhibited exchange of information relative to "dig" activities has not been a strong suit of the dig directors). But it is a fact that the Miami Herald in an article dated Sunday 01/31/99 records that Michael Baumann, the developer, "…received a foundation permit from the city late Thursday (presumeably 01/28/99) to start building…". This would have been nearly seven months after archeological work had in fact been going forth at 8DA12, and at least five months after I, myself, had joined the ongoing daily excavations.

Late in the nineteenth century the banks of the Miami River near its mouth were blanketed with extensive shell and black-earth middens, and at least four burial mounds. Since then the mounds and most of the middens have been obliterated by development. In the 1940s archaeologist John M. Goggin gave the name Glades culture to the post-500 B.C. archaeological remains unearthed in Dade County. Glades sites are found in south Florida east and south of the Lake Okeechobee basin. A number have been dug, including the Grenada midden across the river from the circle. Salvage excavations there in the late 1970s yielded important information on the diet of the Glades people and demonstrated that villagers lived year-round along the river. The Granada midden no longer exists, the victim of hotel construction.

When Carr's team began excavating the Brickell Point site, what greeted them was not pretty. In 1950 six two-story apartment buildings, each with 12 units, and a swimming pool had been built on the property. After the tract was purchased for the planned high-rise towers, the buildings and pool were razed. What remained of the midden was buried beneath twentieth-century slabs of concrete, old pipes, and reinforcing rods.

Using volunteer (and some paid) labor, Carr and field director John Ricisak set to work. Intact midden deposits were indeed present under the recent debris. Dark soil with scattered shell was deposited over an 18-foot-thick layer of limestone bedrock. When excavations reached the limestone they revealed a circle of 24 (or 28, depending on who's counting) holes cut into its surface. At the bottom of these rectangular holes were small, shallow, round impressions. In and around the circle were more than 200 other holes two to three inches in diameter also cut into the limestone. These, like their larger counterparts, were thought by Carr to be holes in which posts had been anchored. The larger posts had formed the wall of a circular building.

While much of the midden was indeed "intact" as Dr. Milanich notes, it is also a fact there was recorded disturbance in the uppermost portions - where mixed out-of-context early historic Spanish glass fragments and other objects were found, as well as likely 18th and 19th century materials (i.e., kaolin pipe fragments, both forged and machine-drawn rusted iron nails, spirit-bottle "kicks", etc.). Hindsight being so much better than its counterpart as we all know, I would wish we had done more profiling and detailing of vertical section faces across the midden which overlay the Circle proper. I feel the internal fabric of that midden harbored many clues as to its means and mostly likely modes of deposition (or redeposition as might apply) and the preferred horizontal strip method of excavation may have missed some relations. There is no perfect method of excavation. Perhaps, if the soil samples from the dig bags may yet be reclaimed, or a hastily done series of hand-driven cores I undertook in the closing days of the dig are yet at hand, chemical and other analyses will further understanding here.

It is an oversimplification to refer to the basin holes as "rectangular". Nor did all of them by any means show the "…small, shallow, round impressions" in their bottoms, as mentioned by Dr. Milanich. Rather there are at least three broad types of holes: rectanguloid, ovoid, and irregular - at least as I have developed in my own field records of the finds here. Even a cursory inspection of the excellent aerial shots of the site obtained by one of the directors and others shows this very plainly. Further, if memory serves, I recall at my last viewing of our Feature Field Log, we were approaching something like 700 such numbered entries - which at this site were almost exclusively the "holes" here in question. I don't remember the start number for the Feature series, but even if the series began at 100 or whatever - there were still far in excess of the 200 holes which Dr. M. cites. To characterize them all as "cut into the limestone" may be begging the question as to what is at stake here also, IMO.

WITHIN THE MIDDEN DEPOSIT above this circle of postholes archaeologists uncovered a complete sea turtle carapace and the articulated remains of a shark. Teeth from a monk seal as well as four human teeth were found at the site, along with Glades pottery and other artifacts of shell, stone, and bone. Two small stone celts (ax heads) were recovered, one from a circle hole. A fact-sheet distributed by the historic preservation division notes that two radiocarbon dates of about A.D. 100 were obtained from pieces of charcoal found in another hole and in the midden. It also states the Miami Circle "may be of national significance as it is believed to be the only cut-in-rock prehistoric structural footprint ever found in eastern North America."

There has been much nonsense attendant this marine turtle find from the day I uncovered it and labored to oversee its en bloc removal - largely in the face of indifference by those in charge - save perhaps for one non-archeologist present that day: the owner, Mike Baumann. The more extensive details of this find and reclamation (including even my necessity to "liberate" various materials required to make the specimen's jacket are detailed in my own field log of events here. The dig was notoriously underfunded). The short version is that marine shell turtle carapace fragments and bones are probably the most widely distributed faunal remains (save for the invertebrate shells) in all of the midden: we found them by the thousands. That they are presumptive butchering scrap from food preparation I have yet to hear anyone dispute. That we had in the one unit I was excavating the better part of a carapace of a middling-sized marine turtle, dorsally disposed, can be no more than fortuitous IMO. There was not the least reason or observation made at the time to suspect otherwise - no accompanying unusual artifacts or dispositions. I did note on the west face of the en bloc as I was putting on the jacket, that there was a rust-stain suggesting a ferrous inclusion perhaps, right next to the exposed carapace at that juncture. My fieldnotes record this datum as a caution to future lab examiners that there might be an intrusion or contaminant here.

Several days later (02/11/99) the Miami Herald shamelessly hyped this mundane recovery, quoting Dig authorities to the effect it was further evidence of the site's "sacred use" and that it was "…placed squarely on the Circle's east-west axis"…, etc. In point of fact, the carapace was only loosely aligned east-west (everything in this world is aligned on some one axis or another…) and no precise observations or determinations were made on its attitude at all before removal (nor were any needed).

The over-writing and scientific insensitivity of the Herald's reporters have combined with a certain naivete' on behalf of Dig spokesmen to inflame much of the "pop culture" interest in this site, which Dr. Milanich so well notes in his provocative article.

It remains to add that working with sifter discards, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I asked a professional zoologist if she could review the faunal scrap. To date, she and her associates have identified 17 additional faunal species here beyond the Monk Seal which Dr. M lists (and which is now extinct in this region, I understand) and which list may be seen by going back one page in your browser to the Directory, and includes pelagic sharks as well as bottom dweller and reef fishes, and other species, including avians, as well. As to the human teeth, more than the four named by Dr. M were recovered; I recovered two adult molars or pre-molars myself.

The matter of the so-called "Maya axes" is too complex perhaps to cover here. As Dr. M notes, two were recovered here. And additionally, I might add, spalls of a third as well. (You may view one of these axes by going back one page in your Browser to the listed picture file in the Directory there). Only one axe was in context and this was in a small "solution hole" outside the perimeter of the Circle proper, and not in one of the basin holes itself - as Dr. M's copy might suggest. Suffice to say that an initial assessment on-site that they were "Maya-like" fueled the press and the "Mayan Connection" to new heights of rapture. To me, they were simply reminiscent of a widespread axe form of the Archaic Period widely distributed throughout Eastern North America; I have seen more than a few of these from sites in Connecticut which I have excavated. It is thought that basalt from quarries in the Appalachian chain was widely traded in Archaic times. The supposition nonetheless was strong onsite that the axes were somehow "Mayan" and to this end a petrographic examination was undertaken locally to see if it could shed light on a possible source region. Anomalies in the titanium fraction were initially tentatively advanced as support indeed for a Central American source, thus apparently ruling against Appalachia. The Miami Herald had an item on this on 4/14/99. More recently, it is my understanding thirdhand this has been again revised and that Appalachia is back in the running. Though I inquired about this on 9/2/99, the investigator would only tell me she is planning to announce her further determination on 9/16/99. I really do not know the status of these investigations beyond this. Perhaps it is of interest here to note that a distinguished Mayanist (M. Coe), has told me personally (4/26/99), among other things, that "The problem is that the Maya almost never utilized basalt".

Press restraint - reporting the circle as possible evidence of a 2,000 year-old circular building associated with the Glades cultures - ceased after January 3 with the appearance of a Miami Herald article headlined "Archaeologists Sift Stunning Evidence of Ancient Culture." While reporting on the discovery and quoting Carr and Ricisak, the article also used information and quotations provided by T.L. Riggs, a 72 year-old surveyor who claimed the circle was carved in the rock 2,000 to 3,000 years ago by the Maya who came to south Florida from the Yucatan in huge canoes. The circle was a Maya astronomical observatory for calculating the passage of time, a sort of south Florida Limestonehenge.

Not the least element in bolstering the popular notion of an observatory here was an on-site visit and apparent endorsement of these views by Miami's own Jack Horkheimer: noted TV astronomy show personality, seen nationally. The "key" to Riggs' verbal hypothesis (I know of nothing in print to date on this) would seem to lie in the fortuitous selection of outlying holes at the ends of what I have called in my own notes, the East and West Trench Extensions of which I compiled field maps as carefully as I could against just such check later wherein vertical poles could be inserted for "alignments" across the (very loosely determined) north and south points of the circle rim to winter and summer solstice risings and settings upon the horizon. No less than the pundit, James Randi, whom Dr. M mentions here further on in his article as supporting, perhaps, his own "septic tank hypothesis", for the origin of the basins, indicated one fatal flaw to this presentation in the huge error (fudge factor we used to call it!) attendant the slightest wobble of handheld posts for such sightings.

During the next two months almost daily local news stories about the Miami Circle fueled international media coverage. Seminole Indians and New Agers visited the site, which was soon closed to the public. Huichol Indians from Mexico, a Maya shaman, kids skipping school, and people wishing to bask in the site's supernatural aura crowded the Brickell Avenue bridge overlooking the circle. A camera was mounted on the roof of a nearby skyscraper so that those not able to make a pilgrimage to the incipient shrine could check it out on their computer screens. Pro-circle demonstrators marched along highways with hand-lettered signs: "Honk to save the Miami Circle." As Ricisak told the Herald, the circle had become sacred ground.

Not everyone was in favor of saving the circle and voiding the developer's permits to build the apartment complex. Miami badly needed the tax dollars the project would bring. Initially something of a compromise was struck in the form of an ill thought-out plan to cut out and move the circle to a new location. A stone mason hired to do the job backed out at the last minute. It is uncertain whether the soft limestone could have withstood the move. Another plan to make a mold of the circle and build a facsimile elsewhere proved unworkable.

As to "saving the Circle" I have been a critic here of local elements blindly urging this, and called repeatedly in print and on the 'Net for a clarification of just precisely what is meant by "saving". If the site is not to be "saved" for further scientific study (as would seem increasingly unlikely) then to this observer and I believe at least a few others, there is nothing at stake to be "saved." If "pop activists" believe it is "sacred" (perhaps like the celebrated "energy vortices" now proudly claimed for virtually every street corner in Sedona, AZ by these same New Agers, the last time I was there), then let them say so and raise their own funds and carry their own battle. Or if the City Fathers or civic groups really want a downtown park here - let them just say so and mount an effort. The continued implication that "saving the Circle" somehow implies saving it for scientific study in lack of any public and forceful statement to this end by some authority is just hypocrisy IMO.

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