I couldn't agree with Dr. Milanich more here - save for the demurrer as to the shapes of the limestone  basin holes, as noted earlier.  As to this matter of  round postholes, I have given that some thought, too:  I trust he will agree with me that this is itself simply an artifact itself as it were, of  tree trunks, limbs and saplings which are the usual building material of the aborigine.  That is, holes for their insertions may even be quite irregular or over-large when initially dug (though this does not seem to present any specific advantage) but once the posts are secured and time passes and eventually they rot away, the loose soil in all cases will have migrated into intimate contact with the onetime posts thus preserving, usually as dark organic stains in horizontal cross section, their inherent circular or round aspect. 

     If the circle supported wall posts for a Glades culture council house or chief's house, where was the other evidence usually associated with such a structure?  There should have been a central hearth and evidence of sitting or sleeping benches along the structure's interior wall.  You would also expect what archaeologists call a living floor, the earthen floor of the building on which people walked, danced, and threw trash, which they then swept under benches.  Living floors are characterized by organic deposits, profusions of flat-lying artifacts, and other tell-tale signs.  If the evidence for such a living floor had been destroyed by apartment construction in the 1950s or by razing those same apartments in 1998, why were the remains of a five-foot long shark found in situ?  Wouldn't they have been disturbed along with the floor?

      Excellent observation.  I often raised this question as to the assumed building - domestic or ceremonial -  on-site, but was largely ignored by the "pro-dwelling" crowd.  As to the "living floor" problem: even walking on the site as it lies cleared of overburden today is risky at best.  Several of us (including the author) took nasty falls here tripping in and around the numerous holes.  To  suggest this as having once constituted  a living platform for humans in their daily activities is just ludicrous, IMO.   If it is to be seriously maintained however,  one might give some consideration (as I have written elsewhere) to the idea that perhaps, as is common with contemporary native populations in tropical New World climates,  there might have been a raised platform floor here, perhaps after the manner of our Seminole "chickees".    In this case, one might invoke the numerous holes as part of a vast understory of intertwined props and braces for the putative floor above… 

      One caller to my office assured me it was not Indians who made the Miami Circle, but people from Atlantis.  A February 17 Miami Herald article ran down various more mundane alternatives: the holes were the remains of a drain field of a septic tank, circular driveway, narrow-gauge railroad turntable, or water tower. In February James Randi, a.k.a. the Amazing Randi, a professional debunker of pseudoscience, notified his 9,000 e-mail list subscribers that his money was on the septic-tank drain field.  The Miami-Dade archaeologists debunked Randi's sewage theory, pointing out, among other things, that the septic tank presumably had had a drain field running off to the south.

      Additionally, a "Spanish bastion" has also been suggested, as well as "outbuildings and arbors" and temporary structures attendant the  Brickell family when they were in residence here.  One idea I tossed out early on for creation of the holes, whose sole merit may be mostly that it at least has cited literature precedences  for the Southeast generally, which many of the preceding don't, is that they might have served as vomitoria for a variant of the Black Drink Ceremony known among the historic Creeks and others, for instance.  A onetime restored earth lodge near Macon, GA preserved just such a ring of basins some years ago. 

      THIS PAST APRIL I VISITED the Miami Circle.  Because of the legal proceedings, permission was needed from the circuit court presiding judge to see the site.  John Ricisak gave a great tour, but I must admit I was most interested in the septic tank.  Why was it aligned with one edge of the circle and lying on a north-south bisecting axis?

      Shades of the turtle and shark burials!  What is it with this compass  orientation for everything having  to do with the Circle? As the famed Archie Bunker was wont to say, "After all , SOMEBODY has to live in  New Jersey!" (And septic tanks as well as dead sharks and turtles must also perforce lie in SOME direction…).  Would it have been more significant somehow, or drained  differently, if  the tank lay say  on the W edge of the Circle?

     With millions of dollars and the reputation of Florida archaeology on the line, I pushed the septic tank issue.  Who put it in and when?  Was it possible that the circle of holes had something to do with the original construction of the septic tank?  Was it a drain field?  The septic tank was installed in a large rectangular hole cut into the bedrock.  If the tank ever leaked or overflowed or was disturbed by flooding of the Miami River, where did the overflow go if it could not seep through the surrounding and underlying limestone?  Had the tank ever overflowed or leaked?  Was it once standard practice for Miami septic tanks to be installed in holes in impermeable limestone?  Did special conditions warrant special precautions?  Were all those little holes in and around the circle actually seep holes drilled into the limestone?

      Now I am hardly setting myself forth as a septic tank authority here (however, as a onetime rural resident in New England, I fancy I know something about them, including opening them up in frozen ground with a pickaxe in the middle of a winter night…), but Dr. M may be getting out on a limb of his own making here along with the "reputations of Florida archeology" by pushing this septic tank hypothesis…

      First, there is this question of a "drain field".  In most regions of the country this is composed of  gravel-filled distributory runners or leaching trenches into which the effluent  from the tank continuously drains.  No such  "field" or gravel-filled runners were uncovered at the outflow end of the Circle septic tank!  Nor were there any outfall pipes leading away from the exit of the tank. There were two subterranean  pipe runs I remarked personally close in to both the east and west edges of the Circle. The broken west side line was a small diameter pipe-end exposed near the open end of what I have called the West Trench Extension, on its north face.  The pipe line I am familiar with to the East, crossed the floor of the East Trench Extension at an angle and was , as I recall, about a 9-inch line of glazed bell-mouth soilpipe (the kind specified for liquid entrainments) - but not standard leaching field drain tile.  I recall it angling sharply to the south where it entered the south face of this trench.  The line  does not point toward the distant septic tank, but it would be pertinent I would think, if the Directors hold that a drainline carried away this tank's effluent, to extend an exploratory trench here and determine where further this line proceeds underground.  In hindsight, I recall no observation of the tank effluent-outlet hookup at the time of the tank's uncovering.  Perhaps this datum exists, I do not know.  It would be pertinent to the Directors' view that an actual drainline carried away effluent here, to know just what - if any - pipe or pipeline connection prevailed  at the time of the tank's first exposure. But I do not recall any pipe runs personally directly over the Circle proper. 

     As to Dr. Milanich's citing "impermeable limestone" it is here I think both he and all others go seriously astray in this matter.  For the Miami Oolite is "infinitely permeable" as one local geologist  with whom I have discussed the Circle at great length, has put it.  (He also added humorously, that the only place where water in all of Miami would ever be found standing around in impermeable places is on our city streets!)  Thus, the whole question of a drain field or drain fields or even a run of drain pipes may be possibly mooted  by the fact that the oolite is actually just a giant sponge itself  and no drain fields or encompassing circle of cut basins to intercept flow is required!  Water flowing out upon the limestone will naturally be absorbed into it, and this in fact could not even be prevented if desired.  But there is an even further observation I offer here: the oolite contains various  voids and chambers at depth.  And some of the (so-called) "dug" holes lead by natural solution-pipes down into these depths. This is all part of what is known as "karstic phenomena" and well-developed and understood by geologists so I will not go into it here.  The installers had only to accidentally crack into or cross over any of  these several voids (some so deep we could not  plumb their depth during our work) and their tank's effluent would have had a most convenient  natural drain ( subject to water table control, of course)..

      I would like to add one further observation: there is a recognized technique in soils archeology that has been employed to identify traces left by human urine concentrations on sites occupied or thought to have been occupied, in the past. I believe this determines anomalies in  potassium ratios, but it may include phosphorus and nitrogenous compounds as well.  This test, or some refined variant, would seem to me to hold promise, perhaps,  for determining what kind of solutions and/or compounds were ever long-resident in these Circle basins.  (That tank effluent is often said to be "clear" or "pure," as a properly working septic tank permits of no solids escape from the vessel, is immaterial, as urine and other wastes in solution in the effluent  may have left concentrated evidences in the soil or on the stone walls of the basins, if they were - as has been suggested - actually catchment basins…

      Tough questions, for which the Miami-Dade archaeol-ogy team found a number of answers.  Each of the six 1950 apartment buildings originally was hooked up to two septic tanks.  The septic tank in the Miami Circle most likely was the northernmost 900 gallon tank, hooked up to Building 4. The circle itself is almost centered between former Buildings 4 and 5. What is probably a footing, a trench in which concrete was poured to support the east 11 of Building 4, is visible just to the west of the circle, while what may be a west wall footing of Building 5 just covers the easternmost portion of the circle.  A section of still another footing is in the interior of the circle.  Though parallel to the others, its association with the buildings is uncertain.

      Carr and Ricisak have tried to convince me the septic tank in the circle is a coincidence. (But Dr. M seems on the other hand, mystified by the fact of the tank's "… lying on a north-south bisecting axis"!  In truth, none of these observations are relevant to the question at issue here, which is how would the effluent from a septic tank in any attitude whatsoever  most likely be disseminated or absorbed at this locale?).  They cite consultations with septic tank experts who told them the Miami Circle did not resemble any septic-tank system they had ever seen.  Carr and Ricisak note they found no archaeological indication that the circle holes ever connected with the septic tank and contrast the clean, sharp-cut limestone walls of the hole containing the tank with the weathered appearance of the "postholes."  Pertinent information, no doubt, but I intend to remain skeptical until sufficient evidence is collected to prove that the Miami Circle was built by Native Americans one or two thousand years ago and is not a twentieth-century artifact.

      How to find such evidence?  I would implement a three-pronged project.  On one front, continue to find and interpret construction records for all six buildings, such as the plumbing inspection records, which have been located.  What more can be learned from them about the septic tanks and the drain fields that presumably ran from each?  For instance, why, on the Building 3 plumbing inspection form dated September 21, 1950, is the "Number of feet of draintile" typed in as "none," and why is that same line on the handwritten Building 4 form, dated September 20, 1950, left blank?  Did the Brickell Apartment septic tanks, installed in limestone, not have traditional drain fields?

      Dr. M. may have rhetorically  answered his own question here.  If (as is the case) the limestone is permeable, as is common knowledge among geologists, and  one can bet it is "working knowledge" or empirical knowledge to local builders and installers,  then the case for the basins as a consequence of  or a necessity for tank installation, is vitiated.

      Second, find and interview people involved in construction of the apartments or people who might have lived in them prior to 1970, when the septic tank system was abandoned and the apartments were hooked up to Miami's public sewage system.  Did their toilets ever back up? Were there problems related to poor drainage between the buildings where the septic tanks were ?

      Third, dig more.  The judge in the eminent domain case and the property owner need to loosen up and let the archaeologists do their job. The Miami-Dade team currently does not even have access to the artifacts they (sic) excavated; those belong to the landowner until the court case is settled.

      This is one of the incipient tragedies to this Dig. It was, I am sure, an improvisation at the outset that our daily inventory of plastic dig bags by the dozens (including the famous turtle en bloc in its makeshift jacket) and all other items, tools, etc. were stored in the semi-exposed  space under an adjacent bridge abutment. But that a builder's quarrel at this late date perpetuates their continued residence there (as I understand) and with the Court's knowledge apparently, is inexplicable.  True, this area was secured by a lockable iron grill, but I believe local construction crews also had access here (their surplus materials were stored in under here as well). Here the dig bags, often unavoidably still with wet contents, including bone and organics,  were stored away by us each evening in Miami's heat and damp.  One can only surmise what molds and algaes have multiplied inside the bags in the interim!   Further, the storage area was dirty and subject to possible incursions by the homeless and an occasional taxi driver, whose numbers used this area variously for parking and as an outdoor toilet.  Pigeons on the overhead girders  contributed droppings down upon the bags and occasional demised members of their tribe spiraled in as well; dust and rats ruled down below.  Not your prime spot for storing relics, either temporarily or on a continuing  basis,  from "…the biggest archaeology story ever to hit cyberspace…," to my way of thinking. 

      Analyze them and prepare a detailed written report on the project to date.  Radiocarbon date the sea turtle and shark remains.  Correlate the artifact types with the radiocarbon dates.  Process the soil samples  taken from the limestone holes and see what is in them, especially flora and fauna.

      Standard  procedure.  I couldn't agree more.  Get on with it!

      Pull out the Miami Circle septic tank and look under it.  Any holes there?  Cross section some of the holes and compare the presumed tool marks on their walls with the tool marks apparent on the inside of the hole cut into the limestone containing the septic tank.

      A standard field method institutued by the Directors was to profile all "features" (i.e, the many small holes in question) on both north/south and east/west axes.  This was largely done so far as I can recall.  Through no fault of their own, it is true the Directors were faced with  many excavators who were also undergoing  a "training" experience here and familiarization with many new field concepts.  So there will be some gaps and questions in the record which are only to be expected, as upon any site.  Toward the summary closing of the Dig,  a fairly competent field force had emerged.  To date, there has been no effort by the Directors to maintain contact, share information, or even show interest in further "debriefing" of  the many who volunteered so much  over so many months here.
 

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