Miami Circle Archaeological Site, Miami, Florida - Misleading Petrographic Study Further Muddies Interpretations

Petrographic Determinations on the
So-Called "Maya Axes" From 8/DA/12

With the 9/24/99 announcement in the Miami Herald that University of Miami geologists have concluded that the basalt in the two whole and one incomplete "Maya Axes" or celts from 8/DA/12 most likely originates from a source near Macon, Georgia, perhaps yet another touted "mystery" about the Great Miami Stone Circle will be brought down to manageable proportions. For myself, I have always harbored suspicion that these objects were generic artifacts related to a broad typological group of such items, generally considered to be from Appalachia by most archeologists working in the East. On site a few others perhaps felt this would prove the most likely interpretation, too.. But this was not a generally popular notion, nor was it one that found much voice in popular press accounts over the intervening months. Early on, enthusiasts dubbed the objects "Mayan axes" and thus axes from Central America they perforce became!

For the record, here is how I recorded, at the time, the in situ find of one of the axes in my own field log:

"Dig Update 10-30-98" ŠBWP

"At 2:00 p.m. 10-29-98, just as John Glenn was blasting into space about 100-odd miles north of us here at Brickell's Point in downtown Miami, Mark - a fellow digger next to me - put his hand in one of the "solution pits" he had been excavating, and withdrew a "Mayan-type" polished basaltic axe put here by men of another age over a millenium ago!(See pix). "Mayan-type" describes a circum-Caribbean pattern for such axe heads (celts in Old World); basalt does not occur in Florida - the known sources (ancient quarries) in the circum-Caribbean area are still indiscriminable petrologically one from the other at this date. "Mayan-type" at this initial assessment is descriptive and not definitive. One other axe of this same general form has been recovered here early this summer out of context in a spoil pile left by backhoes… This was a pretty exciting find: it certainly suggests deliberate use of some of these pits by man, but does not as yet show they "made" them all."

The 4/14/99 edition of the Herald in fact alluded to a preliminary suggestion by this same group of researchers that the basalt might indeed be Central American in origin, thus providing some support for the "Maya Connection" theory. At that time, I discussed this issue with a pre-eminent Mayanist at Yale in a letter under date of 4/14/99 (quote):

"… The basalt from which at least one polished celt or axe recovered at 8/DA/12 or the Great Miami Stone Circle, was made, appears to have a Central American origin, according to an announcement made public yesterday. Though dubbed "Mayan axes" early-on in the site's investigation, the celts are really generically like similar objects found widely throughout the Eastern Woodlands archeological province of North America and elsewhere. I have recovered very similar objects myself from rockshelters I published in CT. Several of us who have dug here at the Circle thought the basalt might indeed be Appalachian in origin,…

In a letter reply to me of 4/26/99 he advised (quote)

"… Thanks for the interesting news about the Miami basalt. The problem is that the Maya almost never utilized basalt. They had ample sources of chert, flint, and obsidian. The only chipped basalt artifacts of which I am aware were in a PaleoIndian site in the Guatemalan highlands."

In some quarters, perhaps, the issue was never really in doubt - but the current physico-chemico test results are a most welcome datum.

And I would like to point out what may be more than just a most curious coincidence: the Georgia sources suggested by the UM geologists for the origin of the basalt in these axes, just happen to coincide rather closely with the locus of Ocmulgee Old Fields, a Late Mississippian site wherein is located a restored Earth Lodge - noted for its large interior circle of basins! I had been at pains to draw attention to this parallel more than a year ago onsite, but was largely ignored.

Bernie Powell
9/25/99