Development Threatens Florida Archeological Trove

A marine archeologist who has excavated prehistoric artifacts from an ancient sinkhole fears urban sprawl will destroy the site and, along with it, evidence that man roamed Florida 12,000 years ago.

The latest find resembles a miniature slingshot, or bow, with grooves on the handle as if something had been tightly wrapped around it. It’s white oak, a strong wood, and it appears to have been used many thousands of years ago as a tool of some sort.

“At the present time we have nothing to compare it to, so we don’t exactly know what it is,” says John Gifford, a University of Miami archeologist who has been excavating Little Salt Spring since the early 1980s.

His student team also brought up a pointed oak rod, slightly burned on one end. Gifford believes it might have been used thousands of years ago to generate friction to start a fire--Boy Scout fashion.

For more than 12,000 years the quality of water in the spring has been preserved, providing what Gifford believes is a window into the earliest period of the paleo-Indians.

Many centuries ago they migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge between icecaps to Canada or along the Alaskan coastal route to the New World. Evidence has been found that they inhabited Chile 13,000 years ago.

“That’s far south of us and about 1,000 years older than what we’ve found,” says Gifford, who teaches at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami.

Sprawl Closes In

He calls Little Salt Spring one of the most intriguing archeological sites in North America. It is part of a 112-acre tract donated to the university in 1982 by then-General Development Corp.

The area, once in the middle of nowhere, now sits in one of the fastest-growing areas along Florida’s Gulf Coast midway between Sarasota and Naples.

The city of North Port, 75 square miles, had a population of 15,000 in 1995. Planners believe that number could reach 25,000 this year. In the last five years the city has grown out to meet the site.

A golf course sits within a half-mile of the spring, a regional high school and performing arts center are under construction nearby, and a planned community with nearly 2,000 units, an office park and a town center is expected to surround it.

With such development, Gifford fears it’s only a matter of time before runoff ruins the water chemistry of the spring and the treasured organic artifacts will be lost forever.

Student James Byrne spent two weeks in June excavating the site where the rod and bow were found. He hung upside-down, 40 feet underwater in the pitch black darkness, from a makeshift platform held together with a framework of PVC pipe.

Students went down for 90 minutes at a time, using a buddy system of two divers. They videotaped their work space. Then they vacuumed the 10-centimeter site with an underwater dredge made from a hose that pool cleaners use.

The artifacts found were brought to the surface.

The mud they removed stayed underwater and was carried by hose to a deeper part of the spring and dumped.

“There’s nothing comparable,” Byrne says. “But in the back of your mind you’re always thinking of the alligators and snapping turtles that are here.”

A Natural Preservative

Byrne, 29, of Miami Beach, spent nine years as a diving instructor in the Caribbean and Hawaii before going back to graduate school last August for marine resource management to care for the aquatic environment.

The spring, which reaches a depth of 200 feet, is 75 yards wide and has an hourglass shape beneath the surface. While it is about one-tenth as salty as seawater, it is known as a freshwater oasis. It is fed underground by a flowing spring. The lack of oxygen in the water has preserved artifacts over the centuries.

In ancient times the spring served as a watering hole, attracting man and beast.

Not far away is an underwater burial site where excavations years ago turned up 5,000-year-old remains of native Americans.

A ledge in the spring about 85 feet deep has yielded evidence of a saber-toothed tiger and a giant tortoise killed with a wooden stake that Gifford says carbon dating has placed at 12,000 years old.

The artifacts excavated from the spring are put in distilled water until they can be transferred to a chemical solution for protection. They are extremely fragile. Should they dry out they would turn to dust within 48 hours, Gifford says. If squeezed, they would collapse like cardboard.

Gifford took the charcoaled stick back to Miami for carbon dating.

Little Salt Lake was 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico 12,000 years ago. Today the distance is about five miles. After the Ice Age ended about 18,000 years ago, water in the oceans rose 300 feet, covering a large area of the western coast of the peninsula.

Roger Smith, a state archeological researcher who worked at the site 25 years ago, said pollution is a concern.

“It’s a world-class prehistoric site, well preserved because it’s underwater,” he said.

Likewise, fellow underwater archeologist Michael Fraught of Florida State University said a proposal that people were at the spring 12,000 years ago is reason enough to press on with research at the site.

Carol Cunningham, North Port’s economic growth specialist, said the city wants to ensure preservation of its natural environment.

“The city is interested in preserving these natural gems, and if there is more we should be doing we’d be interested in knowing about it,” she says.

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On the Net:

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