Digging Miami

4. The Perfect Balance: Adapting to the Land and Sea

4 The Perfect Balance Adapting to the Land and Sea Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, South Florida’s Native Americans inhabited a land dotted with thousands of ponds, sloughs, and coastal isles. It was a watery land not unlike the marshy tributaries of northeastern Florida, an area that archaeological evidence suggests may have been the point of origin for southeastern Florida’s Tequesta. Although Paleo-Indians reached Florida by 9000 B.C., the ancestors of the Tequesta may not have arrived at Florida’s southern tip until about 3000 B.C. The recent documentation of numerous Archaic period sites throughout the Everglades and along Biscayne Bay indicate that by that date, the first continuous habitation of South Florida had begun (see chapter 3). The ancestors of the Tequesta may have brought with them artifacts typical of northern Florida, such as chert projectile points. They also brought a tradition of manufacturing bone artifacts such as bipoints, socketed points, awls, and carved-bone hair pins. Perhaps their most important cultural baggage was their previous experience in the wetlands of northern and central Florida—knowledge that guaranteed good fishing and successful food procurement in South Florida. That the South Florida environment challenged the new arrivals seems certain. Chert, once easily accessible for tools and projectile points from quarries and outcrops in central and northern Florida, was no longer available except by trade or by nearly a week’s journey northward. Certain plants more common to northern Florida, such as persimmon and hickory, were scarce or absent in the south, and instead, a variety of new plant species offered themselves. Divine guidance or trial and error must have been in order, because some of these plants that may have been used for food, such as coontie (Zamia integrifolia), are poisonous if not prepared properly. The Indians of southeastern Florida manufactured tools from the plentiful marine shells since they could not use the soft oolitic limerock that character- The Perfect Balance: Adapting to the Land and Sea 63 izes most of the area. Axes made from the lip of the conch shell were as effective as stone axes, and finding the material to replace a broken tool was no more difficult than picking up a conch shell. These shell axes, or celts, as they are called by archaeologists, are one of the distinctive traits of southeastern Florida’s prehistoric material culture and are similar to shell axes manufactured in north-central and northeastern Florida prior to 500 B.C. The Native American adaptation to the subtropical environment of South Florida is best characterized by John M. Goggin as the Glades Tradition , which he describes as being “based on the exploitation of the food resources of the tropical coastal waters, with secondary dependence on game and some use of wild plant foods. Agriculture was apparently never practiced but pottery was extensively used.”1 The Glades period subsistence strategies were well established by the Late Archaic period (see chapter 3) and continued without significant variations through European contact. Two major studies of zooarchaeological remains dating to the Glades period have been completed: the Bear Lake site (8MO30) in the southern Everglades and the Granada site, 8DA11, at the mouth of the Miami River (fig. 4.1). The Bear Lake site dates from the Glades I Late period through Glades IIIA. The site was tested in 1968 by John Griffin, who dug a transect of units2 within an elongate black-earth midden mound (Mound 1). Faunal remains from Test Unit C were identified with 31 taxa. By weight, oyster (Crassostrea virginica) is the most common , representing almost 50 percent. Merceraria campechiensis, a robust hardy shell, is the second most common, with Busycon contratium and Macrocallista nimbosa being major contributors. Strombus gigas, a mainstay of coastal sites along Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic, is relatively scarce (about 1% of the total mollusca weight), reflecting the fact that the site’s principal marine exploitation is focused on Florida Bay, where Strombus gigas is not as common as in the Atlantic. Griffin notes that the highest incidence of oyster, a brackish water species, in Level 13 suggests a possible shift in salinity of the coastal estuaries during that period.3 Vertebrate remains likewise emphasize the importance of the marine environment, with fish accounting for up to 91.1 percent of the phyla represented . Using otoliths as an index element, sea catfish (Galeichthys felis) and the crevalle jack (Caranax hippos) are likely overrepresented. Underrepresented , but likely a principal food...