|
Ancient Remains Found in Downtown Miami |
|
|
|
|
Written by Xiuhcoatl
|
|
Jan 20, 2006 at 02:59 PM |
Ancient Remains Found in Downtown Miami
Friday January 13, 2006 11:17 AM
By JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press Writer
Source: Guardian Unlimited
MIAMI (AP) - Archaeologists excavating two American Indian burial sites
in downtown Miami say they have found hundreds of remains piled in
limestone fissures, some of them stacked in stone burial boxes.
The remains are at least five centuries old and likely are the
ancestors of the Tequesta tribe that met explorer Juan Ponce de Leon in
1513 when he claimed the land for Spain, archaeologists said.
``The idea of a crypt-like structure, that's never been observed
anywhere in South Florida before,'' said Robert Carr, director of the
Archaeological and Historical Conservancy.
Bone piles were discovered in at least five fissures on the former site
of railroad magnate Henry Flagler's 19th-century Royal Palm Hotel, Carr
said Thursday. The site is near a burial mound that was destroyed more
than 100 years ago.
Two other burial boxes called ossuaries have been discovered in the
area, but they contained the remains of no more than a dozen people, he
said.
The tribe probably kept the bones aboveground for some time before
burying them in mass - scooping out soil in the fissures, burying the
bones and then covering the grave, State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler
said.
``In terms of the rest of Florida, we've never seen anything that's
been the same,'' Wheeler said. ``It's a very unusual mode of burial.''
Archaeologists have been excavating the site since 2003. A condominium development is planned for it.
The second site under excavation, where another condominium development
is being built, dates back about 2,000 years, and burials there appear
to be individual, Wheeler said.
The site is near the original shoreline of Biscayne Bay. Carr
speculated the Tequestas may have prepared bodies there for burial. The
tribe was known to lay bodies on the beach to be ``de-fleshed by the
crabs and the vultures,'' he said.
Archaeologists will study and catalog the remains and re-inter them on the same sites.
They have long known that a wealth of archaeological material is buried under downtown Miami.
Archaeologists excavated a village on the north shore of the Miami
River in the 1980s. The Miami Circle, a round limestone formation 38
feet in diameter believed to be the foundation of a prehistoric
structure of the Tequestas, was discovered in the 1990s.
|
|
Last Updated ( Jan 20, 2006 at 02:59 PM )
|
Archaeology 