Native American Fire Pit Identification

[Bobby_Dazzler_96]

Started digging a test hole on a ridge that wraps around a large swamp in NW Florida and so far we have found some charcoal about 2 feet down. We haven't even finished digging or sifting all the spoils yet, but my question is how do you identify a Native American fire pit? What else would you expect to find? What would convince you to rule it out? To our knowledge, no one has ever lived in this exact area of the property, but we know that it has been used for farming, pasture land, and food plots/hunting in the past. Any information/tips would be appreciated, as we are very new to relic hunting but super determined to eventually find something!

 

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[smallfoot]

Look for debitage and pottery pieces. If there is a NA camp there, there should be some evidence of tool making. Not all charcoal will indicate a camp or burnt building though. Could just indicate woods fire.

 

[newnan man]

In florida if charcoal found was a NA fire hearth there will be broken pottery.

 

[Garscale]

Like stated above, fire pits will be surrounded by flakes. Charcoal 2ft down is good but could be where an old stump burned out. In most sites, there will be a mixing of ash throughout the occupation layers.

 

[dirstscratcher]

Fire pits in the archaic and earlier are a dime a dozen. My experience is that there are countless fire pits used for a night or two, and then they move on. My farm is surrounded on 3 sides by a creek, and when I used to plow, I went deep deliberately to find artifacts. I turned over numerous patches of charcoal mainly on the upland areas next to the creek. I dug many of them and with a little experience it was easy to tell a NA fire pit from a burned out stump, On the stumps you can see the root pattern. Most had nothing but charcoal. A few had nut shell mixed in the charcoal, some had a little fire cracked rock, and one even had what appeared to be calcined bone, to the point of just white ash left. Not one contained artifacts, unless you call a small smooth rock that may have been heated for some purpose an artifact. I did find one large roasting pit that the county hgwy dept graded the top off of on a road berm . It had 25 pounds of river rock in the bottom covered with charcoal. Habitation sites in the woodland era are another story all together. As others have stated, there will be detritus from extended stays at one site.

Edit: I did find artifacts in the area where the fire pits were, but just random, and no correlation to a specific pit.