Mysterious stone circle was a busy trading post
The 'Miami Circle' is evidence of a prehistoric culture that lived at the mouth of the Miami River about 2,000 years ago.
By Gloria Chang, September 24, 1999
In July of 1998, Florida archeologists began a routine excavation after being notified that a developer wanted to build a multi-storey commercial building on a potentially important archeological site. What they found at the mouth of the Miami River, however, was far from ordinary.
The limestone bedrock had a pattern of a circle cut into it – evidence that a prehistoric culture lived at the mouth of the Miami River about two thousand years ago. Within the 38-foot diameter stone circle, were post holes, two hand axes and several hand axe fragments. There's no consensus on the inhabitors, nor the use of the site. Thought to belong to the ancestors of the Tequesta Indians, indigenous to South Florida, some say the structure was for sacred ceremonies, while others believe it was the site of a native chief's house. But now, an analysis of the stone tools is refining the interpretations.
The hand axes found at the site aren't made from rock native to the area. CLICK for another view of the tool.
Geologists at the University of Miami studied fragments from the hand axes to determine their origin. Archeologists knew right away they weren't from the Miami site originally, because the tools were made of a basalt, a hard, volcanic rock. The only stone native to the area is limestone. A thorough examination of the hand axes revealed that the rocks contained low levels of titanium, sodium and potassium. With this information in hand, the scientists compared the tools' composition with a database of 776 basaltic rocks found throughout the Americas and the Caribbean that they had laboriously compiled. By plotting the results, the geologists were able to pinpoint the source of the tools – to central Georgia, near Macon, 850 kilometres away.
The site is near Ocmulgee River, which was populated by a native people called the Mississippians – so named because their culture originated in the Mississippi River valley. Cultural anthropologists say that these tribes were known to produce tools from the local basalt.