A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida’s largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats — and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again.Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found.

Palm Beach County Archaeologist Chris Davenport said scores of bone fragments ranging from only a few inches to 8 inches long have been spotted in Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental U.S., behind Lake Michigan.

The state has alerted the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of the bones, but no decision has been made on their fate. No studies have been done on the human remains, but Wheeler said they likely were 500 to 1,000 years old, or possibly older.

IMMOKALEE - From a distance, the brown object near the bank of Lake Trafford in Immokalee looks like a log, or maybe a big alligator.

Close up, though, it becomes identifiable as a large section of a dugout canoe, possibly more than 1,000 years old. As lake levels have dropped during the ongoing drought, normally submerged areas have become dry. Ten canoes, long buried in the sand, have been exposed. The largest canoe fragment was almost 14 feet long; some seem to be cypress, others pine. Radiocarbon dating should be complete within two months, archaeologist Geoge Provenzali said. In the spring and summer of 2000, a drought in north-central Florida lowered water levels in Newnan’s Lake east of Gainesville, and archaeologists discovered 87 500- to 5,000-year-old canoes. Florida’s oldest canoes, discovered at DeLeon Springs in Volusia County, are 6,000 years old.

Source: Tallahassee.com

In the spring and summer of 2000, a drought in north-central Florida lowered water levels in Newnan’s Lake, east of Gainesville, where archaeologists discovered 87 500- to 5,000-year-old canoes.

Florida’s oldest canoes, found at DeLeon Springs in Volusia County, are 6,000 years old.

Earlier this year, bared portions of Lake Okeechobee’s bottom have revealed human remains, boats and other archaelogical finds.

”Canoes of any sort are very rare in South Florida,” said Bill Marquardt, curator in archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

At the time of first contact with Europeans in the early 16th Century, all of South Florida was dominated by the Calusa Indians, a fishing culture whose population centers were along the coast at such places as Pineland on Pine Island and Mound Key in Estero Bay. Researchers don’t know to whom the Trafford canoes belonged.

”Historically, South Florida was under the control of the Calusa,” Marquardt said. “So it may have been other groups subservient to the Calusa. We don’t know the tribal names. It might have been the Muspa [from the Marco area] or related Indians from around Lake Okeechobee.”

There are no plans to remove the canoes from the lake, Provenzali said. “If we retrieve them, in a year or two, they’ll disintegrate.”

Bubba Blaylock, a Lake Trafford marina mechanic and guide, said he had long heard old stories about canoes surfacing during dry periods, and their existence astounds him.

”I tell you: I wouldn’t cross this lake in a canoe like this, not with all the alligators out there,” Blaylock said. “Maybe the Indians had more influence with their young men, but I would have had to say no.”

Source: MH

Filed under: Immokalee, Lake Okeechobee, Lake Trafford, Lakes, Miccosukee, Seminole, archaeologists, drought