Post by Moon Seeker on Jul 19, 2009 14:04:53 GMT -5
Diana Harris column
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles concerning the startling discovery, 21 years ago, of a prehistoric Native American burial ground on Manasota Key.
Thursday, Dec. 15, 1988, started off as just another lovely fall day on the Gulf Coast. However, it would turn out to be the first day of a three-month-long, tensely charged drama.
Jim Fry, of Fry Excavation of Englewood, had been examining some pilings already set in place for a new home being built. As Jim moved some dirt around, he noticed what sort of looked like bones. Fry wondered if it was his imagination, or if he was looking at a human arm bone. At first he couldn't be sure.
"When we saw the skull, we stopped. I jumped down in the hole, and then I saw jaw bones and teeth. At that I shut down all work," said Joseph Batista, who was the construction superintendent at the Manasota Key building site.
"It shook me up a bit," he added.
"As the bones were being uncovered, I didn't know if they were from animals or humans," Batista said. Suddenly seeing the skull told him they had stumbled onto what were definitely human remains.
Although they were not exactly sure what it was they had found, the construction crew of Gulfshore Building Corp. knew immediately they had uncovered something unusual.
Batista, thinking possibly they had discovered a murder victim, called the Sheriff's Office. Later, when he was complimented on stopping work that saved the integrity of part of the site, Batista said, "I couldn't have kept going. It would have haunted me.
A state law protects burial sites and allows the Division of Historical Resources to halt any construction that may disturb the site until the remains are removed. What can be an incredible opportunity for archaeologists at the same time can be a contractor's worst nightmare come true. Construction on the Manasota building site ceased immediately. Holding up the building process was not only costly, but inconvenient, both for the builder and the owner.
Late afternoon on that Thursday the remains of two skeletons were found. The Sheriff's Office declared the area a "crime scene." The site was visited that evening by former medical examiner Dr. Pearson Clark, who checked the remains to decide if they were 75 years of age or younger. If so, that could suggest foul play.
However, that turned out not to be the case. On Friday, the criminal investigation was called off and a statement was issued by authorities saying they thought some sort of "ancient Indian burial ground" had been found.
Before that happened, rumors of every size and description were running wild through Englewood, as you can imagine. Fortunately, some knowledgeable people were involved from the beginning, which undoubtedly saved the site from total destruction by the naturally curious public. One such person was Sarasota Deputy Skip Wood, who had a master's degree in archaeology and appreciated the importance of keeping the public off the site.
Jim Miller, state archaeologist, stated such discoveries are fairly common in Florida.
"Where there are one or two burials, there usually will be more," he said. Little did he know how right he was going to be proven. He cautioned the authorities that, "The greatest threat to sites like this is from people who want to dig up the bones," so the Sheriff's Office stationed a deputy at the site starting Thursday night.
As soon as the Sheriff's Office decided the area was some sort of burial ground, and not the scene of foul play, the state people were notified. State archaeologists arrived on Manasota Key almost immediately to take charge of the site.
Over the weekend, archaeologists Bill Burger, Steve Koski, Sonny thingyrell and Deputy Wood, working steadily with volunteers, uncovered seven more skeletons. By Monday, Dec. 19, four more had been discovered, and the state's division of Historical Resources designated the property as an historical site, labeling it, "The Manasota Key Burial Site."
"A very significant find," said the archaeologists, and they had just barely seen the tip of the iceberg at that point.
There was no shortage of people wanting to help on the dig. It seemed like half of Englewood had dreams of being amateur archaeologists. Some of the groups that pitched in immediately were the Manasota Key Association, The Lemon Bay Conservancy, The American Littoral Society, all from Englewood; as well as the Time Sifters Archaeologists from Sarasota, Florida State University and New College.
There was so much interest, by Sunday, Dec. 18, about 40 volunteers a day were showing up. In the long run, there were about a hundred volunteers who worked with the professionals, giving freely of their time and energy.
With so many discoveries, it was very slow going. It took almost three days to extract one skeleton. That included packing it for transportation. Just as workers thought they were catching up, more caches of bones would be found. Part of the crew was working until midnight and starting again by 7 a.m.
Almost at once, it was evident to the professionals that the burial site was unique. Indian burial mounds are not unknown in this area, but cemeteries are. As one archaeologist said at the time, concerning who the ancient people were, "The key to their identity lies in the fact we never knew these people buried their dead in large cemeteries. This is an unique and unknown culture."
In 1926, also on Manasota Key, only a couple of miles to the south of the 1988 discovery, a man named Tom Earnest was leveling some uneven spots on a piece of property. His horse team pulling a massive leveling blade through the sand unearthed a large amount of human bones. When analyzed by the Department of Indian Relics, it was discovered one of the deceased had a trace of syphilis. The date put on the remains was about 1600, which was after the Spanish explorers had arrived, bringing with them to the New World several previously unknown diseases.
So, one of the fascinating conclusions of these two finds could be that Manasota Key was used as a burying ground by Native Americans from prehistoric times up to the time of the Spanish arrival.
Jim Miller, of the Florida Department of Historical Resources, was to say at the end of the the dig that the Manasota Key site was not the state's oldest archaeological find, "but it is the largest and most complicated discovery made since the Unmarked Burial Site Act went into effect in 1987. And because of the size of the discovery, a population would be able to be studied, instead of just a few individuals."
www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/colnews.aspx?newsID=441168&a=newsarchive2/071909/cl5.htm&copg=0
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles concerning the startling discovery, 21 years ago, of a prehistoric Native American burial ground on Manasota Key.
Thursday, Dec. 15, 1988, started off as just another lovely fall day on the Gulf Coast. However, it would turn out to be the first day of a three-month-long, tensely charged drama.
Jim Fry, of Fry Excavation of Englewood, had been examining some pilings already set in place for a new home being built. As Jim moved some dirt around, he noticed what sort of looked like bones. Fry wondered if it was his imagination, or if he was looking at a human arm bone. At first he couldn't be sure.
"When we saw the skull, we stopped. I jumped down in the hole, and then I saw jaw bones and teeth. At that I shut down all work," said Joseph Batista, who was the construction superintendent at the Manasota Key building site.
"It shook me up a bit," he added.
"As the bones were being uncovered, I didn't know if they were from animals or humans," Batista said. Suddenly seeing the skull told him they had stumbled onto what were definitely human remains.
Although they were not exactly sure what it was they had found, the construction crew of Gulfshore Building Corp. knew immediately they had uncovered something unusual.
Batista, thinking possibly they had discovered a murder victim, called the Sheriff's Office. Later, when he was complimented on stopping work that saved the integrity of part of the site, Batista said, "I couldn't have kept going. It would have haunted me.
A state law protects burial sites and allows the Division of Historical Resources to halt any construction that may disturb the site until the remains are removed. What can be an incredible opportunity for archaeologists at the same time can be a contractor's worst nightmare come true. Construction on the Manasota building site ceased immediately. Holding up the building process was not only costly, but inconvenient, both for the builder and the owner.
Late afternoon on that Thursday the remains of two skeletons were found. The Sheriff's Office declared the area a "crime scene." The site was visited that evening by former medical examiner Dr. Pearson Clark, who checked the remains to decide if they were 75 years of age or younger. If so, that could suggest foul play.
However, that turned out not to be the case. On Friday, the criminal investigation was called off and a statement was issued by authorities saying they thought some sort of "ancient Indian burial ground" had been found.
Before that happened, rumors of every size and description were running wild through Englewood, as you can imagine. Fortunately, some knowledgeable people were involved from the beginning, which undoubtedly saved the site from total destruction by the naturally curious public. One such person was Sarasota Deputy Skip Wood, who had a master's degree in archaeology and appreciated the importance of keeping the public off the site.
Jim Miller, state archaeologist, stated such discoveries are fairly common in Florida.
"Where there are one or two burials, there usually will be more," he said. Little did he know how right he was going to be proven. He cautioned the authorities that, "The greatest threat to sites like this is from people who want to dig up the bones," so the Sheriff's Office stationed a deputy at the site starting Thursday night.
As soon as the Sheriff's Office decided the area was some sort of burial ground, and not the scene of foul play, the state people were notified. State archaeologists arrived on Manasota Key almost immediately to take charge of the site.
Over the weekend, archaeologists Bill Burger, Steve Koski, Sonny thingyrell and Deputy Wood, working steadily with volunteers, uncovered seven more skeletons. By Monday, Dec. 19, four more had been discovered, and the state's division of Historical Resources designated the property as an historical site, labeling it, "The Manasota Key Burial Site."
"A very significant find," said the archaeologists, and they had just barely seen the tip of the iceberg at that point.
There was no shortage of people wanting to help on the dig. It seemed like half of Englewood had dreams of being amateur archaeologists. Some of the groups that pitched in immediately were the Manasota Key Association, The Lemon Bay Conservancy, The American Littoral Society, all from Englewood; as well as the Time Sifters Archaeologists from Sarasota, Florida State University and New College.
There was so much interest, by Sunday, Dec. 18, about 40 volunteers a day were showing up. In the long run, there were about a hundred volunteers who worked with the professionals, giving freely of their time and energy.
With so many discoveries, it was very slow going. It took almost three days to extract one skeleton. That included packing it for transportation. Just as workers thought they were catching up, more caches of bones would be found. Part of the crew was working until midnight and starting again by 7 a.m.
Almost at once, it was evident to the professionals that the burial site was unique. Indian burial mounds are not unknown in this area, but cemeteries are. As one archaeologist said at the time, concerning who the ancient people were, "The key to their identity lies in the fact we never knew these people buried their dead in large cemeteries. This is an unique and unknown culture."
In 1926, also on Manasota Key, only a couple of miles to the south of the 1988 discovery, a man named Tom Earnest was leveling some uneven spots on a piece of property. His horse team pulling a massive leveling blade through the sand unearthed a large amount of human bones. When analyzed by the Department of Indian Relics, it was discovered one of the deceased had a trace of syphilis. The date put on the remains was about 1600, which was after the Spanish explorers had arrived, bringing with them to the New World several previously unknown diseases.
So, one of the fascinating conclusions of these two finds could be that Manasota Key was used as a burying ground by Native Americans from prehistoric times up to the time of the Spanish arrival.
Jim Miller, of the Florida Department of Historical Resources, was to say at the end of the the dig that the Manasota Key site was not the state's oldest archaeological find, "but it is the largest and most complicated discovery made since the Unmarked Burial Site Act went into effect in 1987. And because of the size of the discovery, a population would be able to be studied, instead of just a few individuals."
www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/colnews.aspx?newsID=441168&a=newsarchive2/071909/cl5.htm&copg=0