To the untrained eye, many of the hundreds of artifacts pulled in recent
months from a Florida spring in the Chassahowitzka River look like
stuff nobody wanted to buy at a yard sale: old bottles, an antler,
broken pieces of a plate, a toy cap gun, a bowl, a fishhook, pins.
 |
| The oldest of
the stone tools recovered was a Suwannee projectile point. Dating from
the Paleo-Indian period (10,000 - 8,000 BC), Suwannee points are
lanceolate in shape and measure between 7.5-12 cm on average. Although
found across much of Florida, Suwannee points are most commonly found in
the Ichetucknee and Santa Fe Rivers [Credit: CNN] |
But to archaeologist Michael Arbuthnot, who oversaw a five-month project
that pulled hundreds of such items from a 2 1/2-acre field of muck as
deep as 25 feet below the surface of the spring, they are much more.
"We found an amazing array of artifacts that basically represent every
period of human occupation in Florida," he told CNN in a telephone
interview.
The finds were a side benefit of a project funded by the state to clean
the spring -- located 90 minutes north of Tampa -- and thereby improve
its flow and water quality.
The spring in the Chassahowitzka, which is Seminole for "place of the
hanging pumpkins," attracts tourists, canoeists and fans of fishing.
But over the years, it has also attracted gunk -- from septic tank
effluent to runoff from the surrounding watershed -- that contributed to
algal growth that made it less attractive.
 |
Bone pins were used for clothing, hair and body jewelry, and, as may be the case
at the springs, spearing fish [Credit: CNN] |
"This thick organic deposit was basically choking out the spring," said
Philip Rhinesmith, senior environmental scientist with the Southwest
Florida Water Management District.
"All around the vent are these accumulated organics," said Arbuthnot,
who oversaw the salvage effort for SEARCH, a cultural resources
management company. "As the divers were basically scooping it into their
6-inch dredge, they were keeping their eyes peeled for artifacts that
might show up."
He described as "phenomenal" the preservation of the finds, whose
location as many as 5 feet deep in oxygen-free sediment had protected
them from decay.
They include a Suwannee projectile point -- a spear point -- whose
estimated age of 10,000 years puts it "right at the cusp of the end of
the Ice Age," Arbuthnot said. The person who lost it may have been
hunting a mammoth.
A fish hook made of bone dates back centuries B.C. and also could have been used to catch alligators, he said.
 |
Bone fishhooks were used from the Archaic period until
European contact [Credit: CNN] |
A variety of bone pins -- used for piercings, fish hooks, awls and fastening clothing -- was also unearthed.
In the dredging operation, which began last May and ended in September,
the underwater archeologists vacuumed up the sediment on the floor of
the basin, put their finds into a floating screen platform and then
picked through the clutter, Arbuthnot said.
It wasn't always clear what was worth a second look. For example, the
bowl didn't look like anything special when it was spotted. "Divers
first thought it was a coconut, because it was upside down," he said.
But the coconut turned out to be the bottom of a bowl, stained black by
years of exposure to tannins in the water. It proved to be a
2,000-year-old, intact ceramic bowl with an earthen brown interior -- in
good condition. "That's a big surprise," he said. "They're
extraordinarily rare."
The discovery of fragments of a 17th century plate -- a Spanish ceramic
-- also surprised the investigators, given that Citrus County is far
from the nearest Spanish colonial settlement.
 |
| Pasco Plain
pottery appears in the Woodland through Mississippian periods. This one
is the only known fully intact Pasco Plain bowl to be recovered in
Florida. The Woodland period is characterized by a mixed subsistence
pattern consisting of hunting, fishing and collecting wild resources.
Mississippian period subsistence consisted largely of estuarine fish and
shellfish. Artifacts from both periods include pottery, stone tools and
bone tools [Credit: CNN] |
"I'm guessing that it was probably either intentionally dumped there or
accidentally dropped in some sort of a trade route with the Native
Americans." A more remote possibility is that a Spanish explorer may
have visited the area and traded it to Native Americans there, he said.
The plate, which would have been nearly 14 inches in diameter when it
was intact, "has an exquisite, painted decoration on the surface of it."
Years under water had stained blue its original vibrant colors, he
said.
Arbuthnot said a shard of brushed pottery dated to the 1700s and showed that the Seminole Indians were connected to the spring.
The antler was probably used by Native Americans to help fashion stone tools, he said.
The cap gun -- a Hubley Long Barrel Texan Jr. from the mid-1900s -- was
made when gun manufacturers were transitioning from cast-iron to
die-cast cap guns and, like all Hubley toys, it was hand-painted.
 |
| As cleanup
crews were restoring this Florida spring to pristine condition,
underwater archeologists sifting through the detritus that was pulled
from the depths discovered artifacts that track the history of humans in
the state [Credit: CNN] |
That there would be finds under the surface was not a surprise. "We know
from past experiences that there's generally a treasure trove of
artifacts to be found" in the muck around springs, said Arbuthnot, whose
underwater work includes an expedition to the Titanic in 2005. "It was
pretty obvious from the start that this was going to be a hot spot."
But it was also full of plain, old-fashioned, modern trash -- Budweiser
bottles, old car parts. Anything younger than 50 years does not meet
Florida's definition of an artifact and was not saved.
The salvage part of the cleanup cost Florida taxpayers $180,000. "What
that paid for was having a certified marine archeologist on the job when
that dredging was happening," Rhinesmith said.
That meant the cleanup project didn't have to stop every time an
artifact was found, which sped its completion. Time was an important
factor, he said, because the work had to be completed between May 1 and
September 30, when the region's water temperatures begin to drop and
West Indian manatees -- a federally protected species -- seek out the
warmer waters of the spring, he said.
Because the finds were made on state-owned land, they belong to Florida.
Some of the finds are to be displayed at the Old Courthouse Heritage
Museum in Inverness. For now, they're neatly labeled on racks in a
laboratory in Gainesville -- a cornucopia of history.
The
things scientists do range from accepting a Nobel Prize to schilling
for corporations to collecting samples in the field. Every generation of
newly-minted Phds clamor for the available positions, even when they
are unpleasant because, 
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