Archaeological dig to start in early June at site where Vero Man was found
- From: Jack Linthicum <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 03:18:49 -0700 (PDT)
Florida was the end of the line for some of the Paleo-Indian
migrations. This is local for me and is another example of the impact
building new structures has on archaeology. Never would a project to
build a new county administration building be held up for a "few
bones", but the other sites discussed in the article have changed the
attitude of Florida towards such.
Archaeological dig to start in early June at site where Vero Man was
found
By Elliott Jones
Originally published 10:26 p.m., May 30, 2009
Updated 10:26 p.m., May 30, 2009
VERO BEACH — Part of an answer to how many thousands of years Indians
lived on the Treasure Coast can be found in grains of sand 15 feet
underground behind the new Indian River County Administration
building.
In early June, scientists are to drill down to get sand samples for
laboratory dating of the site where very ancient Indian bones, dubbed
the Vero Man, were unearthed around 1915.
That’s part of a two-part initiative that is to include a scientific
excavation of a portion of the site next year.
For now, “If you line up 20 scientists and go down the line and ask
how old are the bones, a third will say they are 10,000 years old,”
said Florida State University archaeologist Glen Doran. “A third will
say 6,000 years old.
“I am among the others who shrug their shoulders and say no one knows
for sure” about the age of the Vero Beach bones, he said. “I say let’s
see what we can find out.”
Elsewhere on the Treasure Coast, the oldest other human remains are
dated around 4,300 years ago in Martin County, said Stuart resident
Lucille Rieley Right, president of the South East Florida
Archaeological Society.
Early last century the digging of a large drainage canal on the north
side of Vero Beach unearthed the human bones near remains of extinct
species, including mammoths, that are assumed to have died out around
10,000 years ago.
The discovery attracted national scientific attention — because it
defied conventional wisdom that people dated back only 6,000 years in
the United States. For 20 years the one-acre site was one of the most
famous archaeological locations in the nation because it was the first
to suggest people had been in North America at the end of the age of
the great land mammals.
That age included bear-sized sloths, camels and giant saber-tooth
cats.
Scientific excavations elsewhere in Florida have since confirmed
humans date back at least 12,000 years in the state and were killing
mammoths, Doran said. Indians were in other parts of the United States
even earlier, research shows.
But the antiquity of Vero Man — the bones turned out to be female —
remained a question.
Some of the human skeletal remains are in the Florida Museum of
Natural History in Gainesville, he said. However minerals saturated
the bones for thousands of years making it virtually impossible to
determine their age using high-tech methods, he said.
In October, a laboratory dating test of a mammoth bone from the site
didn’t work.
Last summer Doran and others took 10 soil borings from the Vero Man
site to help pinpoint where more excavation work should be done.
Now Doran and several other scientists are returning to the site
around the first week of June to get new soil samples to subject to
the newest dating method: measuring the radioactivity of sand grains.
Once quartz sand is buried, it progressively builds up radioactivity
that can be measured to estimate how long ago it was on the surface.
So Doran will be pulling up new soil borings encased in black plastic.
Those will be tested in Canada by a scientist pioneering the dating
method.
Ultimately, though, it will take an old-style excavation of the site
to probe for more definitive proof: actual human remains with bones of
extinct animals, he said.
Doran mailed a letter to the city of Vero Beach proposing such an
excavation in 2010 in connection with the city’s plans to build a
drainage cleanup system at the Vero Man site.
The Florida Department of State wants the excavation done — at an
estimated cost of $80,000 to $100,000 — before construction begins on
an $850,000 water cleanup system, said Assistant City Engineer Bill
Messersmith.
Messersmith isn’t ready to say how the scientific excavation work
would be financed.
“I want to see both projects move forward: the excavation and the
storm water project,” Messersmith said.
Vero Man archaeological site:
Significance: May contain human remains or artifacts dating to the
earliest human occupation of Florida, about 12,000 years ago
Location: Southeast of the Vero Beach Municipal Airport
Plans: In mid-June, an archaeological team will visit the site to take
underground soil samples to help establish the general age of the
site.
Next year a state university archaeologist is planning an excavation
to see if evidence of humans can be found there with extinct species,
such as mammoths. About 100 years ago the digging of the North Relief
Canal unearthed bones of a female human and extinct mammals, but
scientists have questioned if the bones were really from the same time
period.
Back then: 10,000 years ago the site was along a swampy back bay of
the Indian River Lagoon. At that time, humans in Florida hunted large
mammals using flint-tipped weapons. The passing of some of the
prehistoric animal species is partially attributed to humans,
partially to climate change.
Other ancient archaeological sites:
• 4,000 years ago — Some pottery found south of the House of Refuge,
Stuart, dates to when pottery-making was discovered.
• 4,300 years ago — The Mount Elizabeth mound in Indian RiverSide Park
on the west side of the Indian River Lagoon south of Jensen Beach in
Martin County.
• 4,300 years ago — Several sites in coastal St. Lucie County are
believed to be of comparable ages, but they haven’t been radiocarbon-
dated.
• 7,000 years ago — The Windover site south of Titusville, in northern
Brevard County, was a submerged burial area that contained woven
fabrics.
• 12,000 years ago — At the bottom of the Aucilla River in northwest
Florida, scientists found evidence that humans had cut a tusk off a
mammoth.
SOURCE: South East Florida Archaeological Society president Lucille
Rieley Right and Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville.
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/may/30/archaeological-dig-start-next-month-site-where-ver/
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