In the Summer of 1995 Dr. Randolph Widmer was invited by the Marco Island Chapter of the Collier County Historical Society to undertake some salvage excavate in one of the few remaining empty lots on the Key Marco site which was scheduled for the erection of a condominium. The above map shows the present housing division with its streets, lots, and canals associated with the outline of the original site map which was produced by Sawyers for the Cushing expedition in 1896.This site is one of the most important sites in the United States. In 1895 Frank Hamilton Cushing undertook a comprehensive excavation in a muck pond located in the southwest corner of the site. He called this muck pond the Court of the Pile Dwellers. In this muck pond he over 1000 wooden artifacts, the largest number ever recovered from a prehistoric archaeological site in the eastern United States. The original location of this muck pond is indicated by the magenta shaded area in the left map. You can click on this area to visit this page This muck pond was completely excavated in 1896 and has since been filled in and is the site on three house lots. These artifacts are some of the finest examples of prehsitoric native american art in North America. Among these artifacts are the famous Key Marco cat, a carved wooden feline/human figurine. My excavations were located in the red shaded area also on this map. Click on this area of the map to go directly to the site maps or continue reading and visit there later. The goal of the project was to determine if there was any of the site remaining intact and to see if dwellings, structures, or othe archaeological features could be located to provide a residential and settlement context for the impressive inventory of artifacts recovered from the muck pond. Although we could not directly link the artifacts from the muck pond to our excavations, we would nonetheless have an general understanding of the the context of these artifacts. This was particularly inportant in light of the fact that no excavation was done by Cushing to make this association. Cushing This project was to be completely volunteers. The Southwest Florida Archaeological Society provided both field and laboratory personel for the washing and initial sorting of the artifacts collected in the excavations. The processing of the artifacts was undertaken at the Craighead Laboratory at the Collier County Museum. Numerous individuals worked at the site. Dr. Rebecca Storey, was the field director and organized the training of volunteers, the assignment of excavation crews, and overseeing the excavation crews. Graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Houston acted as crew chiefs for the projects. volunteers from the Marco Island Chapter of the Collier County Historical Society served as personel for unsite registration of visitors and also participated as volunteer archaeologists. They also provides logistic support such as ice, fencing, and supplies. The Marco Island Boy Scout Troop 234 loaned us the use of the trailer for storing our field equipment.
Two mounds, labeled mound A and Mound B, although now leveled, were located in the area of our excavations. These mounds where originally 13 and 14 feet high respectively. We wanted to concentrate our excavations in the area of these two mounds and hopefully find intact areas containing features and structures. We initially placed a backhoe trench to evaluated the stratigraphy. For a detailed view of where we placed our excavation units together with a discussion of what we found click on the enclosed area labeled Mound A.
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