Sa

Figure 5. The sea turtle (Caretta caretta) carapace (Feature
#1028) post excavation en bloc, ventral side of carapace in view.

 

village center moved from Brickell Point to 8DA11 located
across the river, but that the Miami Circle site continued to
serve some ceremonial purpose. Ethnographic accounts (Hann
1991:314), recent excavations at 83DA1 1, and analysis of Miami
Circle artifacts seem to confirm this movement to the north side
of the river for habitation. Therefore, an alternative hypothesis
may be posited based on the proposed sanctity of the Miami
Circle area during the later periods: the Tequesta may have
ritually buried their ceremonial trash in this “hallowed ground”.

No ethnographic accounts of the Tequesta specifically
mention dolphins, but Lopéz de Velasco, whose writings in
1569 were based on a review of other accounts, does mention
the capture of a marine mammal and an associated mortuary
ritual. In Hann’s (1991:319) translation of de Velasco, he
writes that after the Tequesta captured a whale, “the first thing
that they do to it is they open the head and extract two bones
that it has in the skull and they throw these two bones in the
chest (caja) in which they place the deceased [chief] and this
they adore.” In Swanton’s (1946:722) translation of the same
passage, he determines that it is not a whale in the ritual, but a
manatee. Larson (1980) speculates that the whale may actually
be a pilot whale, which is a member of the dolphin family
Delphinidae. He argues that the two bones that were removed
from the skull were the tympanic bones (the auditory bullae),
which resemble small human heads. Because the auditory
bullae were recovered with the Miami Circle dolphin cranium,
I do not believe that it was used in this type of mortuary ritual,
as some have suggested.

Alternatively, the dolphin skull may have been used for
medicinal purposes. The medicine kit of the shaman recovered

 

MIAMI CIRCLE ANIMAL FEATURES 185

from Key Marco contained the skulls of opossum and
weasels (Cushing 1896). However, these skulls are
obviously much smaller than a dolphin skull and
there is no further evidence of skulls being used in
this manner.

Animal imagery is a common artistic theme found
in Glades-area (Stirling 1936) artifacts dating to the
European Contact era, and dolphins were occasion-
ally depicted. This “terminal Glades complex”
(Wheeler 2000b) temporally extended from approxi-
mately the mid sixteenth to the mid eighteenth cen-
tury and involves the incorporation of European
material such as metal, clothing, and glass beads into
indigenous artifacts. According to radiocarbon dates,
the animal burials from the Miami Circle probably
dated to this time period. The animal iconography of
the terminal Glades complex falls into two general
categories: one, for use in public places, such as in
mortuary ponds, ceremonies, and dances and the
other for personal use. The former includes large
wooden carvings, wooden masks, and plaques and the
latter includes small effigies in the form of pendants,
but both categories depict the same animals. In-
stances of dolphin imagery in Calusa artifacts from

  

= <scl the Terminal Glades complex include a wooden tablet
689;

F.S. in the form of a duck or roseate spoonbill with an
incised dolphin at the top, and a square turtle plastron
piece incised with two wheeling dolphins, both from
the Key Marco site (Gilliland 1975:80; Wheeler

2000b:148-149). Cushing (1896:377) considers the latter

artifact to be ceremonial, and states that it was “used in sacred
games, or perhaps in processes of divination.”

The Shark Skeleton. Shark remains are common in southern
Florida sites, but the only other example of an entire shark in an
archaeological context is the carcass of a “large shark” repre-
sented by 20 articulated vertebrae that was recovered within
food refuse at the Riviera Complex (Wheeler 1992b:6).
Unfortunately, this is all of the information available for the
Riviera shark, but does raise the question of whether both the
Riviera and the Miami Circle sharks should be considered
burials, or whether they are justrefuse. Across the Miami River
from the Miami Circle at the Granada site (8DA11), shark and
ray remains were abundant, comprising 53.6% of the faunal
meat biomass (Wing and Loucks 1982:324-327). Similarly,
many shark remains were discovered at the Palmer site (8SO2)
near Osprey, Florida, including articulated sections of shark
centra and burned denticles. Kozuch (1998:183-185) concludes
that sharks were caught by hooks, lines, and weirs by prehis-
toric Floridians and that most of the carcass was brought back
to the habitation site to be butchered. Many parts of the shark
would have been used, including the skin, which would have
been dried for use as shagreen (“sandpaper”), the liver, which
would have been boiled for the oil, and teeth, which were vital
for tool-making in the absence of stone. Larson (1980:99) adds
that catching sharks offshore must have been very time consum-
ing and labor intensive, but sharks were invaluable for their
parts, and so worth the time and energy involved.