July 6, 2005

Little Salt Spring Reveals More Florida History
Rosenstiel School underwater archeologists retrieve 8,000-year-old relics

VIRGINIA KEY, FL (June 27, 2005) – As part of its continued excavation of Little Salt Spring, Rosenstiel School scientists and partners recently unearthed two unique burial artifacts estimated to be approximately 8,000 years old – a green stone pendant and another stone artifact that appears to be part of a spear-thrower.

Gifted to the University in 1982, Little Salt Spring in North Port, Fla., was first discovered as an archeological site in the late 1950s. The 240-foot deep, hourglass-shaped spring is fed from an underground source that has no dissolved oxygen in the water. Consequently, bacteria cannot grow and decompose wood and other organic materials, offering unique artifact preservation. Subsequent archeological explorations took place in the 1970s, yielding artifacts that date to more than 12,000 years ago.  The University has been excavating the site since 1992, conducting an interdisciplinary field school for its undergraduate and graduate students.  Meticulous technique and very minimal funding have limited excavation progress to only what can be accomplished in an annual two-week field class.

“Both artifacts come from the disarticulated human burials on the east side of the basin in about 30 feet of water.  This is an area in which we had never done any exploration before,” said Dr. John Gifford, Rosenstiel School associate professor of marine affairs and policy and principal investigator on the Little Salt Spring project. “We were able to explore this area this year because of the extra volunteer divers we had from the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, who actually located these particular items, as well as several others.”

Last year, Dr. Gifford and his colleagues and students unearthed two stakes and brought to the surface one of them, which they estimated was at least 9,000 years old.

Because 95 percent of the sinkhole remains unexplored, many believe our most revealing lessons in history await discovery. The great abundance of artifacts and vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant fossils afford a unique opportunity to reconstruct the natural and cultural environment of southwest Florida.

Rosenstiel School is part of the University of Miami and, since its founding in the 1940s, has grown into one of the world’s premier marine and atmospheric research institutions.

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Media Contact:
Annie Reisewitz
a.reisewitz@miami.edu
305-284-1601