New Perspectives on the Timing of Regional Development and Complexity around Lake Okeechobee: Radiocarbon Dates for the Belle Glade Burial Mound (8PB41) with Comparison to the Pond-mound Complex at Fort Center (8GL13) (original) (raw)

Abstract

The Belle Glade archaeological site is located close to the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County, Florida. The site consists of a midden (8PB40) and a burial mound (8PB41), with the latter including intricately carved wooden animals and other apparent ceremonial elements. Despite sizable excavations in the 1930s (Sterling 1935; Willey 1949a) and several salvage digs in the 1970s (Purdy 1991; Sublett n.d.), the dating of the burial mound’s components remained unclear. This hampers comparisons to other Lake Okeechobee Archaeological Area sites. This is especially the case with Fort Center (8GL13), a site located to the northwest of Lake Okeechobee. This site is famous for its mound-pond ceremonial complex, which included similar carved wooden animals to those found at the Belle Glade site (Sears 1982; Purdy 1991). Indeed, these similarities led Purdy (1991:79) to tentatively assign the ceremonial peak of the Belle Glade burial mound to A.D. 200-600, reflecting a similar date range to the mound-pond complex at Fort Center. The primary purpose of this paper is to presents two radiocarbon dates for the Belle Glade burial mound, which aid with developing a chronology for the various components of that mound. This new timeline suggests that the ceremonial peak of the Belle Glade site was, in fact, after the collapse of the mound-pond complex at Fort Center. Consequently, rather than contemporaneous and equivalent centers operating around the lake, there is evidence for cycling between several prominent locations. Such cycling between different centers across a regional landscape is often a fundamental element of complex socio-political organization. Thus, the secondary purpose of this paper is to discuss the implications of this cycling, along with several other aspects indicating complexity, leading to the proposal that Fort Center and Belle Glade operated as successive centers around Lake Okeechobee. Status: Manuscript pending revision and resubmission after peer review.

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