Recovering the Forgotten Woodland Mound Excavations at Garden Patch (8DI4)

Abstract

Forty-five years ago Timothy Thompson excavated at two of the six mounds at the Garden Patch site but results were never reported. We assembled data from Thompson's work and enhanced them with new test pits at Mound IV and re-excavation of a Mound V trench. Mound IV is a natural sand ridge where a village was established early, by the second century A.D. Mound V began as a naturally elevated platform for at least one burial and associated structure during the fourth century A.D. and was then covered by lenses of shell and sand. The construction sequence of Mound V resembles other mounds in the region. These results help illuminate the functions and depositional histories of mounds within Woodland multi-mound centers of the coastal plain while also demonstrating an effective approach to balancing stewardship and new excavations.

Keywords:

• Burial mounds
• Ceremonial center
• Coastal occupation
• Gulf Coast
• Salvage archaeology

Acknowledgments

Funding for this research came from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Thanks to the students of the 2013 FLMNH summer field school, and to our colleagues that volunteered their time and efforts to help in the survey and excavations at the site. Special thanks to John Krigbaum for examining the Mound V burial in situ. Fieldwork was conducted with a permit from the Division of Historical Resources (Permit No. 1213.030). Thanks to Julia Byrd at the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research and Randy Havens and David Nichols on with Florida Fish and Wildlife for facilitating our work and for their continued support of our efforts. We appreciate the helpful comments of Tim Kohler, Jeff Mitchem, and two anonymous reviewers that improved the paper.

Data Availability Statement

Collections from Timothy Thompson's excavations are FLMNH Accession No. 71-51 and include catalog numbers A-2051–A-2066, A-2316–A-2322, A-2643–A-2663, A-5263–A-5284, and A-7138–A-7169. Recent excavations are curated as FLMNH Accession Nos. 2012-53 and 2013-22.

Orcid

Neill J. Wallis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4740-286X

Notes

1 Goggin described three components (Willey 1949:306): a natural sand ridge capped by midden (Garden Patch 1), a sand mound (Garden Patch 2), and a village midden (Garden Patch 3). Based on his cursory descriptions, these site areas are Mound IV, Mound V, and Area X, respectively.

2 Describing Moore's and Goggin's excavations as separate sites, Willey (1949) apparently did not consider that both investigations were on the same site complex. However, Willey describes Goggin's Garden Patch sites as 1.61–2.41 km (1–1.5 miles) southeast of Horseshoe Point, clearly an error which would put them in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, Willey gives Moore's excavations as 3.22 km (2 miles) north of Horseshoe Point, contra Moore's “north-easterly” designation.

3 In a letter addressed to Elizabeth Wing on January 8, 1980, Thompson describes how he “drift[ed] away from academia for several years” and then decided to enroll at Catholic University to complete his graduate studies with a focus on the Chesapeake Bay. In the letter, Thompson also states his intentions to complete “unfinished business” at Garden Patch. However, a few years later Thompson became fully entrenched in his work as an archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers’ Norfolk District.

4 During his initial survey of Garden Patch, Thompson set an arbitrary datum of 600N/600W on the eastern edge of Area I. Each of his excavation units was designated by the coordinates of its southwest corner in reference to that datum. Excavation of the first unit, 745N/270W, began on March 7, 1970 and 750N/260W was excavated soon after. The latter unit was offset from the first by 1.52 m (5 ft) to the north, so that the northeast corner of 745N/270W joined the southwest corner of 750N/260W.

5 An undated draft of a letter from Thompson to Mr Sherwin Odum, the district forester at the time, states that “two 5′ × 10′ test pits were dug in two different parts of the site,” one of which was the Area III location. This letter suggests the need for further work at the site, particularly in the area of the “three sand burial mounds.” The third unit at Area III/Mound IV, presumably also 1.52 × 3.05-m (5 × 10-ft), was likely excavated during the subsequent trip by Thompson to investigate Mound V. Letter on file, Florida Archaeology, Florida Museum of Natural History.

6 The full 2σ (95.4 percent) range is cal 3 A.D. to 204. Calibration of ¹⁴C ages was completed for all samples using the IntCal13 curve (Reimer et al. 2013).

7 Between May 26 to July 28, 1970, Thompson returned to Garden Patch to excavate two units in Mound V, and presumably also to excavate the third unit at Area III.

8 No name or date is associated with the student paper that contains the photocopy of the Mound V profile, but the file contains several other student papers that date between 1980 and 1985. Paper on file, Environmental Archaeology, Florida Museum of Natural History.

9 The burial was recorded by bioarchaeologist John Krigbaum. The southern portion of the trench was backfilled immediately after documentation of the burial and adjacent wall profiles.

10 After the profiles were recorded, the remains of the two individuals were returned to the unit and covered with clean white sand. Other collected materials consisted almost exclusively of vertebrate faunal remains and were also reburied when the unit was backfilled.

11 Calibration of ¹⁴C ages was completed for all samples using the IntCal13 curve (Reimer et al. 2013).

12 Letter from Timothy Thompson addressed to Elizabeth Wing on January 8, 1980, regarding plans for the Garden Patch artifact and faunal assemblages. Letter on file, Environmental Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.