The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Blueberry site (8HG678): Belle Glade lithic technology and earthworks

The Blueberry site (Florida Master Site File 8HG678) is a Belle Glade village site located on the eastern edge of the Lake Wales Ridge near Lake Placid in Highlands County. The site was recorded and analyzed by multiple archaeologists starting in the 1990s, including Robert J. Austin, Scott E. Mitchell, and others.[luer-2003] It contains a Belle Glade sheet midden and a distinct, older Late Archaic fiber-tempered ceramic component.[scudder-2003]

Dual-component chronology and stratigraphy

Scudder reports two chronologically separate cultural components at the site:[scudder-2003]

  • Late Archaic component: Fiber-tempered ceramics represent an older occupation dated roughly 4500 to 2500 BP, which Scudder’s text elsewhere gives as 5000 to 2500 BP.[scudder-2003]
  • Belle Glade midden: A separate Belle Glade midden represents a later occupation.[scudder-2003]

Scudder reports a calibrated date of AD 1410 to 1455 for charcoal associated with the Belle Glade midden (Beta-83917).[scudder-2003] Butler and Lawres report six accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon assays spanning calibrated AD 1160 to 1660 for the Belle Glade occupation.[butler-lawres-2014]

Lithic procurement and the Minimal Reduction model

Because the Lake Wales Ridge and southern Florida lack locally available tool-stone, lithic raw materials were entirely nonlocal and had to be imported or scavenged.[austin-1997]

Butler and Lawres’s Phase II testing at Blueberry recovered 272 lithic specimens.[butler-lawres-2014] The assemblage is heavily dominated by debitage (89.3 percent), specifically bifacial thinning flakes and retouch flakes, with very few core-reduction flakes.[butler-lawres-2014] This points to the curation, resharpening, and reuse of finished tools. Butler and Lawres classify Blueberry as a “Minimal Reduction Site,” concluding that lithic material entered the site primarily as late-stage bifacial preforms or finished implements, and that local work was restricted to tool finishing and maintenance.[butler-lawres-2014]

This site-specific finding is strongly corroborated by the regional economic model established by Robert J. Austin’s prior work on lithic resource use in south-central Florida. Austin demonstrated that, driven by the principle of cost minimization in a stone-poor environment, lithic raw materials entered Belle Glade sites (like Fort Center) in “relatively small packages that were easy to transport, either as small cores, small chert cobbles, late-stage preforms, or finished implements.”[austin-1997] The Blueberry site assemblage conforms perfectly to Austin’s regional model of lithic economy.[austin-1997][austin-estabrook-2000]

Settlement architecture and material culture

Butler and Lawres report at least three earthen mounds, a linear ridge or embankment, and post-mold features they interpret as evidence of permanent architecture.[butler-lawres-2014] They also report Belle Glade Plain ceramics, marine shell tools, shark teeth, a greenstone pendant, a quartz lithic tool, pumice, red ocher, and faunal remains of deer, turkey, freshwater fish, and turtles.[butler-lawres-2014] They interpret nonlocal materials as evidence of interregional trade networks.[butler-lawres-2014]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Robert J. Austin, The Economics of Lithic-Resource Use in South-Central Florida (1997) · secondary
  2. Robert J. Austin and Richard W. Estabrook, Chert Sourcing and Prehistoric Mobility: Results of an Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis of Chert Artifacts from South-Central Florida (2000) · secondary
  3. George M. Luer, The Florida Anthropologist (2003) · secondary
  4. David S. B. Butler and Nathan R. Lawres, Modeling Belle Glade Lithic Use Behaviors: A Case Study from Highlands County (2014) · secondary
  5. Sylvia J. Scudder, Deep Sand: Soil and Landscape Relationships at the Blueberry Site (8HG678), Highlands County, Florida (2003) · secondary

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