The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Goodnow Mound (8HG6): Contact-period burials, European trade goods, and the AD 1200 dating error

The Goodnow Mound (Florida Master Site File 8HG6) is a contact-period Indigenous burial mound on Lake Josephine in Highlands County, excavated between January 7 and February 1, 1947, by state archaeologist John W. Griffin and assistant archaeologist Hale G. Smith on the property of Henry C. Goodnow, and published in 1948 by the Florida Park Service.[griffin-smith-1948] The site provides definitive archaeological evidence of early historic European trade and Indigenous metalworking in south-central Florida.[griffin-smith-1948][fairbanks-1968]

Origin of the AD 1200 dating error

A persistent error in archaeological databases and secondary literature assigns the Goodnow Mound a date of AD 1200, creating the false impression that early modern Spanish trade goods were found in a twelfth-century prehistoric context.[tdar-goodnow-148470]

This contradiction stems from the structure of the original 1948 publication, which combined two separate site reports into a single bulletin:[griffin-smith-1948]

  • Part I: The Goodnow Mound: A historic burial mound dated by Griffin and Smith to the early historic Spanish contact period between 1530 and 1700, based on glass trade beads, hawk’s bells, iron tools, and Spanish olive jar sherds.[griffin-smith-1948]
  • Part II: The Skipper Site: A prehistoric habitation mound and small midden on the same lake, which Griffin and Smith assigned to the Glades IIIa period and dated to approximately AD 1200–1500.[griffin-smith-1948]

In their summary, Griffin and Smith noted that “both of the sites excavated would seem to post-date 1200 A. D.”[griffin-smith-1948] When the National Archeological Database (NADB) and the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) ingested the 1948 report, automated cataloging extracted “1200 A.D.” as a temporal keyword for the combined title Goodnow Mound, Highlands County, Florida, attaching the prehistoric date to the historic contact-period mound.[tdar-goodnow-148470]

European trade assemblage

Griffin and Smith recovered an extensive assemblage of European manufactured trade goods interred with Indigenous burials in the low sand mound:[griffin-smith-1948]

  • Glass trade beads: Thousands of European glass beads accompanied the burials. Small seed beads were the most numerous type; in a sample of 4,299 of them, 2,039 were blue and 1,951 white, together roughly 97 percent of the sample.[griffin-smith-1948] Also present were striped polychrome beads that W. C. Orchard, author of the standard reference work on Indian beadwork, judged Venetian in origin; “gooseberry” beads; a blue bugle bead; opaque light blue beads that Orchard read as imitation pearls; a cut crystal bead with twenty-eight facets; and a single four-layer star or chevron bead.[griffin-smith-1948]
  • Utilitarian iron implements: Two pairs of iron scissors were recovered from burials, the larger 195 mm long, with glass beads rusted onto the blades and a string of 74 beads corroded around the shears.[griffin-smith-1948][milanich-1995] One pair lay over the clavicle of a burial, apparently suspended around the neck.[griffin-smith-1948] Excavators also recovered two celt-form iron axes without haft holes, an iron knife blade, and an iron rod.[griffin-smith-1948][milanich-1995]
  • Metal bells: Five hawk’s bells were found, four of copper or brass and one of silver 22 mm across, with its rusted iron striker still inside.[griffin-smith-1948]
  • Spanish ceramics: Sherds of an unglazed Spanish olive jar were recovered, from a flattened amphora roughly 25 cm in maximum diameter whose base had been knocked out, which Griffin and Smith read as the vessel being ritually “killed” in the manner of aboriginal mound pottery.[griffin-smith-1948]

Griffin and Smith concluded that while precious metals may have derived from coastal Spanish shipwreck salvage, the utilitarian iron tools and mass quantities of glass seed beads reflect direct or indirect Spanish trade into the Florida interior rather than beach salvage.[griffin-smith-1948]

Cold-hammered silver coin beads and ceremonial regalia

The Goodnow Mound is a type site for the Indigenous reworking of European precious metals into traditional ornaments:[griffin-smith-1948][fairbanks-1968]

  • Silver coin beads: Excavators recovered three beads fashioned by pounding European coins into barrel and cylindrical shapes with perforated centers.[griffin-smith-1948] One large barrel-shaped bead measured 19 mm in diameter at the center and 10 mm at the ends, with a central perforation connecting wide outer indentations.[griffin-smith-1948] A second smaller silver bead and a similar bead of lead were also recovered.[griffin-smith-1948] In 1968, archaeologist Charles H. Fairbanks formalized the artifact classification “Florida Coin Beads” based largely on the Goodnow Mound examples, demonstrating that Indigenous artisans hammered silver coins into thick, rounded beads.[fairbanks-1968]
  • Ceremonial tablets: An incised silver ceremonial tablet (37 mm long by 20 mm wide) featuring a central raised boss and geometric engraving in the south Florida Glades artistic tradition was discovered lying directly on a mass of over 1,500 white glass seed beads and a large blue bead.[griffin-smith-1948] George M. Luer subsequently analyzed this specimen alongside a second tablet from the site and identified a third silver tablet from Goodnow Mound in private collections, connecting the site to peninsular ceremonial networks.[luer-1994]
  • Additional metal ornaments: Other native-worked metal artifacts included an incised silver pendant shaped as a largemouth black bass (36 mm long), sheet silver pendants decorated with punctates, rolled sheet silver tubular beads, an eleven-link silver chain, and circular perforated copper discs.[griffin-smith-1948]

Indigenous ceramics and cultural affiliation

The native ceramic series at Goodnow Mound consisted of 105 sherds of Belle Glade Plain, six sherds of Biscayne Plain, and a single untyped sherd containing fine sand and mica.[griffin-smith-1948]

Anthropologist Jerald T. Milanich and subsequent researchers identify the Goodnow Mound as a seventeenth-century site associated with the Jororo, an interior hunting, fishing, and foraging people who occupied south-central Florida south of Lake Tohopekaliga and east of the Peace River drainage during the early historic mission period.[luer-1994][milanich-1995]

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. John W. Griffin and Hale G. Smith, The Goodnow Mound, Highlands County, Florida: Containing a Report on the Skipper Site, Highlands County (Contributions to the Archaeology of Florida, No. 1) (1948) · official
  2. Charles H. Fairbanks, Florida Coin Beads (The Florida Anthropologist 21:4) (1968) · secondary
  3. George M. Luer, A Third Ceremonial Tablet from the Goodnow Mound, Highlands County, Florida: With Notes on Some Peninsular Tribes and Other Tablets (The Florida Anthropologist 47:2) (1994) · secondary
  4. Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (1995) · book
  5. Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) / National Archeological Database, Goodnow Mound Highlands County, Florida (tDAR Document 148470 / NADB Reports 0064217) (2026) · official

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