Fort Center is an archaeological site in Glades County, Florida, United States, a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee. It was occupied for more than 2,000 years, from 450 BCE until about 1700 CE. The inhabitants of Fort Center may have been cultivating maize centuries before it appeared anywhere else in Florida.
The area around Fisheating Creek was occupied by people of the Belle Glade culture from as early as 1000 BCE.
Fort Center is a complex of earthwork mounds, linear embankments, middens, circular ditches, and an artificial pond occupying an area approximately long and wide extending east–west along Fisheating Creek, a stream that empties unto Lake Okeechobee.
The site is named for a US Army fortification, "Fort Center", used during the Seminole Wars.
Physical environment The Fort Center site consists of three environments: a meander belt along the stream consisting of a floodplain swamp and natural levees, wet prairie, and oak-cabbage palm-saw palmetto hammocks. The floodplain and prairie are subject to frequent flooding. The prairie consists of two to four feet of sandy soil on a hardpan, resulting in poor drainage. The stream meander belt cuts below the hardpan.
Pollen evidence shows that the river meander belt and prairie existed in essentially their current condition since human occupation began 2,500 to 3,000 years ago until the 20th century. The area covered by hammocks has increased since sustained occupation ended around 1700. Much of the area around Fort Center was developed as improved pasture during the 20th century. Lake Okeechobee was surrounded by a system of dikes built during the 20th century, except for where Fisheating Creek enters the lake.
Cultural environment Fort Center is in the Lake Okeechobee Basin, an area that surrounds and drains into Lake Okeechobee, and is synonymous with the Belle Glade culture area, one of several related culture areas in southern Florida. The people of the Belle Glade culture occupied the area around Fisheating Creek from as early as 1000 BCE until historic times. The Kissimmee River valley is usually regarded as a sub-area of the Lake Okeechobee Basin (Belle Glade culture area). Sears treats the Lake Okeechobee Basin, including the Kissimmee River Valley, as a sub-region of the Glades culture area, while others place the Belle Glade (Lake Okeechobee) and Glades areas on an equal footing. The cultural traditions of southern Florida had a long history and were well adapted to the area. Archaeological evidence of changes in those cultures is mostly limited to small changes in the few ceramics that were decorated.
Mounds, ditches, canals and other earthworks have been found at a number of locations in interior southern Florida. More than thirty sites of the Belle Glade culture or its predecessors are known from the area around Fisheating Creek. A number of sites with extensive earthworks have been found in the Belle Glade culture area. At least seven other sites in southern Florida, including two near Fisheating Creek, have similar circular features, although none of them has been subject to detailed examination by archaeologists. McGoun quotes Stephen Hale as saying that complexes "with sequences of construction and architectural style almost identical to those at Fort Center" are found from Lake Tohopekaliga in the north to Palm Beach and Hendry counties to the south. There are also similarities between Fort Center and the Crystal River site. Milanich also notes resemblances between Period II Fort Center and contemporary Cades Pond culture sites at River Styx and Cross Creek in northern Florida.
Authors have sometimes postulated that the various mounds and other earthworks in the Belle Glade and Glades areas were constructed by or at least used by the Calusa. Archaeologists now generally discount that theory. While the Calusa exercised political hegemony over much of southern Florida during the historic period, the Belle Glade and Glades culture areas remained distinct from the Caloosahatchee culture area inhabited by the Calusa. It may be the case that the Caloosahatchee culture developed later than the Belle Glade culture.
Excavation
The Fort Center site came to the attention of archaeologists after a carved wooden bird was found in the pond in 1926. Working for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration beginning in the Great Depression, archaeologists conducted surveys and test excavations at Fort Center during the 1930s and 1940s. Archaeologist John Goggin surveyed the site in the early 1950s, digging some test pits. In 1961, an amateur group obtained permission from the land owner, Lykes Brothers, to survey the site. The group exceeded their permit and conducted an uncontrolled excavation. They took many artifacts, including objects from the historic period that had been reworked from metals of Spanish origin. When Lykes Brothers realized what was happening, they cancelled the group's permit, closed access to the site, and invited a professional archaeologist to survey the site.
The complex was excavated over six years (1966–1971) by teams from the University of Florida, Colgate University and Florida Atlantic University. The State of Florida acquired the Fort Center site from Lykes Brothers in 1999 as part of the Fisheating Creek Ecosystem. It is operated as the Fisheating Creek wildlife management area.
In 2010 further research at the Fort Center site was conducted by Victor D. Thompson and Thomas J. Pluckhahn with grants from the National Geographic Society, Ohio State University and the University of South Florida. their work confirmed much of Sears' data but differed significantly on the function and archaeological significance of the Fort Center ritual place. Thompson and Pluckhahn are the first archaeologists to view Fort Center as one of many persistent Monumental ritual earthworks in the Glades/Calusa cultural region of south Florida. They concluded that the area is one of the most important hunter-gatherer intensive earthworks groups in world prehistory.
Origins Sears believed that the freshwater regions of peninsular Florida were peopled by immigrants from northern South America who preceded Arawakan language-speakers through the Antilles. He cited the use of celts and adzes made from conch-shells, the proposed derivation of the Timucuan language from South American roots, the cultivation of maize, and the use of earthworks to form fields in savannahs (wet prairies) as was done in South America. He also cited the use of fiber-tempered pottery, similar to that used in South American, and distinct from pottery used in the rest of eastern North America. Sears divided the period of occupation at Fort Center into four periods. Period I began before 450 BCE, perhaps as early as 1000 BCE, and lasted until around 200 CE. Period II ran from about 200 to between 600 and 800, followed by period III until 1200 to 1400, and then period IV up to about 1700.
Archaeologists have been skeptical of Sears' migration theory because there is no evidence of South American root crops being introduced to Florida, and the evidence from pottery does not give a clear south to north sequence of introduction within Florida. There is some support for the idea that maize, and at least one strain of tobacco, were introduced into Florida by a sea route. Other archaeologists have noted that the peoples living in the Greater Antilles prior to the arrival of Arawakan-speakers were hunter-gatherers, not agriculturists. They believe that the agricultural Arawakan-speaking Tainos did not reach Hispaniola and Cuba until 600 to 700, near the end of Sears' Period II, well after the introduction of maize at Fort Center. Thompson and Pluckhahn's research and dating clearly shows that Fort Center as a regional ritual center began with the construction of the Great Circle before Sears' Glade I period by as much as 350 years. Their recent archaeology also shows that immediately after the construction of the Great Circle, work commenced on the building of the mortuary mound and pond complex nearby. In 2017, anthropologist Nathan Lawres addressed the issue of previous researchers evaluating the monumental structures at Fort Center and the entire Kissimmee/Okeechobee Area primarily in terms of economic interpretations. He is the first to argue that the alterity of Belle Glade monumental landscapes provides a context to an ontological (metaphysical) approach.
Period I Period I is characterized by several mounds, mostly artificial, that supported living areas, and by circular ditches, which Sears interpreted as enclosing fields. Only one or a few families lived on the site at any given time, and there is no evidence of any differentiated status. Maize pollen was found in middens on the mounds and in the fields dating from this period.
Five artificial mounds, identified as Mounds 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, are in or near the stream meander zone. They are each round, about 100 feet in diameter, and two to three feet high. Most of these mounds are now part of the natural levees along the Fisheating Creek. The mounds may have been built on existing natural levees, or the presence of the mounds may have helped shape the levees. Three burials were found in Mound 13, which may have been used as a burial mound and later as a house mound. Mound 10 was not excavated. Little other than sherds were found in the other mounds.
The Okeechobee basin is subject to frequent flooding. Mounds are required in most parts of the basin to raise house floors above flood levels. The only place in the area high enough to remain above the flood waters was a section of old natural levee. Part of this levee, named Midden B, was also used as a living site during Period I. While the mounds at Fort Center were mostly used as house platforms, some mounds and other earthworks served other purposes. The site may have been inhabited because it provided easy access to food sources in the stream.
Thompson and Pluckhahn conclude that the mortuary mound and pond complex was built much earlier. They agree that only a few families lived permanently on the site, but they found evidence of a larger number of people living there probably during times of construction. Such alterations to the physical landscape at Fort Center for continuous for almost twenty-five centuries. this would necessitate a volunteer labor force living periodically onsite. The regular group funerals would require lodging for the families of the deceased.
Circular ditches Sears' team of archaeologists found three circular ditches at Fort Center. Two were about 300 feet in diameter, and partially overlapped. A third, later circular ditch was about 1,200 in diameter. It enclosed the earlier ditches, but was not concentric with either of them. This ditch was 25 to 30 feet wide, and six feet deep. Most of the dirt from the ditch had been thrown on the inner side of the ditch. There were two gaps in the ditch, one on the southeast side and another on the east side, closest to Mound B in the Ceremonial Complex.
No artifacts were found in the ditches or in the area enclosed by the ditches, but maize pollen was found under soil that had been disturbed from digging the ditches. Radio-carbon dating indicates that all three circles were complete by 450 BCE. There is no evidence of the circles being used for habitation, ceremonial or defense purposes. Sears holds that the maize pollen indicates that the circles were used for cultivation. The ditches around the circles penetrated the hardpan, helping to drain the prairie soil. Sears also states that the Great Circle likely was used for gardens from several centuries BCE until the end of period II, around 600 to 800. Sears compares the circular ditches at Fort Center to similar circular ditches used for agriculture in pre-Columbian Colombia.