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Shell and Sand Mounds
of Tick Island, Florida
Architect Richard Thornton is a member of an alliance of Creek, Choctaw and
Seminole scholars, who over the past seven years have been intensely studying
the heritage of the Muskogean peoples. Much of their activities have involved
re-examination of the archives of the early Spanish, English and French
exploration of the Southeastern United States. We have asked Richard to provide
AccessGenealogy with some of his work. As we add to these articles we will
also be providing a question and answer section for the reader to ask questions
of Richard.
When English settlers first arrived
in Florida, shell mounds were endemic to coastal areas.
Not much thought was given to them until the late 1800s
when the Florida East Coast Railroad was being built.
Stone suitable for making construction gravel was
non-existent in much of Florida, so railroad
construction crews substituted crushed shells excavated
from Native American mounds. The shell mounds were so
commonplace and unremarkable esthetically, no one
questioned the practice. After the railroad was
completed, newcomers flocked to Florida. This coincided
with the advent of automobiles. The automobiles needed
paved roads to transverse the swampy terrain of the
Florida. Road construction contractors immediately found
the seemingly inexhaustible supply of Indian shell
mounds just as convenient a source of raw materials as
the railroad crews had earlier. By the late 1920s
hundreds of the mounds had been completely destroyed.
The state highway department switched to engineered
concrete paving containing crushed stone in the 1930s,
but Florida homeowners continue to utilize crushed
shells for driveways.
On Tick Island, near Jacksonville, FL contractors were
merrily tearing away at another shell mound when workers
found stone tools and weapons mixed with the shells.
Word got out. Some amateur collectors began poking
around the site looking for perfect spear points,
ornaments and pottery. Before the ancient structures
were totally destroyed, a Ripley Bullen, a professional
archeologist investigated the site.
Until recently, the hundreds of shell rings and mounds
along the Atlantic Coast and shell mounds along rivers
in the Piedmont were thought to be the remains of
temporarily occupied ceremonial centers or seasonal
camping spots. The very early dates of many sites
influenced archaeologists to assume that they were only
piles of shells and debris that arose spontaneously at
feasting grounds. Perhaps some, or many, were. The first
discovery to challenge this assumption was at Tick
Island.
At Tick Island, formal burials with grave goods were
found under a very large mound that was radiocarbon
dated to approximately 3500 BC by archaeologist Ripley
Bullen. The few archaeologists, who were even aware of
his discovery, responded that the large mound was the
product of repeated generations of temporary visitors,
who piled up sand and shells over a hallowed spot in
ceremonies. They continued to interpret all Archaic
Period mounds and rings as “middens” or piles of
accumulated debris. However, Bullen’s work indicated
that much of the mound at Tick Island was built in a
very short time. It is not clear what form of social
organization or religious values would enable a
community of fishermen and gatherers to construct such a
large project in a few years, but they did.
The structures at Tick Island were begun almost as early
as those at Watson Brake, LA (See article on Watson
Brake.) They actually may have been completed prior to
the time that work stopped at Watson Brake. Tick
Island’s antiquity is surprising enough, but the form of
its main mound is astounding. It predates the earliest
Maya mounds by about 3000 years, and those of the Zoque
(Olmecs) by 2300 years! Yet the mound is surprisingly
similar in form to both the early Zoque and Maya mounds.
It had a ramp leading to a flat top, where it is
presumed that ceremonies were held. The mound was too
damaged by erosion and vandalism.
Did the Zoque (Olmecs) migrate to Mexico from the
Southeastern United States?
The Maya’s recorded on their stone stelae that the
ancestors of the Zoque arrived in three great flotillas
of canoes onto the coast of Vera Cruz, Mexico around the
year 1600 BC. This is about the same time that Poverty
Point, LA was settled, (See article on Poverty Point.)
Up to this point in time, pottery was not made in
Mexico. The Zoque apparently introduced the technology
for making pottery. Indigenous peoples in what is now
Georgia and Florida had been making pottery since about
2500 BC. The architecture of Tick Island, FL and Watson
Brake, LA predate any structures in Mexico or South
America. Did the first steps beyond being migratory
hunters begin along the Gulf Coast of the United States,
and then spread southward to Mexico, the Caribbean and
South America. It is a tantalizing possibility.
Probable appearance of Tick Island, FL around 3200 BC
Photo: VR image by Richard Thornton, Architect
Notes About this Material
Source: Richard Thornton, an alliance of Muskogean scholars, professors and
professionals. Copyright Richard Thornton, Blairsville, GA, 2010. Used here with
permission.
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