Fort Center: An Archaeological Site in the Lake Okeechobee Basin (Ripley P. Bullen Monographs in Anthropology and History, Number 4)

xi, 212 pp. "Raising intriguing questions about the relationships of Florida's prehistoric population to the Caribbean Basin and about the origins of maize agriculture in the eastern United States, William H. Sears documents his years of fieldwork at this important Lake Okeechobee Basin site. Fort Center, named for a nineteenth-century Seminole War fort built on the earlier Indian site, consists of a variety of earthen structures--mounds, linear earthworks, circular ditches, and middens--all associate with the Belle Glade culture. Stretching along Fisheating Creek for nearly one mile, the site was first occupied as early as 500 B.C. The earliest occupants cultivated maize in fields drained by circular ditches. Later fields closely resemble the raised linear earthworks used for prehistoric agriculture in Mesoamerica and northern South America. Sears suggests that components of the Fort Center agricultural complex--maize and the use of lime to prepare it, and the use of ditches and raised fields--were introduced from such tropical regions."--jacket