What is Little Salt Spring?
Ecological Preserve
Little Salt Spring Archaeological and Ecological Preserve is a 112-acre parcel of land owned by the University of Miami, located in south Sarasota County in the City of North Port, in the state of Florida, USA. The site contains a 260-foot wide by 250-foot deep sinkhole [A natural depression in a land surface formed by the dissolution and collapse of a cavern roof. Sinkholes are roughly funnel-shaped and on the order of tens of meters in size. They generally occur in limestone regions and are connected to subterranean passages.] where evidence of Florida's earliest inhabitants has been found in the sediments of the 40-foot deep basin and the 90-foot ledge of the spring.
During the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, 8,600 to 12,000 radio carbon years ago, the site was a wetland oasis in an arid environment attracting extinct animals, such as giant tortoises and ground sloths, as well as the people who hunted them. In the middle Archaic period, 6,000 - 7,500 years ago when water filled much of the basin, the spring served as an occupation site and mortuary pond where the occupants interred their dead in the peat of the upper basin of the spring and adjacent wetland slough--a fascinating time capsule of Florida's earliest prehistory. |
Underwater Archaeological Research
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Informative Links
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University of Miami (Underwater archeological and ecological preserve)
About.com (Well-Preserved Archaic and Paleoindian Site) YouTube (Archaeological Excavation) Tampa Bay Online (Divers find prehistoric artifacts) Paper No. 65-0 (A 12,000-YEAR RECORD OF SUBTROPICAL CLIMATE CHANGE) |
