Ancient Weedon Island Canoe
A prehistoric, pre-Columbian canoe has been found at Weedon Island. It is made from a single pine tree and is 45 feet long.
Kolianos said carbon dating of the canoe shows it to be about 1,100 years old.
Long before Sunken Gardens and Tropicana Field and the Don CeSar, there was the Weedon Island culture, she said.
“This was a heavily populated area,” she said. The culture blossomed between the 3rd century and 1200.
The canoe first was found seven years ago when a beachcomber searching for old bottles spotted part of the vessel protruding from the ground.
Because the preserve didn’t have a history center at the time, the discovery went unreported for years, Kolianos said. Finally, it came to light, and a team of state and local archaeologists including Kolianos mounted a plan to excavate the vessel.
In December, about 10 archaeology students, volunteers and state archaeologists plodded through the mangroves to the site. They quickly built a makeshift dam with sandbags and plastic to keep the tide out, and they began digging. They uncovered the vessel’s rotting gunwales and dug beneath it to take measurements. Under the keel, they found a long pole about 3 inches in diameter. The pole could have been used to propel the canoe, or it might have been used to roll it onto the shore.
Read the rest and see the picture at tbo.com.
There is information and pictures of canoe trails and boardwalks on TuffyDog’s Weedon Island page.
December 18th, 2008 at 8:51 am
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