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A West Indian Ax from Florida*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

John M. Goggin  and
Irving Rouse
John M. Goggin
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yale Peabody, Museum, New Haven, Conn.
Irving Rouse
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yale Peabody, Museum, New Haven, Conn.
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Extract

A stone ax of West Indian type is included among the collections from north Florida in the Florida State Museum (cat. no. 3535). In view of the ever-interesting question of Antillean-Floridian relationships, this specimen seems worth considering in some detail.

Information in the Florida State Museum catalog indicates that the ax was received in 1914 from A. W. Sargent of Gainesville who found it on the surface near Newnan's Lake, Alachua County. This is about five miles east of Gainesville. It was accompanied by the base of a spearhead, an arrowhead, and a sherd of St. Johns Check Stamped pottery (cat. nos. 3536-3538).

The ax has a roughly rectangular blade; shallow, grooved neck; and broad butt, with a large ear-like projection on either side of the butt and a pair of smaller ones on top (Fig. 55). In cross section, one side is strongly convex and the other partially flattened, so that the artifact might more properly be called an “adze.” Its length is 15.8 cm. and its width 10.9 cm.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 4Part1 , April 1948 , pp. 323 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1948

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Footnotes

*

This note is published in connection with the Florida research of the Yale Caribbean Program. Thanks are due to Nile C. Schaffer, Acting Director, Florida State Museum, for his generous cooperation.

References

1 Identification by Professor Adolph Knopf, Department of Geology, Yale University.

2 J. Walter Fewkes, “A Prehistoric Island Culture Area of America,“ Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, No. 34, Washington, 1924, pp. 108–9, Pis. 30–2; Sven Lov én, Origins of the Tainan Culture, West Indies, Göteborg, 1935, pp. 171–210.

3 E.g., Henry and Paule Reichlen, “Contribution a l'arch éologie de la Guayane Francaise,” Journal de la Soc été des Américanistes, N.S., Vol. 35, Paris, 1947, pp. 21–4, Fig. 4.

4 Fewkes, op. cit., p. 267.

5 Harrington, M. R., “Cuba before Columbus,” Indian Notes and Monographs, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, 1921, Vol. 1, Fig. 27, p. 118 Google Scholar.

6 Irving Rouse, “West Indies,” in “Handbook of South American Indians,“ Vol. 4, Bulletin, Bureau of American Ethnology, No. 143 (in press).

7 Rouse, Irving, “Porto Rican Prehistory,” New York Academy of Sciences, Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Vol. 35, Nos. 3–4 (in press)Google Scholar.

8 Goggin, John M., “A Preliminary Definition of Archaeological Areas and Periods in Florida,” AMERICAN ANTIQUITY, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 114-27, 1947 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The material in the Florida State Museum includes a series of accessions, all apparently from this immediate vicinity (i.e., along Prairie Creek just south of the lake). These include (accession number given): “Prairie Creek Mound” 293, 3635, 3637), “vicinity of Prairie Creek Mound” (231, 320, 336, 358, 406, 451, 473, 492, 499, 546, 596, 603, 628), “six miles southeast of Gainesville” (85, 93), “Vidal Farm” (84), and “along the A.C.L. tracks south of Newnan's Lake” (17). The Yale collections are all from the midden itself.

10 For a discussion of the above types and periods, see Goggin, op. cit.