Garden Patch Archeological Site (8Di4)

About this property

The Garden Patch is a Middle Woodland archaeological site in Horseshoe Cove, near Horseshoe Beach, Florida, off County Road 351. For a major part of its occupation, the site was a ceremonial center associated with the Swift Creek and Weeden Island cultures. On April 25, 1991, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Garden Patch is sixteen kilometers (ten miles) north of the mouth of the Suwannee River, and two km (1.2 mi) from the Gulf of Mexico, near the western end of Horseshoe Cove, a slight indentation in the Big Bend Coast on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The Big Bend Coast has a very shallow slope, with a thin layer of soil, primarily sand, over limestone. It consists of fresh-water swamps and ponds, salt-water marshes and ponds, tidal flats and tidal creeks. Dunes that formed on slightly raised spots in the underlying limestone during the late Pleistocene emerge as islands along the coast and support coastal hammocks inland. Sea level rise in the last few thousand years has transformed old dunes that were inland into islands. Seventeen archaeological sites adjacent to the western half of Horseshoe Cove (some 36 square kilometres (14 sq mi) in area) have been identified. The history of those sites appear to be related to the rise of Garden Patch as a ceremonial center. The western Horseshoe Cove is surrounded by a 6-to-12-kilometre (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide area in which no archaeological sites have been found. Two islands in Horseshoe Cove, Butler Island, and Bird Island, have archaeological sites related to Garden Patch. The sites on Butler and Bird islands were originally on the mainland, but a rise in sea level cut them off from the mainland. The site on Bird Island was occupied 2480–2290 BC, 360–170 BC, and, after the site had become an island, 810–980. Butler Island was occupied 170 BC – AD 5 and, after the site had become an island, 885–1215. Garden Patch was occupied 25–120 AD and 240–980. The first occupation of the Garden Patch, 25–120 AD, is interpreted as a homestead. Starting around 240, a new occupation of the site resulted in the construction of mounds, marking Garden Patch as a ceremonial center, contemporary with the development of ceremonial centers at Crystal River and Shell Mound (near Cedar Key). The ceremonial center continued in use for about three centuries, and then was abandoned. Later, a previously unused area next to the ceremonial center was occupied for a couple of centuries. Clarence Bloomfield Moore investigated three mounds "near Horseshoe Point" in 1902. Wallis and McFadden identify those mounds with mounds VII, V, and VI at the Garden Patch site. Moore excavated some burials and a few artifacts from Mound V. A surface collection at the site was conducted in 1948. Test excavations of the site were conducted in the 1970s by archaeology students. Starting in 2010, the site was mapped and additional excavations conducted.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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