User:Donald Albury/Pine Island Canal

Draft article.

The Pine Island Canal (8LL34) is a canal, now heavily damaged, which crosses Pine Island in Florida from the Pineland Archeological District to Indian Field, a distance of about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi). The canal was dug about 500 to 1,000 years ago, and is believed to have been used as a canoe route. Much of the canal has been damaged or destroyed by development since the late 19th century.

Location

Pine Island is low lying, and its shores were largely covered by mangroves. One of the few places providing easy access to the interior of the island from the water was the group of shell mounds at what is now called the Pineland Site. Late nineteenth-century visitors to the Pineland area described a canal extending across Pine Island from the Pineland site. By the 1970s, however, much of the canal had been altered by development, and was in danger of disapearing.

The canal crossed Pine Island, connecting a group of archaeological sites known as the Pineland Site on the northwest side of the island with a couple of burial mounds and a shell key called Indian Field on the northeast side. The canal was 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) long. The Pineland and Indian Field sites date to late-prehistoric and early historic times. The canal was likely dug 500 to 1,000 years ago, and possibly as early as 2,000 years ago.

Late nineteenth-century visitors Frank Cushing and Andrew Douglas described the Pine Island Canal at its western end at the Pineland Site as being 9 metres (30 ft) wide and 1.5 to 2.5 metres (4.9 to 8.2 ft) deep measured from the tops of the berms along both sides of the canal. By 1980 the canal through the Pineland Site had become a narrow irrigation ditch As the canoes used by the Indigenous peoples of Florida were on average only 40 centimetres (16 in) wide, and had a draft of no more than 15 centimetres (5.9 in), the canal dimensions were ample for canoe use.

The western part of the canal beyond the Pineland site crossed land that has been cleared and levelled, and no trace of the canal could be found in 1980. Aerial photographs from the 1970s showed a thin linear feature crossing the eastern part of the island towards the Indian Field site. Ground inspection in 1980 found that the raised ridges flanking the canal were badly eroded, elevated no more than 10 centimeters above the natural ground level, while the canal bed was largely filled in and only a few centimeters below the natural ground level. The canal was overgrown with the pines and saw palmettos that covered the surrounding land. At some points on the eastern side of the island the canal had been further impacted by the cutting of firebreaks and the removal of pine stumps.

Aerial photos from the 1950s, before land on the western side of the island was cleared, clearly showed the canal extending all the way across the island. In those photos the canal bed was consistently about 4.5 metres (15 ft) wide, and the raised banks were each about 6 metres (20 ft) wide, with a total width of 16.5 metres (54 ft).

A trench across a relatively undisturbed section of the canal in the middle of the island revealed a profile consistent with measurements based on aerial photographs. The swale between the canal banks was about 5.5 metres (18 ft) wide, the crest of each bank was about another 3.5 metres (11 ft) from the swale, while the crests of the canal banks were about 13 metres (43 ft) apart. Sand had eroded from the banks into the canal. Differences in the color of the sand in the walls of the trench indicated that the canal bed had originally been about 8 metres (26 ft) wide 30 centimetres (12 in) below the natural level of the ground, and about 5 metres (16 ft) wide 60 centimetres (24 in) below the natural level of the ground. A hardpan had formed at the 60 cm level, comparable to the hardpan in undisturbed soil away from the canal. Luer presumes that the canal would have been deeper to reach groundwater.

The eastern end of the canal reaches Matlacha Pass opposite an island called Indian Field. The canal probably continued across the tidal zone of Pine Island, but natural forces and the digging of mosquito control ditches have erased all traces of that part of the canal. Two sand burial mounds were near the eastern end of the canal. One, recorded as "Pine Island 8" (8LL40), was completely dismantled by Clarence Bloomfield Moore in 1900 and 1904. Moore found more than 250 burials in the mound. The second burial mound and another site, (8LL783 and 8LL784), have not been scientifically studied, but vandals removed some human remains from the sites. Artifacts excavated from the Pine Island 8 mound included many of European origin, indicating that the mound was in use after European contact. Luer suggests that the close association of the Pine Island 8 mound, the Indian Field site, and the Pine Island canal indicates that the canal was probably construction in late pre-Columbian times and continued in use after European contact.

Indian Field

Indian Field (archaeological site 8LL39), previously known as "Indian Old Field", is a shell works island with a shell mound. (The island is privately owned, and visitors must have prior permission.) Ceramic shards of a type carbon-dated to 600 to 1100 BP at another site have been found at Indian Field. (Frank Hamilton Cushing reported in 1897 that he had been told that the Pine Island Canal reached "shell elevations" on the east side of Pine Island, which Luer assumes means Indian Field.)

A valley extends through the Indian Field island. Luer describes this valley as a partially filled-in channel, originally at sea level, that was an extension of the canal across Pine Island. Luer notes that the channel is similar in width to the canal on Pine Island. A mound on the northern end of the island has been heavily modified, and has an occupied residence on its top. A smaller and lower shell deposit is on the south end of the island. Luer notes similarities of the features at Indian Field with other shell works sites in the Charlotee Harbor area. Luer interprets Indian Field as a way-station or monitoring point on a canoe route from the Pineland site across Pine Island and Matlacha Pass to the mainland and eastward.

Cape Coral canal

In 1883, Charles Kenworthy of the Smithsonian Institution reported a claim that the Pine Island Canal continued on the mainland for another 14 miles (23 km). Aerial photographs from the 1940s of the Cape Coral area, across Malatcha Pass from Pine Island, show a linear feature that resembles the Pine Island Canal in aerial photographs of the same period. (The Cape Coral area has been subject to extensive development starting in the late 1950s, and no trace of the linear feature was visible in the late 1980s.) The feature was visible over about 6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi), starting about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) east of Indian Field and running eastward about 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi). The line then turned and ran east-northeast for another 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi), disappearing near Hancock Creek. Luer suggests that the linear feature across Cape Coral was a canal similar to the Pine Island Canal.

George Luer suggests that construction of the Pine Island Canal and of similar canals elsewhere in southern Florida are indications of the integration of the region under the Calusa.

The Pine Island Canal is one of several prehistoric canoe canals in southern Florida. The Mud Lake Canal (8MO32), which crosses the base of Cape Sable in Everglades National Park, is the best preserved of the canals. Nearby is the obscure Snake Bight Canal (8MO29). The Naples Canal (8CR59), in Naples, Florida, has been destroyed by development. Two canals connect the archaeological site at Ortona with Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River. Another canoe canal, Walker's Canal (8WL344), has been described in Walton County, in the Florida Panhandle.

Ales Hrdlicka,

Charles Kenworthy (1883), M. H. Simons (1884), Andrew E. Douglass (1881–1885), Clarence Moore (1905), and R. D. Wainwright (1918) wrote about Pineland.

Sources

• Luer, George M. (June 1989a). "Calusa Canals in Southwestern Florida: Routes of Tribute and Exchange". The Florida Anthropologist. 42 (2): 89–130 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
• Luer, George M. (June 1989b). "A Seminole Burial on Indian Field (8LL39), Lee County, Southwestern Florida". The Florida Anthroplogist. 42 (2): 131–133 – via University of Florida Digital Collection.
• Luer, George M. (March 1991). "Historic Resources at the Pineland Site, Lee County, Florida". The Florida Anthropologist. 44 (1): 59–75 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
• Luer, George M.; Wheeler, Ryan J. (September 1997). "How the Pine Island Canal Worked: Topography, Hydraulics, and Engineering". The Florida Anthropologist. 50 (3): 115–131 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
• Luer, George M.; House, Wayne "Bud" (March 2001). "Further Loss of the Pine Island Canal, with Comments on Segment 3". The Florida Anthropologist. 54 (1): 55–56 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
• Luer, George M.; Wheeler, Ryan J. (June 2001). "An Experiment in Dating the Pine Island Canal". The Florida Anthropologist. 54 (2): 87–89 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
• Marquardt, William H.; Walker, Karen J. (2012). "The Pineland Site Complex: An Environmental and Cultural History". In Marquardt, William H.; Walker, Karen J. (eds.). The Archaeology of Pineland: A Coastal Southwest Florida Site Complex (PDF). Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. pp. 793–920. ISBN 9781881448136.
• Thompson, Victor D.; Marquardt, William H.; Walker, Karen J. (January–March 2014). "A Remote Sensing Perspective on Shoreline Modification, Canal Construction and Household Trajectories along Florida's Southwest Gulf Coast". Archaeological Prospection. 21 (1): 59–73. doi:10.1002/arp.1470.
• Patterson, Denége (September 2012). "A Tour of the Islands of Pine Island Sound: A Geological, Archaeological, and Historical Perspective Part 2 in a series: Part Island" (PDF). Friends of the Rendell Research Center. Retrieved November 9, 2018.