THE AMAZING TALE OF THE MIAMI CIRCLE

The discovery of a 2,000-year-old site in downtown Miami caused quite a stir.

By Michael Bawaya

In downtown Miami’s financial district, the buildings bear the names of the crème de la crème of commerce— Hyatt, Citibank, Bank of America.Next to the posh Sheraton Biscayne Bay Hotel is a waterfront lot that,it seems,should more likely be occupied by a Starbucks than a 2,000-year-old archaeological site.

Sitting approximately in the middle of this lot is the Miami Circle, a Tequesta Indian site that,in a short time, has gained international renown.Waterfront property was also desirable in prehistoric times, and the now-extinct Tequestas were known to inhabit this area,where the Miami River flows into Biscayne Bay, from approximately 500 B.C.to about A.D. 1700.

Gary Beiter set a can of fish steaks in Louisiana hot sauce on the roof of his car and had at them. “Brunch,” he explained.Dressed in khaki pants,a short-sleeved shirt, and an Indiana Jones hat,Beiter looked every bit the archaeologist. He works for Miami-Dade County, and one of his duties is to serve as custodian of the site.

The Miami Circle is a curiouslooking feature that possesses a hint of otherworldliness.It’s 38 feet in diameter and its limestone bedrock is full of holes.The circle is usually covered with several strips of tarp for protection.Underneath the tarp,plywood boards cover the holes.Some of the holes hold rainwater, and when Beiter removed the plywood countless cockroaches scurried out. He quickly found shark vertebrae, shell tools,and pottery sherds.

Though Beiter had been custodian of the circle for seven months, that was the first time he’d seen the entire site uncovered.He was soon on his stomach,scrutinizing artifacts. “It’s unique to the whole country,”he said of the circle.

The discovery of the circle turned Bob Carr into something of a celebrity. He was frequently interviewed by the media, and he had dozens of requests to give talks. “I don’t know if it changed my life,” he observed. “It certainly made two years of my life extremely busy.”

The Tequesta’s long occupation made this one of the most archaeologically sensitive areas in the city. In the 1870s,the Brickell family established a trading post here, and in 1950 six apartment buildings were erected on the site.The lot had been on the market for a number of years and was purchased for $8 million in 1998 by Brickell Pointe,Ltd.Michael Baumann,Brickell Pointe’s developer, considered it a fine place to erect a twin-tower apartment complex.

Miami had been struggling financially for several years and Brickell Pointe was expected to contribute over $1 million to the city’s tax revenues and 600 units of upscale housing that would enliven the downtown area. Joe Carollo,who was then mayor of Miami,thought Brickell Pointe would be a key contributor to the city’s fiscal rehabilitation.

One day in May of that year, Bob Carr, then the head archaeologist for Miami-Dade County, happened to notice a demolition crew tearing down the old apartments to make way for the new towers.A local ordinance mandates that a cultural resources survey be conducted prior to construction.Once Carr contacted Baumann and informed him of the law, the latter agreed to allow an archaeologist to monitor the project.Pottery sherds, shell refuse,and animal bones—indications of village life—were identified.This led to a hastily arranged salvage excavation, headed by John Ricisak,another county archaeologist.The project,which started in late July,was expected to end in four to six weeks.

There was a large septic tank buried inside the circle’s southern edge,but the site was otherwise in good shape.The archaeologists found hundreds of artifacts each day.When they began digging they discovered late-19thcentury glass beads and coins that were probably associated with the Brickell trading post.As they dug deeper, they encountered prehistoric pottery sherds, faunal bones,and shell tools,and other items.When they struck the limestone bedrock,they found the strange holes.

The excavation continued under difficult circumstances.“We didn’t know when we were going to be kicked off the site,” said Ricisak.He described it as “kind of a ragtag,shoestring-budget operation.”

Nonetheless,they would soon make a remarkable discovery. Because of delays in issuing the construction permits, excavation progressed into October and,as more of the bedrock was revealed,Carr, Ricisak,and surveyor Ted Riggs identified a circle.The archaeologists were at a loss to interpret this feature,as they had never seen anything like it before.Meanwhile,delays in issuing the construction permit gave them additional time to dig.

What might have been: This billboard advertising the twin-tower luxury apartment complex still looms over Brickell Pointe. The City of Miami believed the development would make a significant contribution to its tax base.

MAYA MAYHEM

The excavation had somehow gone on for months with virtually no media coverage. Then Reuters,the British news agency,ran a story.When the Reuters reporter visited the site,he interviewed Riggs as well as Ricisak. Though not an archaeologist, Riggs had no doubt as to the nature of the circle.Having visited Maya sites in Central America,he had some knowledge of their culture, which led him to conclude that the circle was a calendar cut from stone,a work of Maya astronomical genius.According to Riggs,the Maya, likely for ritualistic or religious purposes,used it to track the sun’s position. For good measure,Riggs threw in Stonehenge parallels.

Though the archaeologists working at the site dismissed Riggs’s theories,the Reuters’s reporter swallowed them whole.News of what became known as the Miami Circle, replete with Riggs’s Maya/Stonehenge ruminations,

quickly traveled the globe,appearing in countless newspapers.“I knew I was in trouble,” Ricisak said with a laugh, “when friends of mine in Italy called to tell me they’d seen my photo on the front page of their paper.” Not long after the Reuters article appeared,the Miami Herald published a front-page article on the site,and a media frenzy ensued.

The day the Miami Herald article ran,hundreds of people showed up at the site and the police had to disburse the crowd.Infuriated by the publicity, Baumann came to the site the next day, demanding to know who had informed the press.A security guard was hired to supplement the chain-link fence that protected the site.

The Miami Circle was soon transformed from an obscure archaeological site into a cause célèbre.The media coverage—the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, the Associated Press, the BBC—was relentless, focusing on the circle’s imminent destruction, which galvanized protestors.The stories in the press echoed in the streets and the halls of local and state government.A “circle-cam” was installed in a nearby building, enabling people to watch the excavation live on the Internet. Dozens of Web sites were spawned by the controversy. Hundreds of schoolchildren participated in a letter-writing campaign, pleading with local officials to preserve the circle.The intense publicity was a nightmare for Baumann.

Presented with such a vexing problem,the developer offered an unlikely solution:He proposed to cut the circle into pieces that would be extracted from the ground and moved to a city park for preservation.This,to Baumann,may have been a win/win solution,but others were unimpressed. “It was a ridiculous idea,” said Ricisak.“It would have

served no purpose other than to take some of the heat off the developer and the City of Miami.” Public opposition to the development was fierce,but feckless.Some kind of legal action was required to save the circle. Being a county employee as well as an archaeologist,Carr was very familiar with the local preservation laws that decreed that,on private property,only human burials were protected.But no human remains,other than a few teeth, had been found at the site. Carr,without success,tried to talk Baumann into changing the design of the towers so as to preserve the circle.The circle was perhaps the most important, and certainly the most publicized,find of Carr’s 25-year career, and he would see it bulldozed. But as luck would have it,Carr didn’t know the preservation laws inside out.One This reconstructed dolphin day in mid-January of 1999,he was talking skull, which consists of with Sarah Eaton,the city’s historic preservaapproximately 100 pieces, was tion director.To Carr’s surprise,Eaton said the found at the circle. The dolphin site was in an archaeological conservation skull is the only one to be area.He recalled that,in 1992,Miami amended found at an archaeological site its preservation ordinance because the county outside of the Pacific threatened to sue the city for not protecting its Northwest. The dolphin may have historic structures.But Carr was unaware of the been ceremonially buried. fact that the ordinance amendments established archaeological conservation areas and that the city’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board had the authority to impose conditions—such as the excavation and preservation of an archaeological site at the developer’s expense—on anyone wanting to disturb them.The ordinance also required that all such proposals to disturb these areas be reviewed by the county archaeologist, namely Carr, who would then recommend what archaeology was to be done before a “certifiThese shell tools, which were typically used for woodworking by the cate of appropriateness” for Tequesta, include a whelk adze and axes. the work was issued.As these procedures hadn’t been followed,it appeared to Carr that the City of Miami,in its eagerness to foster development,had violated its own law.

The circle also yielded this articulated shark skeleton. The shark, like the dolphin, was interred on an east-west axis, apparently for ceremonial purposes. Radiocarbon testing indicates the skeleton dates to about A.D. 1600.

STOPPING THE BACKHOE

Thus began the legal machinations,and none too soon,as Baumann’s construction permits were about to be approved.The Dade Heritage Trust,a nonprofit preservation group, filed for an emergency injunction to stop the development.The city, meanwhile,had issued Baumann’s foundation permit, and he had told the archaeologists they were to be off the site by February 1.

On Saturday, January 30,the archaeologists worked furiously to excavate the complete carapace of a sea turtle.Assisting the crew was Baumann himself. “In some ways,”Carr said of Baumann,“he was in the toughest position of all of us.”When the archaeologists returned to the site at dawn on Sunday for their final day of work, Baumann was there again.

As they were working, Baumann received a call on his cellular phone from his lawyer. Baumann was informed that he and Carr were to immediately attend a hearing regarding the Dade Heritage Trust’s injunction at the home of Miami-Dade circuit court judge Thomas Wilson.Both Baumann and Carr were surprised by this turn of events. There,in Wilson’s living room,with the television on (it was Super Bowl Sunday) and the atmosphere more that of a get-together than a hearing,the fate of the circle would be determined.“It was bizarre,” Carr remembered.

Judge Wilson ruled against the emergency injunction. Generous in victory, Baumann gave the archaeologists another 30 days on the site,then he would have a professional stonemason remove the circle. Carr recommended, and Baumann chose, Josh Billig for this challenging job.

Billig was expert in working with the area’s fragile limestone and he was intrigued by the challenge the circle presented.He believed that he could remove the circle by cutting it into numerous pieces.The Miami Herald reported on February 13 that Billig would remove the circle, and that day people began calling him, hoping to talk him out of it.The callers failed to persuade him,though they did give him pause.

That evening,which was both Valentine’s Day and his birthday, Billig and his wife dined near the site.A backhoe was mysteriously delivered to the site,prompting a Herald reporter to call Billig for a comment.Billig was surprised, as he was to supply the equipment for the circle’s removal.He and his wife decided to walk to the site,where they encountered a crowd of protestors.Eventually, Billig spoke briefly with Bobby Billie, a member of the Independent Seminole tribe who had been active in the effort to preserve the circle.Billie told the stonemason to abandon the job.After sleeping on it,Billig took the advice.

Billig’s decision failed to decrease the growing tension.The arrival of the backhoe was a throwing down of the gauntlet. Perhaps as many as 200 people were gathered at the circle’s fence early Monday morning. Inside the fence was the man who had been hired to operate the backhoe.A banner affixed to the security gate proclaimed “Baumann = Cultural Genocide.” The protestors shook the

The Miami Circle’s limestone bedrock is covered with over 500 cut postholes and 24 basins. Apartments were built over the circle in 1950, and the rectangular septic tank of the apartments can be seen. This septic tank created doubt about the site’s age and authenticity.

fence and screamed at the man as he started the backhoe’s engine.One of the archaeologists,Danny Gregory, was told that several of the protestors were armed and,if necessary, were prepared to use force to save the circle.“I was just glad I had a hole to hide in,” he stated.There were no police there,only a lone,thoroughly intimidated security guard hired by Baumann.As his engine idled,the backhoe operator absorbed the taunts and screams of the crowd for about 30 minutes.Then he capitulated, getting into a truck and making his escape.

This complex,volatile situation became all the more so as Miami-Dade County quickly entered the fray. The next day the county’s mayor, Alex Penelas,along with Carr, attended a city commission meeting to argue for preserving the circle.The commissioners,however, refused to let him speak.Mayors Penelas and Carollo resorted to “trading barbs,” said Carr.“It was very intense there for a while.” Carollo feared the city could face a huge lawsuit from Baumann if it reversed its position on the circle.

Thus Penelas decided that the county would go it alone.At a press conference the next day he announced that he would ask the county commissioners to obtain Brickell Pointe through eminent domain,since Baumann refused to sell the land.The county commissioners subsequently voted overwhelmingly in favor of an eminent domain action;however, a hostile takeover based on archaeology was far from routine.And even if their legal strategy succeeded,it would have to be complemented by a financial plan that could raise the millions of dollars necessary to pay off Baumann.

Thomas Goldstein is an assistant county attorney who worked on the case.He said that courts have determined that acquiring private property for football stadiums is a valid public purpose.“Was archaeological preservation a public purpose recognized by the courts?”he asked rhetorically. He knew of only one legal precedent to base his case on,that being the condemnation by the federal

These basaltic axes were found in the circle. They show little evidence of wear and appear to be ritual offerings. Geologists have traced their origin to northern Georgia.

government in 1892 of a railroad that was to run through the Gettysburg battlefield.

Faced with the eminent domain action, Baumann,who bought Brickell Pointe for $8 million, claimed it was now worth approximately $50 million,which was far more money than the county had to spend. With the city and county at cross-purposes—the city was contemplating suing the county for its eminent domain action—the State of Florida sought to resolve the conflict.Carr found himself addressing cabinet meetings headed by Governor Jeb Bush,himself a former real estate developer,as to why the site should be preserved.Eventually the state agreed to provide financial assistance.Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who oversees issues of historic preservation and who later received her 15 minutes of fame for her role in determining the outcome of the last presidential election,was also instrumental in determining the circle’s fate.

ARCHAEOLOGY OR PLUMBING?

Just as the preservationists appeared to be gaining the upper hand,the pro-developers were assisted by an unlikely source in an unexpected way. Jerald Milanich,a curator of archaeology at Gainesville's Florida Museum of Natural History and one of the state’s most prominent archaeologists, began to speak his mind. Milanich, from a distance,had been following the story of the circle and,to some extent, it had been following him.He was frequently contacted by reporters wanting a quote and promoters of the circle wanting support.Though he hadn’t visited the site,he was aware of all the speculation,archaeological and otherwise, about what it really was:a Maya calendar,a UFO launching pad,a product of the people of Atlantis, a drain field for a large septic tank that was built for the apartments that once occupied the site.However absurd these notions seemed to Carr, Ricisak,and the other archaeologists who worked the site,Milanich, for various reasons,thought their conclusion of a 2,000-year-old Tequesta site to be fanciful.He,in fact, found the septic tank explanation to be more plausible.He was concerned that in addition to a huge sum of money, the reputation of Florida archaeology was at stake in this debate.

Deciding to see for himself, Milanich visited the circle in April 1999 along with Jim Miller, head of the state Bureau of Archaeological Research.They were welcomed by Carr and Ricisak,who set to work making their case.Milanich examined the site for perhaps 30 minutes, spending most of the time by the septic tank,then he declared himself ready for lunch.During the course of the meal,Carr and Ricisak,to their displeasure, found that their arguments hadn’t impressed Milanich.When Milanich continued to talk about the septic tank,Ricisak retorted that some people believe the circle to be of extraterrestial orgin,a theory that was as valid as Milanich’s.

Despite the lack of legal precedents,Goldstein,along with fellow county attorney Tom Logue,won the right in April to condemn the property specifically for archaeological and historical preservation.A subsequent jury trial was to determine the amount Baumann would receive for the land.

In late September, shortly before that trial was to begin, Baumann and the county agreed to an out of court settlement of $26.7 million.“I think it was an excellent deal for (Baumann),” Goldstein said.“And in the end it was probably a good deal for the county.” Getting the money wasn’t easy. The state put up $15 million,the county $3 million,and the remaining $8.7 million was borrowed from the Trust for Public Lands,a nonprofit land conservation foundation.Even at that point, Milanich’s skepticism still resonated.To make certain it wasn’t being hoodwinked into buying a fabulously expensive septic tank, the state dispatched its own team of archaeologists to the site for six weeks before handing over the money.When the team corroborated Carr’s and Ricisak’s conclusions,the deal was finally done.

Despite this, Milanich continues to harbor doubts. “I’m still looking for someone to address what happened to the site in the twentieth century and how it affected the pre-Columbian remains,” he said.

A number of archaeological questions remain about the circle,such as its purpose,and even its age—the 2,000-year-old date is derived from charcoal and shell

Fish vertebrae were used to make this carved bone ornament (front and back) that was found within the circle.

Here We Go Again

On one side of the Sheraton Biscayne Bay Hotel is the Miami Circle. On the other side is Brickell Park, a 2.4-acre rectangle that extends to Biscayne Bay. The City of Miami was in the process of selling the park to a New York developer, Gotham Partners, for $18 million. Prior to finalizing the deal, Gotham Partners hired an archaeological consulting firm to perform an assessment of the property. In August of 2001, the firm, headed by none other than Bob Carr, found a number of human remains that are thought to be related to the Miami Circle. Upon learning of the discovery, Gotham Partners backed out of the deal. —Michael Bawaya

Catherine Hummingbird Ramirez sits in front of the shrine. She has seen sick people come to the circle and be healed. “The whole area is positive energy,” she said.

found within the circle,not from the feature itself.“I get ulcers when I hear people saying what it is,because we don’t know,” said Beiter. Carr, who is now director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy,Inc.,will publish an archaeological report on the circle in September that could answer these questions.

WHAT TO DO WITH IT

The chain-link fence surrounding the site is festooned with flowers,photographs, ribbons,newspaper clippings, and a “no trespassing”sign.The fence has evolved into a shrine of sorts and Catherine Hummingbird Ramirez serves as its priestess.Ramirez,who identified herself as a Caribe Tribal Indian queen, generally comes twice a week to maintain the shrine.She is warm and motherly, with limpid brown eyes.

“It has a positive impact on people,” she said of the circle.“It’s very spiritual.” She remarked that luminaries ranging from the Dalai Lama to Miami Vice actor Philip Michael Thomas have been drawn to the site.

Approximately four years after its discovery,much of the sound and fury surrounding the circle has subsided.“I think this is one of the success stories of archaeological preservation in America,”Carr said with pride.He hopes it will serve as a model for other cities.Having escaped the clutches of the developer, the circle is now in the gentler hands of a mini-bureaucracy, the 18-member Miami Circle Planning Group.Blood and treasure were spent to save it, so many people feel the circle must in some fashion repay the public. For the longest time the question has been how best to give the public access to the site without exploiting it.Some Native Americans are opposed to converting what they consider to be a sacred place into an exhibit.Others are concerned that it be done with the proper sensitivity. Ramirez is untroubled by the prospect of an exhibit,as the site has already been disturbed.“There’s no way to bring it back to what it was,”she observed.

The planning group,which includes two Native Americans,is forging ahead with an interim plan to build an open structure with a thatched roof that would protect the site and give the public easy access to it. It’s estimated that such a structure would cost about $386,000 and that it could be built by this fall.As for a possible long-range plan,the planning group has endorsed an 18-month study to be conducted by the National Park Service exploring the feasibility of the circle becoming part of nearby Biscayne National Park.

Acknowledging that the planning group has been moving at a very deliberate pace,one of its members, Michael Spring,quipped:“The site is two thousand years old.The goal is to come up with a long-range plan before another two thousand years go by.”

“The whole tale of the Miami Circle is really an amazing one for a lot of different reasons,” said Ricisak,who thought all along the site would be destroyed.“It was totally uncharacteristic of the way things work in Miami.”

Many people have attributed various powers to the circle,some going so far as to claim that it can heal the sick. Carr makes no such claims;however, he believes that the circle is not merely an archaeological phenomenon,but also a social phenomenon that brought diverse groups together. And to his mind the circle has one minor miracle to its credit:Carr marveled at how a community that had been so uninterested in its past suddenly, dramatically, embraced it.