The Myakkahatchee Creek Archaeological Site (8SO397) is located in North Port in

Sarasota County, Florida Sarasota County is a county located in Southwest Florida. At the 2020 US census, the population was 434,006. Its county seat is Sarasota and its largest city is North Port. Sarasota County is part of the North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton, FL ...

, United States. The site was discovered when the area was being prepared for housing in 1982. Crews building Cold Springs Lane and Reiterstown Road unearthed artifacts and human remains. Archaeologists discovered a rare inland multi-period Manasota Indian village near the Myakkahatchee Creek, a major transportation route from the Gulf of Mexico inland. What makes the site so rare is that evidence of 10,000 years of occupation was excavated and very little is known about inland villages. The Manasota people remained permanently settled as fishing–hunter–gatherers between Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Culturally, they were the northernmost of the Glades south Florida culture region. Archaeologists found a large

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

, as well as a large U-shaped ritual earthwork with a burial mound. The area has yet to be professionally excavated. The creek is now part of North Ports

Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park is a heavily wooded park in North Port, Florida, north of Interstate 75. History In the 1970s and 1980s, new residential subdivisions were being built in North Port with development by General Development Co ...

. Luer and colleagues commented after their salvage archaeology at the Myakkahatchee Creek site in 1987 that: "Archeological site destruction has been rampant and widespread in the Upper Charlotte/ Lower Myakkahatchee River area and is still ongoing. The remaining resources urgently need to be identified, inventoried, and studied before they too are lost." According to the state's master file, there are a total of 205 prehistoric sites in Charlotte County that have been presumed lost by 2018. Several hundred likewise have been lost in Sarasota County with the exception of

Historic Spanish Point Historic Spanish Point is a museum and environmental complex located in Osprey, Florida at 337 North Tamiami Trail. The museum includes an archeological exhibit of a prehistoric shell mound known as a midden, a turn-of-the-century pioneer home ...

, Warm Mineral Springs and the

Little Salt Spring Little Salt Spring is an archaeological and paleontological site in North Port, Florida. The site has been owned by the University of Miami since 1980 with research performed there by the university's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric ...

Archaic Period sites.

References

{{Indigenous peoples of Pre-Columbian Florida Archaeological sites in Florida Sarasota metropolitan area North Port, Florida