<< Other Photo Pages >> Mount Royal Site - Artificial Mound in United States in The South
Submitted by AKFisher on Friday, 04 August 2023 Page Views: 234
Pre-ColumbianSite Name: Mount Royal Site Alternative Name: Mount Royal MoundsCountry: United States
NOTE: This site is 66.195 km away from the location you searched for.
Region: The South Type: Artificial Mound
Nearest Town: Crescent City, FL
Latitude: 29.436430N Longitude: 81.66027W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Mount Royal (8PU35) is a U.S. archaeological site close to where the St. Johns River exits from Lake George in Putnam County, Florida. It is located three miles (5 km) south of Welaka, in the Mount Royal Airpark, off County Road 309 on the eastern bank of the St. Johns River. The site consists of a large sand mound and several nearby middens.
The Mount Royal site was occupied beginning about 4,000 years ago. The site was largely unoccupied from 500 BCE until 750 CE. Mount Royal was occupied again after 750, and after 1050 it grew into the main town of an important chiefdom with connections to the Mississippian culture. The town lost importance after 1300, but a settlement, called Enacape, was still there when Europeans entered the area in the 1560s. The Spanish mission of San Antonio de Enacape was located in the town from 1595 until after 1656.
Location:
The Mount Royal site is located on the east side of the St. Johns River between Lake George, to the south, and Little Lake George. The site is on the north side of a short section of the river that flows to the west (the river in general flows northward). The most prominent feature is a large sand mound about 90 metres (300 ft) from the river. A causeway or avenue, still visible at the end of the 19th century, but since obscured, ran north from the mound to a rectangular pond. The mound is on a 1 acre (0.40 ha) parcel now owned by the State of Florida. The surrounding area, including the middens and village area, is part of the Mount Royal Airpark residential development.[4]
Archaeological investigation:
The Bartrams
The Mount Royal site entered the archaeological record in 1766, when John Bartram and his son William visited it. William returned to the site 15 years later. They found a sand mound 100 yards (90 m) in diameter, and almost 20 feet (6 m) tall. The Bartrams described an "avenue" running north from the mound, with raised banks on the sides. The avenue was "level as a floor", 60 yards (50 m) wide, and extended about .75 miles (1.2 km) to a rectangular pond 100 yards (91.4 m) wide and 150 yards (137.2 m) long. John Bartram speculated the pond had been a borrow pit from which the sand in the mound had been taken.[5]
On William's return to the site, he found that an orange grove and palms and live oaks that had flanked the avenue in 1766 had been cleared in preparation for planting. The 19th-century archaeologist Samuel Foster Haven called the reports published by the Bartrams "the earliest 'careful and intelligent' descriptions of a native American Indian mound."[6]
Clarence Moore:
In 1891, Clarence Bloomfield Moore, a self-trained archaeologist, investigated shell middens along the St. Johns River. In 1893, he returned to the St. Johns and began excavating sand mounds, including the one at Mount Royal. In two short seasons (two-and-a-half weeks in 1893 and three weeks in 1894), Moore excavated and backfilled almost all of the sand mound.[7] He published his findings at Mount Royal in two parts in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1894, a total of more than 250 pages.[8]
Before Moore's first visit, the mound had been plowed over and the sides of the mound had slumped down, raising the ground level around the mound. As a result, Moore encountered problems with measuring the height of the mound. He estimated that the mound was 4.9 m. high, and stated that it had been much higher originally. He reported that the mound was 168 metres (551 ft) in circumference. The connection of the avenue to the mound was no longer discernible. He reported that the avenue was 12 to 20 yards (11 to 18 m) wide, flanked by berms that were an average of 2.5 feet (0.76 m) high and 12 feet (3.7 m) wide.[9]
Later investigations:
In the early 1950s John Goggin and his students from the University of Florida collected potsherds and other artifacts from the ground surface of the middens and other areas surrounding the Mount Royal mound. By this time the avenue reported by the Bartrams and Moore was no longer visible from the ground, but did show up in aerial photos. With the area slated for residential development, B. Calvin Jones of the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research conducted investigations in 1983, 1994 and 1995, including shovel tests and focused excavations of selected areas.[10]. Souce: Wikipedia.
References:
1. National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
2. Milanich 1999, p. 8.
3. Milanich 1999, pp. 9–13.
4. Ashley 2005, pp. 265–266.
5. Ashley 2005, p. 265.
6. Ashley 2005, pp. 265–66.
7. Milanich 1999, pp. 3, 6.
8. Milanich 1999, Sources.
9. Ashley 2005, pp. 266–67.
10. Ashley 2005, p. 272.
Sources:
Ashley, Keith H. (September–December 2005). "Archaeological Overview of Mt. Royal". The Florida Anthropologist. 58 (3–4): 265–286 – via University of Florida Digital Collections.
Milanich, Jerald T. (1994). Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1273-2.
Milanich, Jerald T. (1999). Famous Florida Sites: Crystal River and Mount Royal. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-1694-8.
Further reading and information:
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield (1894). Certain Sand Mounds of the St. John's River, Florida, Part 1. Philadelphia: The Levytype Company. - Free downloadable ebook
Moore, Clarence Bloomfield (1894). Certain Sand Mounds of the St. John's River, Florida, Part 2. Philadelphia: The Levytype Company. - Free downloadable ebook
Directions:
From Crescent City, FL via Huntington Rd, 11.1 mi.
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