page_title: Key Marco
section_title: Pepper-Hearst excavation
hierarchical_section_title: Key Marco / Pepper-Hearst excavation
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Key Marco showing areas excavated by Pepper-Hearst Expedition (1896), Van Beck (1964), and Widmer (1995). Derived from public domain KeyMarcoMap.jpg.
context_page_description: Key Marco was an archaeological site consisting of a large shell works island next to Marco Island, Florida. A small pond on Key Marco, now known as the "Court of the Pile Dwellers", was excavated in 1896 by the Smithsonian Institution's Pepper-Hearst Expedition, led by Frank Hamilton Cushing. Cushing recovered more than 1,000 wooden artifacts from the pond, the largest number of wooden artifacts from any prehistoric archaeological site in the eastern United States. These artifacts are described as some of the finest prehistoric Native American art in North America. The Key Marco materials are principally divided between the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; and the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. The original pond was completely excavated and refilled. It is now covered by a housing subdivision. Excavations of small parts of the site were also conducted in 1965 and 1995.
context_section_description: The "Court of the Pile Dwellers" at Key Marco was a small muck pond, covering less than an acre. The conditions in the muck preserved the wood and other objects, including those made with bone, fiber, gum, rawhide and gut. Objects of stone, shell and pottery were also found in the pond.
  A great variety of artifacts were found in the pond, including bowls, mortars and pestles, spears, atlatls, cords, ropes, nets, net floats, fishhooks, carved clubs, wooden tablets and plaques, wood ear spools, realistically carved animal heads, carved and painted masks, and a carved wooden feline/human figure (the so-called "Key Marco cat"). Many of the wooden objects, besides the masks, had been painted.  The colors were still vivid when the objects were first removed from the muck. The artifacts were very well preserved due to being buried in the wet conditions.
  At the time the pond was excavated, techniques for preserving wood and other fragile materials removed from the muck had not been developed. The colors on the painted objects quickly faded, and many objects quickly deteriorated. But, a photographer with the excavation party recorded all the objects soon after they were removed from the pond, thus preserving evidence of their appearance. Watercolors were also prepared by Wells M. Sawyer showing the colors of the painted objects.
  Dating the finds from the "Court of the Pile Dwellers" has been a problem.  Because of the limited knowledge of the archaeological discipline at the time, no record of the stratification of the objects was kept.  They cannot be placed in sequence. There is no sign of European trade goods or influence in the finds. Radiocarbon dating did not exist at the time of excavation. Radiocarbon dating of objects which have been handled and stored away from their original environment for long periods may not be reliable. In the 1960s an attempt to radiocarbon date some objects yielded a date of 1670 AD. A second attempt in 1975 using five different objects yielded dates from 55 AD to 850 AD.
caption: Map of Key Marco, showing the pond known as the "Court of the Pile Dwellers" in blue, the Van Beck excavation of 1964 in gold, and the Widmer excavation of 1995 in brown.
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