...this fellow lives there, but had nothing to say about it.
Jan Brown said it might be like a Lowes or Home Depot, a stockpile for construction projects, but then again it could have been like a lighthouse or beacon perhaps, but the truth is that only the people who built it really know - and like that Iguana, they don't have much to say...
I couldn't help but be drawn to what looks like a wall, above that looter's pit:
Here's the detail from the site map, my own two centavos added:
When I returned for a second visit, Jacob and I walked on and around it. This somewhere around the top left hand corner of the structure to the left in the site map - and hopefully the photo captures that rounded feeling. One of the other larger structures, a platform mound that was probably an "elite" residence, had rounded corners that Jan said showed perhaps a later time of construction...
(approx. lower left corner, structure to left in site map)
(Above and below: slightly different camera angles)
There were sort of "points" to the outer edge, sometimes like a small circular stack:
Jacob plucked a loom weight from where the tide washes the edge:
It was "solid walking," no rocking when walking around the structure...
...and Jacob's opinion was that the whole thing was carefully constructed:
And I felt it was too:
A link to some info by Dr. S. J. Mazzullo, Department of Geology
at Wichita State University: http://ambergriscaye.com/marcogonzales/
2 comments :
Seems like the huge number of conch shells should be a first consideration. All the shells I see are intact, so were they being used as a construction material? Are they food or offering?
They were the main food supply, but were a const. mtl. as well. Some huge conch mounds, like shell mounds around here (along the Housatonic - some with burials in them, according to C.C. Coffin) got crushed to be used as road beds and other purposes. An "offering" might be an additional part of it all - that I hadn't heard anywhere else, but might be a valid consideration...
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