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i c� 40 HP3 Farm 10-90M40te-as1 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet arts APoraysl nra 10240M ra Section number H Page _Z_ Indian River Narrows Cultural resource District Sellards of the Florida Geological Survey and Scllards conducted additional excavations of the site in 1916 (Rouse 1981:65). Sellards concluded that the materials were genuinely contemporaneous with the associated extinct animals, such as Columbian elephant (Elephas columbi), mastadon (Mammul americanum), horse (Eguus leidyi), saber -tooth cat (Smilodon spp. ), and other species, and not intrusive to the geological deposit (Sellards 1916:121- 160). These finds and their apparent association caused an immense controversy because many anthropologists of the period refused to believe that Indian ancestors had existed in the Americas at such an ancient time. Prominent anthropologists and geologists took both sides, but those opposing Sellard's view included Ales Hrdlicka, physical anthropologist at the U.S. National Museum, George G. MacCurdy, archaeologist at Yale University, and Rollin T. Chamberlin, geologist at the University of Chicago (Sellard 1917:70; Rouse 1981:65). Over the next several decades as more evidence accumulated and further analysis of existing finds was conducted Sellard's view was vindicated and the antiquity of human habitation in Florida, and in Indian River County specifically, was established. In 1940-1942, excavations on OrchiL. Island and elsewhere along the Treasure Coast were conducted by Charles D. Higgs, a winter resident of the area from Wisconsin. Higgs identified a series of sites with mixed deposits of Indian and Spanish material which he correctly attributed to the early Spanish colonial era (Rouse 1981:68). Hale G, Smith, the Florida Park Service archaeologist, returned to the Higgs Site (originally BR 1341134, now IR 24) to conduct additional excavations in 1946 (Rouse 1981:68, 212-217). Smith correctly inferred from the existing evidence that the site was likely associated with salvaging the wrecks from the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet and was not a mission or other habitation site (Smith 1956:94), It is now conclusively known that the island has several other terrestrial (e.g., the McI.arty Site, IR -26) and submerged sites associated with the shipwrecks and salvaging of vessels from the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet and the area off shore has become one of intensive treasure salvage since the 1960s (See Willer aad, Richards 1996). Additional research on prehistoric and historic period sites was conducted in the 1960s -1970s by both avocational (Homer Cato) and professional archaeologists (Carl J. Clausen, Adelaide K. Bullen and Ripley P. Buller) which helped to further refine the archaeological sequences of the area. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing until the present, much of the archaeological research conducted in Indian River County has been provided by contract archaeological firms in association with public and private development. Much of the focus of the recent archaeological research has been to identify site types rind to delineate site boundaries and has riot concentrated on further refining what is known of the area's cultural or chronological data. Additionally, the current "treatise" on Florida archaeology, Milanich's Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida (1994) only briefly touches upon the archaeology of the Indian River region. Dickel points out that there has been little thorough analysis of the data for the region and that, as a result, knowledge of the remit n is notably lacking (199' 11)