Real Florida:

[Times photos: Lance A. Rothstein] Archaeologist Bill Burger chops out a hole in the high ground of a forest of palmetto and pine, looking for evidence of prehistoric people who might have lived there. Burger, 50, is doing an archaeological assessment in Wesley Chapel near SR 54 for the proposed West Zephyrhills Bypass.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 31, 2002

Since the archaeologist found arrowheads in his boyhood, he's been fascinated by Florida's ancient inhabitants. He pieces their stories together from shell and bone, geography and garbage.

WESLEY CHAPEL -- Cool weather cheers Bill Burger. "Less likely to encounter a rattlesnake," he says, wading into the saw palmettos among the pines of Pasco County. "This is prime habitat for them, but they're most likely hibernating."

Not that Burger fears Eastern diamondbacks -- he has been known to eat them for supper. But he avoids the ornery live ones, especially when his mind is occupied by other things. He flings his shovel into the sand and adds his weight. Soon he has excavated an impressive hole.

Clink! Clink!

His shovel hits pay dirt -- a small piece of ancient coral. Centuries ago the coral was quarried, heated and worked by human hands. "Looks like somebody was trying to make a spear point," Burger says.

He can't tell whom. All he knows is they lived in Florida centuries before the first Europeans arrived. He studies everything they left behind and tries to piece together their culture. "Basically, I'm sort of a glorified garbage man," says Burger, a prominent archaeologist who grew up in Florida. "I get paid for digging lots of holes in the ground and looking for old stuff."

Holding a coral chip up to the light, Burger notes the color and patterns, confirming it is not simply a rock. Coral flakes can be evidence of toolmaking.

Burger will chat about his work at Camp Bayou Nature Preserve in Ruskin at 2 p.m. Saturday as part of a Trail of the Lost Tribes program funded by the Florida Humanities Council and the Frank E. Duckwell Foundation. He'll lecture about what Florida was like when Spanish explorers wandered ashore in the 16th century. But he'll discuss prehistory as well. Florida has been inhabited for at least 12,000 years.

The series' purpose is to promote awareness, protection and visitation of remaining cultural sites around Florida and especially Tampa Bay, where some of the first encounters between native peoples and Europeans took place.

"Most people have no idea what happened here," says Burger, a frequent lecturer at colleges, high schools and civic clubs. Throughout Central Florida countless developments, shopping centers and hospitals -- including Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg -- have been built over ancient mounds used for burials and religious ceremonies.

"A lot of what was here has been lost," says Burger, known for his long days, and even nights, in the field. "But I'd like to think there's still stuff out here waiting to be discovered."

Sweating in the bush, swatting mosquitoes and keeping his eye out for rattlesnakes, Burger feels kin to the rugged people who once lived here. "I sometimes spend as much time chopping as I do digging," he says, clearing palmettos with his trusty machete.

Self employed, he currently is conducting a survey for an environmental consulting firm working for Pasco County. A future road will slice through the pines. Before asphalt replaces soil and tree, Burger will record the archaeological history.

He stops and raises his hand.

Listening for a moment, he detours around a thick patch of underbrush.

"Hornets. I heard them buzzing. They're living in the ground over there. They're very aggressive. They'll chase you down and even kill you. Better to give them wide berth."

After listing a coral flake in his log book, archaeologist Bill Burger proceeds to “bag it and tag it,” adding the artifact to the others found during this survey in Wesley Chapel. “I guess I’ve been digging holes like this for about 20 years now,” Burger says.

Snake a la road

Burger was born in Michigan, but he's lived here a half century -- all his life except for the first few months. He was raised at Bishop Harbor, a cove surrounded by mangroves in Manatee County, where a boy could fish and explore from dawn to dusk. He remembers finding the arrow points and bones that inspired his desire to become an archaeologist.

He knew what he wanted to do even as a teenager, when he finished first in his class at Palmetto High even though he was expelled, temporarily, for having long hair. After graduating from New College in Sarasota and earning his master's from the University of South Florida, he started digging and never stopped. You can tell by his fingernails, which harbor dirt from who knows how long ago.

He has excavated from one end of the peninsula to the other, walking into wilderness woods and encountering immense mounds built with oyster shells and bone by unknown people over the centuries. He has also studied archaeological treasures within city limits. Once, minutes from Sarasota, he knelt on a construction zone sand dune and documented the grave site of ancients who were buried by the hundreds, bound in fetal positions, their heads pointing in the direction of the setting sun.

What can Burger tell you about that lost tribe? Not much and quite a bit. He can't tell you what they called themselves because they left no records. Yet it seems clear they honored nature -- why else did they bury their dead facing the day's last light? -- and were dependent on seafood.

"You can learn a lot from bones," says Burger, whose nickname, in fact, is "Bones." "They can tell you about diet and culture. Nothing excites me as much as finding bones."

This fossilized coral flake likely was discarded by a prehistoric Floridian while making tools 5,000-7,000 years ago, Burger says. He unearthed the chip during his dig near SR 54 in Pasco County.

Tanned and sinewed, he wears a two-day beard and an impossibly threadbare work shirt, filthy dungarees and steel-toed boots. He covers his head in a tattered cap that keeps the gray of his pony tail from snagging passing smilax vines. He's a real-life Marlboro Man who chain smokes Virginia Slims.

Bill Burger lives alone, south of the Sunshine Skyway on the island of Terra Ceia, where his day starts early. He likes to be in the field before the sun climbs high.

If he can avoid the interstate, he does; lonely county roads are more interesting to him than crowded highways. He cranks up the Rolling Stones on the stereo and gazes over a bone-covered dashboard through a dusty windshield at old-timey Florida.

Seeing an interesting dead animal, he hits the brakes. If the critter is long dead, he holds his breath, skins it and keeps the bones for further study. If a creature is freshly dead, he may harvest it for dinner. He hates waste -- and he considers himself a curious soul. Ancient Floridians, after all, ate the same grub.

Rattlesnake meat, he can say with authority, does taste like chicken. He also sups on freshwater turtles, possums and armadillos. "Oh, do armadillos smell foul when you clean them! They're kind of a cross between skunk and a gut-shot rabbit. But they taste pretty good."

Standing up: bad idea

Pulling off SR 54, he pursues a dirt path into the forest. Palmetto and oak branches rake the side of his old Ford, a pickup held together by rust, faded paint and duct tape. In the bed lie the tools of his trade -- shovel, sieve, gloves, pack and, of course, his back brace.

"Standing up on our hind legs was not a good idea for Homo sapiens," he says. "My back is worn out. I don't know how many holes I've dug in my life, but it would be intimidating."

Where the sand deepens, he reluctantly parks. Time to walk. The main highway is less than a mile away, but it could be a hundred. The soundtrack is provided by the rustle of palmettos and the screech of a hawk, a Northern harrier, dive-bombing a flock of warblers.

"People always wonder where an archaeologist looks for stuff," he says. "It's really no mystery no matter how many polysyllabic words we professionals use. You just have to ask: Where would the ancient people have camped? The answer is high ground. But it would have to be near the water. And so here we are."

He digs another hole. Nothing. The second hole surrenders a few more coral shavings, evidence that somebody was making tools.

Native cultures differed in their lifestyles, depending on location. Panhandle people farmed corn, beans and squash. South Florida ancients depended on seafood. In west-central Florida, the aboriginals were gatherer-hunters.

"It makes sense," Burger says. "Look around. Can you imagine trying to farm right here? Can you imagine clearing these palmettos with a tool made out of a conch shell? Can you imagine fighting the bugs and raccoons and the weather?"

A palmetto frond clinging to his gear, Burger returns to his truck after a day of digging and recording his finds. Calling himself a “glorified garbage man,” the archaeologist says, “I get paid for digging lots of holes in the ground and looking for old stuff.”

It was probably easier to collect palmetto berries and acorns, to catch turtles and birds, to make a pilgrimage to the nearest estuary for oysters, clams and mullet, to climb a pine and wait to ambush a passing deer with a sharpened spear.

About 350,000 people inhabited the peninsula when Spaniards arrived in La Florida. One of the first encounters between the European and native cultures happened in 1528, most likely in Pinellas County near what is now Tyrone Mall. Burger can't help but let his imagination run wild. Was it morning? Or was it afternoon? Perhaps the sun was in their eyes when they looked out into the bay and saw a strange watercraft -- a Spanish ship -- bearing down. They had ruled Florida for thousands of years. How could they have guessed that extinction was coming?

Other Spanish expeditions followed. Conquistadors, not known for patience and kindness, coveted gold and converts. Florida lacked precious minerals, but some indigenous people became Christians. Others refused and fought to the death. All the while, European germs for which they had no immunities took their toll.

"Probably they got sick from what we would call childhood diseases," Burger says. "Those diseases didn't kill everybody. But they were tough on the weak and the infirm, most likely the youngest and the oldest. The old people were the storytellers who held everything together. When the old ones were gone, so were their stories, and culture followed. That was the tragedy."

Florida's original people were virtually gone by the 18th century. Creek natives from Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas, fleeing from colonial persecution, ventured into Florida. Eventually they become known as "the Wanderers," what the Spaniards called Seminoles. In the 19th century, they engaged the U.S. government in three wars without surrendering. Bands of them live in Tampa and the Everglades today. They raise cattle and citrus and entertain tourists with alligator wrestling and bingo parlors.

Much of the history of Florida's earliest people, the ones who lived here before the European invasion, has been erased, the mounds in which they buried their dead or built their ceremonial temples bulldozed into oblivion or used for road fill.

What were they like, the ancients?

"They were people just like us, living at a different time," he says. "They had some of the same foibles as we have today. They were human beings."

He climbs into his truck and starts the engine.

"When you study the past, you see all the mistakes being made again and again. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever learn from the past and become better people."

Near a giant billboard that advertises a new country club, just down the way from a trailer park, he pulls onto the paved road and heads for a diner. He's hungry, not for a rattlesnake pot pie, but a cheeseburger with fries.

"Naaaah," he says. "I don't think we'll ever learn from our mistakes."

To receive a free "Trail of the Lost Tribes" brochure, call (941) 794-8773. By e-mail contact Karen@aroundbend.com

For more information

Florida's Indians: From Ancient Times to the Present, by Jerald T. Milanich, University Press of Florida. Indian Mounds You Can Visit, by I. Mac Perry, Great Outdoors Publishing.

Trail of the Lost Tribes lecture series:

Saturday: Camp Bayou Nature Preserve, Ruskin. 2, 4 and 6:30 p.m. Bill Burger talks about "The Natives of Tampa Bay at the Time of First European Contact."

March 6: Coast Library, Crystal River. 7 p.m. Brent Weisman discusses "The Strange Saga of Florida's Lost Cultural Treasures." Gary Ellis lectures on "The Evolution of Archaeology on the West Central Gulf Coast."

March 10: Museum of the Islands and Randell Research Center, Pine Island, Lee County. Noon-6 p.m. "Archaeology Fair."

March 11: First Baptist Church of Pine Island Center, Lee County. 7 p.m. William Marquardt, Karen Walker and John Worth discuss "Two Thousand Years on Pine Island."

March 20: Selby Library, Sarasota. 7 p.m. Jerald Milanich lectures on "Weedon Island Culture."

April 13-14: Safety Harbor Museum of Regional History. 2 p.m. Jeffrey Mitchem talks about "The Archaeology and History of Safety Harbor," followed by a tour of the Safety Harbor Mound at Phillippe Park.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.