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A stone-age man in the city

As urban life climbs upward, Brian Evensen is more interested in what lies beneath. He likes to hold history in his hands.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published July 9, 2006

[Times photos: Bob Croslin]

Brian Evensen’s collection includes arrow points, pottery and animal skulls. Among the treasures are the bones of a giant ground sloth, which would stand 16 feet tall if Evensen assembled the bones.

	Brian Evensen holds three of the thousands of artifacts he's discovered throughout Florida.
	Pinellas County resident Brian Evensen has found thousands of artifacts throughout Florida and Pinellas County.

ST. PETERSBURG

Brian Evensen leaned against a fence at a downtown development and tried not to drool. He wasn't shopping for a new condo, but something older. He's a stone-age kind of guy.

"I like the sand," he said, gazing through the fence at the construction site. "What you want is nice yellow sand, though a whitish sand can be pretty good, too. It's old sand, not sand that was trucked in yesterday. Old sand is usually productive sand."

The arrowhead man of Pinellas has an appreciation for good dirt. A human bulldozer, Evensen over the decades has unearthed thousands of stone weapon points mostly in his home county. Some items in his collection go back 12,000 years when aboriginals hunted giant mammoths and ground sloths. Smaller arrow points, youngsters of 500 years old or so, may have been fired into the chest armor of invading Spaniards by Tocobaga warriors.

The sign at the construction site, alas, warned about trespassing. His fingers entwined in the wire fence, Evensen sighed. "I'm sure I could find a few arrow points if I did a little digging in there," he said. "But they can have you arrested if you go in without permission."

Stone-age guys and modern Florida have a love-hate relationship. Across the street was the BayWalk theater complex. Early afternoon pedestrians hurried down the crowded sidewalk. The Da Vinci Code was starting soon.

"When they were building BayWalk," Evensen whispered, "a buddy of mine got on the construction site and found some nice arrow points."

* * *

The arrowhead man is not a professional archaeologist. He is an enthusiastic amateur who likes to dig. He grew up on Weedon Island, now a park internationally famous for Indian artifacts. The preserve museum displays artifacts Evensen gathered.

He was 7 when he found his first arrow point in a ditch under the power lines. "The thrill gets into your blood," he said. He managed to fail grammar school history. "They made you memorize dates. Hell, if they'd have said, 'People like you or me lived here 12,000 years ago,' I would have been real excited." At the University of Florida he majored in archaeology and minored in the vices of the era.

"I was one of them hippie boys," he said in a cigarette-ravaged voice. "I never quite finished."

Now he is a grizzled 56. Over his lifetime he has made a living in construction and occasional consulting work. These days he sells a few artifacts and replicas at Ancient Journey, a new age emporium in Belleair Bluffs.

At his home he teaches hobbyists how to make arrowheads. He shows kids from the local science center the spoils of a lifetime of gathering. The house is a veritable museum, stuffed with arrow points and bows, spears, axes, pottery, animal skulls and bones. The yard is guarded by a totem pole he built recently and Moe, a hybrid wolf.

Moe ate Evensen's cell phone, though stone-age men probably should go without them anyway. At least Moe hasn't gnawed on the giant ground sloth bones. In 2002, Evensen dug up the Ice Age mammal in a dry retention pond at a Cadillac dealership on Gandy Boulevard. If he ever puts the creature together, it will stand 16 feet tall. He dreams of opening his own "Ancient Florida" museum.

The arrowhead man hunts fossils, too. Years ago he was hunting in North Florida's Santa Fe River when he noticed a rocky crevice 20 feet down. It looked like a prime spot for finding mastodon bones. He saw what looked like a deflated soccer ball lodged between rocks. As he reached for the ball, he discovered that it was actually a 12-foot alligator.

Both he and alligator tried to escape the crevice at the same time. For a terrible moment, he thought the alligator had hold of his arm. "But it was only his claws ripping through my wet suit when he went past. I found out I could walk on the water when I got to the surface."

Arrowhead hunting is less perilous. When he plucks a stone point from the ground he likes to hold it above his head as if he is consecrating a Communion host.

"I'm the first person who has held the point in his hand since it was lost," he said, igniting another cigarette. "I like to show it to the sun. It's kind of a spiritual experience."

* * *

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

A bulldozer was backing up.

WHAMMA! WHAMMA! WHAMMA!

A 200-foot high construction crane was driving pilings.

"I don't call this progress," Evensen said, watching the crane. "I call it regress."

Thousands of years ago, a huge Indian village sprawled across downtown. The village center was most likely near today's Bayfront Medical Center, previously known as Mound Park Hospital and built on a 70-foot mound left by an ancient tribe. Dozens of such mounds, constructed over the centuries from oyster shells, were used for ceremonies and burials. Twentieth century man hauled the mounds away and used the shell as foundation for city streets.

A Doral defied gravity from Evensen's lower lip. He ignited it with a Bic. Years ago he tried living off the land like an aboriginal. He speared mullet but couldn't remember how to make a fire. Even a stone-age man appreciates a Bic.

* * *

Stone-age Floridians didn't have horses until the Spaniards brought them. They traveled by canoe or on foot.

Evensen climbed out of the saddle of his Ford Explorer at a new construction site. His scraggly hair cascaded from beneath a worn-out ball cap. He hadn't shaved for days and the walrus mustache sagged more than usual. There was dirt under his nails. In short, he looked like he was ready to do some serious archaeology.

Over on Fourth Street, near the interstate, he walked toward the construction crane. "Damn, another fence," he said. But a bulldozer had shoved sand against the interstate. That sand would have to do.

Evensen looked determined. He also looked terrifying, carrying what appeared to be a pitchfork. It was actually a device of his own invention, a probing rod. He began stabbing piles of dirt. The pitchfork tines sang at him when they hit something hard, the sound carrying up the handle.

"What's that?"

Rock. Paper. No scissors, but pipe. It wasn't the virgin sand he prefers. It was mixed-up sand, but it showed some yellow, so maybe it contained something old.

Aluminum foil. A Cheetos bag. An empty Aquafina bottle.

"Here we go."

To the ignorant it looked like rock. But to the arrowhead man, it was a time machine. To the arrowhead man, it was a souvenir of a lost world.

"Somebody, I'd say 5,000 years ago, was making an arrow point out of coral. As he shaped the point, probably with the tip of an antler, he started knocking off chunks. As he worked it down, the pieces got smaller, and sharper, until they were flakes. That's what this is. It's a flake."

As he admired the artifact, the 21st century intruded.

A moving van screeched around the corner and roared onto the interstate. A small airplane overhead got ready to land at the downtown airport.

"You know what I always wonder about," Evensen said. "I always wonder what the people were thinking when they looked out on the water and saw those Spanish ships on the horizon. I mean, did they know what those ships portended?"

Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 93-8727 or klink@sptimes.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Brian Evensen's Web site is www.suwanneecase.com.

Further reading:

Florida's Indians From Ancient Times to the Present, JeraldT. Milanich, University Press of Florida

St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, Raymond Arsenault, University Press of Florida

[Last modified July 7, 2006, 11:06:00]