"We don't know what they called themselves."
The undisputed star of an archeological dig now underway in a buggy jungle on Big Talbot Island is a 4,000-year-old projectile point about 3 inches long, It's made of chert, a sedimentary rock unlike anything found in the sandy soil of the island.
It came from present-day Gainesville or areas west of that and was likely brought to the coast through a trade network at some point.
Its style points to that early date, so what was it doing for thousands of years before it was found in the excavation of the village of Sarabay? After all, Sarabay was a home for Timucuan-speaking Mocama Indians that dates to far later — roughly to the 16th-century period of first contact with European colonists and soldiers.
"The story it must have to wind up in this site," marveled Ian King, a University of North Florida student helping on the dig.
Read more at the Florida Times-Union