Fort Center is an archaeological site in Glades County, Florida, United States, a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee.

[6] Pollen evidence shows that the river meander belt and prairie existed in essentially their current condition since human occupation began 2,500 to 3,000 years ago until the 20th century.

[15] At least seven other sites in southern Florida, including two near Fisheating Creek, have similar circular features, although none of them has been subject to detailed examination by archaeologists.

[16] McGoun quotes Stephen Hale as saying that complexes "with sequences of construction and architectural style almost identical to those at Fort Center" are found from Lake Tohopekaliga in the north to Palm Beach and Hendry counties to the south.

[18] Milanich also notes resemblances between Period II Fort Center and contemporary Cades Pond culture sites at River Styx and Cross Creek in northern Florida.

[22] Working for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration beginning in the Great Depression, archaeologists conducted surveys and test excavations at Fort Center during the 1930s and 1940s.

[27] Thompson and Pluckhahn are the first archaeologists to view Fort Center as one of many persistent Monumental ritual earthworks in the Glades/Calusa cultural region of south Florida.

[28][failed verification] Sears believed that the freshwater regions of peninsular Florida were peopled by immigrants from northern South America who preceded Arawakan language-speakers through the Antilles.

Archaeologists who researched hunter-gather societies in the southeastern U.S. believed that Sears' interpretation, based solely on a single site reported by Denavan in the Amazon region of Columbia, and involving migration from that area, was a leap too far.

They believe that the agricultural Arawakan-speaking Tainos did not reach Hispaniola and Cuba until 600 to 700, near the end of Sears' Period II, well after the introduction of maize at Fort Center.

Their recent archaeology also shows that immediately after the construction of the Great Circle, work commenced on the building of the mortuary mound and pond complex nearby.

[28][page needed][31] In 2017, anthropologist Nathan Lawres addressed the issue of previous researchers evaluating the monumental structures at Fort Center and the entire Kissimmee/Okeechobee Area primarily in terms of economic interpretations.

He is the first to argue that the alterity[clarification needed] of Belle Glade monumental landscapes provides a context to an ontological (metaphysical) approach.

[32][page needed] Period I is characterized by several mounds, mostly artificial, that supported living areas, and by circular ditches, which Sears interpreted as enclosing fields.

[38] Sears believes that the inhabitants of Fort Center, who dug the circular ditches and introduced maize and cord-tempered pottery to the area, were people who were descended from migrants from South America, but they had been resident in Florida long enough to have adapted to the local environment.

[28][page needed] In contrast, Sears never researched similar circular ditches in the Lake Okeechobee Basin region that had the same features and like functions.

[28][page needed] Historian Ted Ehmann recently argued that beginning with the construction of the first feature at Fort Center, The Great Circle, and for the following twenty-five centuries, several groups worked cooperatively.

Ehmann believes the evidence shows the merging of prehistoric cultures and a synthesis of beliefs occurred, and was unique to the south Florida mound-building epoch.

The complex was located on the prairie, close to the stream meander belt, and was the focus of the Fort Center site during Period II.

Also found were sherds from imported ceramics, including types identified as Deptford, Cartersville, Pasco, Crystal River, and St. Johns.

[53] Under the wood and bones was a midden layer, consisting of sherds, shells, pipe fragments and coprolites (preserved human feces).

William H. Marquardt an authority on Calusa wood carvings found only one other slightly comparable tradition, the Northwest Coast tribes.

Sears also stated he believed the carved effigies had no community function despite their apparent connection to regional funeral and burial rituals.

[58] Later analysis of the bones found in the charnel pond and in Mound B indicated the people suffered from osteoarthritis and anemia due to parasite infections and iron deficiency, but were relatively well nourished and showed less tooth wear than other contemporary populations in Florida.

[59] Sears interprets the complex consisting of Mounds A and B and the charnel pond as a ceremonial center where mortuary specialists processed bodies; in particular, they cleaned flesh from bones.

All of the residents of the ceremonial center would have been in a sacred social class, serving some large portion of the Okeechobee Basin (including the Kissimmee Valley).

Occupation continued at Middens A and B on the natural levee along Fisheating Creek, and expanded to new mounds on the prairie away from the stream meander zone.

Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, who was held captive by Indians in Florida for 17 years in the 16th century, indicates that the Mayaimi people, who lived around Lake Okeechobee and were therefore the likely inhabitants of Fort Center, were subject to the Calusa.

[70] During the Second Seminole War Fort Center, a palisade of cabbage-palm trunks, was constructed on the northeastern edge of the Great Circle, on the banks of Fisheating Creek.

[77][78] In 1842, a reconnaissance party of 83 sailors and marines (along with a Seminole guide and his wife and child) led by United States Navy Lieutenant John Rodgers traveled in 16 dugout canoes from Key Biscayne through the Everglades, across Lake Okeechobee and up both the Kissimmee River to Lake Tohopekaliga, and Fisheating Creek to the head of the open stream, before returning to Key Biscayne.