Jorge M. Pérez, the billionaire art collector and philanthropist whose name graces the Pérez Art Museum Miami, made his money as the founder of Related Group, one of South Florida’s largest real-estate developers. In 2013, the same year the Miami Art Museum was renamed for its generous benefactor, Related acquired a four-acre lot in the city’s Brickell financial district in order to build a giant luxury hotel and residential complex. Related spent $104m just to acquire the land.
While demolishing one of the two office buildings on the lot and digging at the site, relics were discovered dating back at least 3,000 years—perhaps as far back as 7,000 years—belonging to the Tequesta civilisation, Miami’s first people. Ornaments made from animal bones and shark’s teeth, wooden fire starters, projectile points and other tools provide evidence of a bustling population and thriving commercial network. This rich and well-preserved trove may be the most significant in a series of interconnected archaeological sites at the mouth of the Miami River.
In November 2023, Miami’s Historic and Environmental Preservation (HEP) Board declared a portion of the Indigenous site at Brickell an archaeological landmark. The board withdrew a proposal to designate the other lot, striking a deal with Related that it prepare an action plan for the display and interpretation of the archaeological finds.
It is still unclear how these prehistoric relics will be stored and exhibited, and who will fund their long-term preservation. Today, more than a million of them are housed inside the yet-to-be-demolished office building at 444 Brickell Avenue. Their future beyond that remains unknown.
“So many people don’t know the history of Miami and think it’s just a city with high-rises and no history,” Traci Ardren, an archaeology professor at the University of Miami, tells The Art Newspaper. “This is why it’s so important to communicate to the public the significance of these findings.”
Paving over history
The Brickell site is across the street from the Miami Circle, a Tequesta ceremonial site discovered in 1998 and dubbed Miami’s Stonehenge, preserved in large part as a result of public outcry against its demolition. Both the Brickell archaeological site and Miami Circle are located in an archaeological conservation area—the entire region bordering the Miami River may have been built over ancient Indigenous communities.
“We think of the circle as the centre of the settlement, the most important part of the site,” Ardren says. “Everything radiates from that. The closer to the circle, the greater the likelihood of finding more relics.”
In the past several years, teams of archaeologists hired by Related Group have worked to excavate and catalogue more than a million artefacts, including pottery shards, stone instruments used to make wooden structures and canoes, arrowheads, objects used for trading, as well as the remains of extinct animals. Scattered human remains have also been discovered on the site. In accordance with Florida law, local tribal authorities were notified and the remains were reburied in a different location at the discretion of tribal leaders.
In April 2023, a proposal for the Brickell site’s designation as an historical landmark was presented to the HEP Board. During a heated public meeting, archaeologists, Indigenous activists, preservationists and residents voiced their concerns about Miami’s Indigenous history getting paved over for a luxury building project.
In response, Pérez, who is still the chief executive of Related Group, told the board: “Doing the right thing for this community remains my highest priority.” In an opinion piece published in the Miami Herald the previous month, Pérez had written that the relics would be preserved “but not on site”, adding: “We understand that some people will not be satisfied regardless of what we do, and no one is going to shed a tear for a developer that is slowed down by archaeological findings. But we believe in fair play and fair regulation, and we remain committed to smart, conscientious development and appropriate archaeological conservation.”
Preservationists have expressed growing concern that the significance of the Tequesta relics can never be communicated properly unless Related is held accountable and the HEP Board has more direct control over what the developer does at the site. Ardren and her fellow archaeologists Pamela L. Geller and William J. Pestle published their own opinion piece in the Miami Herald less than a month after Pérez’s, pleading with the public not to allow rampant development to wipe out all evidence of Miami’s Indigenous roots.
At the same time, Indigenous activists have continued to protest that their voices are not being heard. Since February 2023, Robert Rosa, the chairman of the American Indian Movement of Florida; Betty Osceola, an environmental educator and a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida; and other Indigenous activists have been pleading with the city to stop the digging.
“We keep asking you to leave our resting ancestors and our artefacts in the ground,” Osceola said in a public statement. “This is a sacred area, and you might not see it, because it ain’t your people, but this plan is not enough.”
Rosa added that “it takes years for tribes to get their artefacts back”, referring to the repatriation process under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act after the finds are moved to a museum—a possibility that is very much on the table with these Tequesta relics.
Archaeologists clean around a snake burial found on the site in Brickell that is being developed by Jorge Pérez’s company. It is one of more than a million relics, mostly from the Tequesta people, uncovered there
Courtesy of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy of Florida
Action plan falls short
During a public HEP Board meeting in September of this year, Related presented a 45-page action plan for the Brickell site. After a review, the board gave the developer until January 2025 to produce an updated and more detailed version. The city archaeologist Adrian Espinosa-Valdor, who analysed the plan, said at the meeting that it “did not describe any kind of long-term holding for these materials. It sort of reads like what their intentions are, rather than how it’s going to be implemented. We just don’t know.”
For example, Related has yet to find a storage facility with enough space for the rest of the items that have already been uncovered—and there are surely more to come. The HEP Board stated that for the developer’s action plan to be complete, all the materials temporarily hosted at 444 Brickell Avenue need to be permanently moved into a storage facility. The action plan must also provide a system for making the archaeological finds accessible to researchers.
HistoryMiami Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate and the official repository of Miami-Dade County’s archaeological materials, has expressed interest in the custody of certain Tequesta relics. A spokesperson for HistoryMiami says the museum is at present in discussion with Related about acquisition of “only museum-quality artefacts”, adding that the museum hopes to make the finds accessible through public display.
As locals and other interested parties look forward to reading Related’s new action plan next month, many fear that any plan could end up an empty promise—as has happened so many times in the past with other developers. For example, during the construction of the Met Square complex in 2014, another ancient Tequesta site was found. After months of negotiations, the site’s developer, MDM, agreed to preserve a portion of the site and display archaeological finds in a public plaza. Years later, the promised public plaza full of Tequesta relics is nowhere to be found.