Article Summary

In 1970, Prof. W. Harrison and two colleagues mapped and sampled a number of concrete cylinders and pieces of grooved marble columns on the ocean side of Entrance Point, at the entrance to Bimini Harbor on the northwest Bahama Bank. This short note consists of reports of carbon- and oxygen-isotopic-ratio analyses of the marble samples. The analytical work was done by Scripps' Professor Harmon Craig and his wife Valerie. In two letters to Harrison from the Craigs, reporting the results of their analyses, they attempt to compare their results to various other analyses that they made from classical marble source sites. While the results of the analyses are rather inconclusive, they tend to eliminate some of the classical marble sites from considerations about the provenance of the Bimini marble-pillar fragments. These results and interpretations may be of value to future archaeological researchers working at Bimini.