Miami ? Indian ruins recovered from a downtown Miami construction site went on public display for the first time Friday, nearly four years after they were first discovered.

The exhibit at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida features more than 100 artifacts found near the mouth of the Miami River in November 1998. Archeologists believe the artifacts are 2,000 years old and indicate the area was used by Tequesta Indians, possibly as a trading post.

“Only a small group of archeologists got to be out there and it was never really open to the general public,” said Jorge Zamanillo, a curator at the museum and an archeologists who worked the site. “A lot of people have seen pictures of it, but now they can understand what it means.”

The area, known as the Miami Circle, is a 38-foot circle that Tequestas are believed to have carved into the limestone. It was found during a pre-development examination by archeologists, on ground that was supposed to be the site of an apartment building.

“It’s one of the best records of what life was like in Biscayne Bay before the Spanish arrived,” said Irv Quitmyer, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Florida who has studied the site.

The exhibit, called “First Arrivals,” includes samples of pottery, cutting devices, hair pins and other materials used by the now-extinct civilization. One of the highlighted artifacts is a large turtle shell, which may indicate the area was used for ceremonial purposes.

Archeologists were originally surprised the area had survived a 1950s construction project. When that apartment building was knocked down, scientists found builders on that project had only dug about 10 inches into the ground to place footers for that structure preserving the ruins buried 3-4 feet below.

George Chillag, curator of exhibits, places a bronze cast of a jaguar skull as he helps install a new exhibit at the Historical Museum on Southern Florida in Miami. The exhibit focuses on artifacts found at the Miami Circle site and others in the museum collection from the same period, about 2,000 years ago.

Then, during the city-mandated examination of the property in 1998, archeologists were running out of time to complete their study. A developer had brought in bulldozers and backhoes to begin a complete excavation.

So, breaking away from normal procedures, the archeologists used the backhoe to dig away at the site, since it would be far faster than finishing the dig by hand.

“We dug where we thought the rest of the circle would be, and found it,” Zamanillo said.