Written language is not the only way to transmit knowledge across time and space. Information about human activity can be found in the structures we build, the art we create and the bones that we bury.
Florida’s archaeological state parks protect mounds of history where Florida’s native past is written in sand, seashell middens and ceremonial sites. Two of those sites are in Tallahassee.
Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park
About the time William the Conqueror was building the tower of London, Florida natives were building their own monuments.
More than eight centuries ago, Native Americans inhabited the area around Lake Jackson in Tallahassee. Seven temple mounds were part of a village and trade center. Like Tallahassee today, the site was likely a political center.
Evidence suggests that mounds are more than monuments or status symbols. Mound –building in the southeastern United States suggests that the activity reinforced cultural traditions and social identities. In building mounds, the people were imprinting their history on the landscape.
Burial objects such as copper breast plates, shell-beaded necklaces, bracelets, anklets and cloaks link the mound builders at Lake Jackson to the builders of other large ceremonial centers. Mound sites located at Etowah Indian Mounds in Georgia and Moundville Archeological Park in Alabama share similar features and purposes with the Lake Jackson mounds.
Research indicates that the Lake Jackson residents interacted extensively with geographically distant communities, so the site was likely a bustling center of activity from the years 1200 to 1500.
Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park
While the Roman Empire was falling, the mound complex at Letchworth was rising. Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park protects a 46-foot-tall mound (Florida’s tallest Native American ceremonial mound), several small mounds, a plaza and a village. The surrounding forests likely provided a source of game and groceries such as nuts, berries and edible plants. The nearby lake was another food source as well as a transportation route.
Archaeologists believe that the mound complex was built and occupied by Native Americans between 200 and 900. During this time, Letchworth served as a political and ceremonial center for North Florida and the southeast.
But native Floridians inhabited the site long before the mound-building commenced. Archaeological researchers have found evidence of human habitation for 12,000 years. The earliest locals were nomadic. They likely quarried chert for tools from outcrops exposed at the lake.
From unearthed ceramics and other artifacts at the site, archaeologists can trace the evolution of Florida’s cultures from Paleo-Indian to the present.
Crystal River Archaeological State Park
Even before the Vikings set sail to raid and trade across northern and Central Europe, natives in what would become the U.S. were using waterways to trade with far-away villages on our side of the world.
Like our Interstate highways today, rivers served as major transportation routes. Archaeologists speculate that from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 500, trade routes ran from as far south as Crystal River in the southeast to the southeastern Canadian shores of Lake Ontario, with river-route connections to the Midwest and the Ohio River Valley. Though the people who traveled the river systems were not a single culture, they did exchange products and practices and were connected by a common network of trade routes. Researchers estimate that as many as 7,500 Native Americans visited the complex every year.
One of the sites along the route, currently the Crystal River Archaeological State Park, was a complex ceremonial center and burial site. Temple, burial, shell and sand mounds make up the complex in Citrus County. Archaeologists believe the site is one of the longest continuously occupied pre-Columbian sites in Florida, representing more than two-thousand years of human settlement.
The river system and local marine estuary could provide enough food to sustain a large population. Abundant seashells also provided building supplies, trade goods and tempering material for pottery.
What made people of prehistoric cultures stand a stone or wooden slab upright and embellish it with carvings, colorings or text is unknown. But stand them upright they did, in the ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica – and at the Crystal River site. Stone stelea are part of an arrangement of sand, shell and stone that some archaeologists believe formed a solar calendar. Tests indicate that the stelea were placed on the site around A.D. 440. A face was carved on one of the stelea, but time and the sun, wind and rain have almost erased it.
Mound Key Archaeological State Park
While the Mayans were building monuments and working gold, Florida’s natives were minding their mounds and building their own empire. Though people moved to Florida about 15,000 years ago, the “modern” Caloosahatchee culture likely took shape about 500 B.C.
Florida’s early engineers built an island complete with a canal through the middle that allowed easy access for canoes, their transportation mode of choice. The engineers built water courts connected to the canals, which researchers believe provided canoes with dock space and a safe harbor from tides and tropical storms.
From their island home, the Calusa had easy access to tasty protein sources. Nets yielded abundant supplies of fish. Shellfish such as oyster, conch and clam also contributed to the main ingredients of the Calusa’s seafood platter diet. Conveniently, much of the seafood was packaged in building material. The island, ridge clusters and mounds are made of sand and seashells.
Evidence at Mound Key Archaeological State Park indicates that Mound Key was the capitol for the Calusa, headquarters for a confederation that extended as far east as lake Okeechobee and as far south as the Keys in the 16th century. The site, Mound Key Archaeological State Park, is one of the best-preserved sites in the Calusa domain.
Written accounts of the Calusa come from the Spaniards who explored Florida in the mid-1500s. Study of artifacts indicate that Mound Key was the site of one of the first Jesuit missions built in this hemisphere.
In 1566, the Spanish established a settlement on the island with a fort and a Jesuit mission. Evidently, neither the Spaniards nor the Calusa were good neighbors. The newcomers abandoned the settlement three years later.
The Calusa are long gone, but at Mound Key you can stand in the place where they lived and ruled their world.
Florida’s Archaeological State Parks
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Recreation and Parks preserves sacred grounds, ceremonial mounds and places where Florida natives shaped their culture, their landscapes and a past that gave way to our present.
More information
Florida’s archaeological state parks are open from 8 a.m. until sundown.
Lake Jackson Mounds
3600 Indian Mounds Road
Tallahassee
850-922-6007
Letchworth-Love Mounds
4500 Sunray Road, South
Tallahassee
850-922-6007
Crystal River
3400 N. Museum Point
Crystal River
352-795-3817
Mound Key
You’ll need a boat. Mound Key is located in Estero Bay.
Boat dock, ramp and canoe rental available at Koreshan State Historic Site
3800 Corkscrew Road
Estero
239-992-0311
Research resources:
Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Recreation and Parks
Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources 
By Cherie Graves
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
