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The oldest burial mound site in the state of Florida (and perhaps North America) is the Horr's Island Mounds located in southwest Florida. Archaeologists discovered the island to be a permanent home to prehistoric peoples in the age of Hunting and Gathering non permanent societies. Their surveys turned up a number of sites representing at least four thousand years of human occupation, including "massive shell middens, conical mounds, [and] a contact period Calusa village..."
Thousands of tiny fish bones (including scallops, hardhead catfish, pinfish, threadfin herring) and shells of all kinds were unearthed and examined to determine what season they were collected. The seasonality of these bones and shells indicated that people lived on Horr's Island year-round, gathering scallops in the summer, quahogs in the winter or spring, and catching catfish, pinfish and threadfin herring mainly in the fall.
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It appears that "bottom-dwelling estuarine fish such as catfish and sheepshead were commonly caught on lines. Smaller fish were apparently netted."
"Excavation revealed more than 600 postholes, probably representing many small circular houses." Not only did Horr's Island Archaic people live year-round in one place, "...but, they built a shell and sand mound nearby." They built it in a well-defined "cone shape rising 20 feet above the ground surface. Layers of sand were spread carefully over the shell from time to time. Some of the sand layers were pure white, some were colored by the addition of charcoal."
This pointed clearly to deliberate construction and to a ceremonial use. Mound A is believed to be a burial mound because of two human burials (although a later period were found on the outskirts of the mound. He was not able to excavate in the central part of the mound, so he cannot be positive. If he is right, the mound is the earliest burial mound known in the Eastern United States! "So now archaeologists have to rethink Florida Archaic." We know now that, at least in some places, people lived a settled life, caught fish and collected shell fish throughout the year. They buried their dead in mounds."
Resources & Further Reading:
Milanich, Jerald T. Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1994.
Morgan, William N. Pre-Columbian Architecture in Eastern North America. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1999.
"Archaeologist's Tour of Horr's Island." Marco Island Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2. Marco Island, FL: 1994.
Milanich, Jerald T.,ed. Florida Historical Contexts. Tallahassee, FL: Division of Historical Resources, 1990.
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