Remembering the Dead

Remembering the Dead. Crystal River Archaeological State Park. , Main Burial Complex (Mounds C-F) , Have you ever visited a cemetery? The mounds and raised features here are a graveyard for Native Americans who buried their dead at this site 1,000 to 3,000 years ago. The large, central mound contains the graves of people buried with gifts showing they had contact with places and people from far away, or may have themselves come from distant places. , , Faraway Influence , Some special objects buried with the people in the central mound were made from meteoric iron, copper, quartz crystal, mica, and other exotic materials that are not found in Florida. Their style of design points to connections to Native American cultures in present-day Ohio. , , Building Bridges , An exhibit called "A Window into the Past" once gave visitors to this park a view of Native American burials. The structure was removed and the graves reburied in the 1980s as laws and public sentiment started to change how we treat the remains of Native peoples. Today, archaeologists show greater respect for contemporary Native Americans and try not to disturb burial places. , , Who were these People? , The names for later Native groups like the Calusa or Timucua were recorded by early European explorers in the 1500s, but the earlier people of Crystal River left no written record of their own. We can never know the name they had for their community, but the clues they left behind show the deep links they had to thousands of years of Native American tradition along Florida's Gulf Coast. , (captions) , Quartz Crystal Plummet , , Copper Gorget , , Decorated Pot (right) and Red and Black Painted Pot (below) , , Many of the mact finely crafted artifacts from Crystal River like these beautiful pots and shell ornament are curated at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC , , Shell Ornament