Crystal River Archaeological State Park in Citrus County, Florida

Photograph: Crystal River Arch Park mound F01.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 2.5 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Citrus County attraction

Crystal River Archaeological State Park

Citrus County · Gulf Coast

A six-mound complex on the Crystal River occupied for about 1,600 years, with carved limestone stelae found almost nowhere else in North America.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

This 61-acre site holds one of the longer continuously occupied places in Florida. People lived and buried their dead here for roughly 1,600 years, from the Deptford period through the late Fort Walton period, and the earliest burials in the conical mound date to about 250 BC. Six mounds stand on the ground: burial mounds, temple or platform mounds used for ceremony, a plaza and a midden. Around 500 people are thought to be buried in the complex. What was put in the early graves says something about how far this place reached: copper tools and ornaments that came from the Ohio River valley, carried down through the Hopewell trade networks. Later burials hold fewer objects and sometimes none, which shows the practices changing over centuries. The most unusual feature is the stelae, carved limestone slabs showing human faces and torsos. At least four of them were set up here, and standing stones of that kind are rare in North America; whether the idea came up from Mesoamerica is still argued over. The site went on the National Register of Historic Places on September 29, 1970, and was made a National Historic Landmark on June 21, 1990

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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