Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park is a Florida state park in Leon County, Florida, about north of downtown Tallahassee. It preserves the Lake Jackson Mounds (8LE1), the capital of a Fort Walton culture chiefdom that occupied the region between about 1050 and 1500 and one of the largest Mississippian mound centers in the lower Southeast.
At its height the complex comprised seven earthen platform mounds grouped around one or more plazas, together with village residences and surrounding farmland. The largest, Mound 2, rose about and probably carried the residence of the paramount chief. Nearby Mound 3 served as a mortuary temple; the burials excavated from it yielded repoussé copper plates, engraved shell gorgets, and other elite objects in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex style, most acquired through a long exchange relationship with the Etowah chiefdom in Georgia. Mound 3 lay on private land and was leveled for fill dirt in 1975–1976, prompting a salvage excavation that recorded its contents.
After the site was abandoned around 1500, the chiefdom's seat moved to Anhaica, whose inhabitants the de Soto expedition met in 1539 as the Apalachee. Surveyors recorded the mounds as early as 1852, and archaeologists including Gordon Willey, John Griffin, B. Calvin Jones, and Claudine Payne investigated the site from 1940 onward. Florida began acquiring the property and established the park in 1966. The site would go on to be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It is now administered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Division of Recreation and Parks.
Today the park protects upland hardwood forest, bottomland forest, and a steephead ravine system draining to Lake Jackson, and offers hiking trails and interpretive exhibits. It forms part of the Florida Greenways and Trails System and lies within the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
History Early inhabitants The site was built and occupied between 1050 and 1500 by people of the Fort Walton culture, the southernmost regional expression of the Mississippian culture. The scale of the site and the number and size of the mounds indicate that this was the site of a regional chiefdom, and was thus a political and religious center. After the abandonment of the Lake Jackson site the chiefdom seat was moved to Anhaica (rediscovered in 1987 by B. Calvin Jones and located within DeSoto Site Historic State Park), where in 1539 it was visited by the Hernando de Soto entrada, who knew the residents as the historic Muskogean-speaking Apalachee people. Whether the Fort Walton people who built Lake Jackson were the direct ancestors of the historic Apalachee is widely assumed but not firmly established; because less than one percent of the site has been professionally excavated, some researchers hold that the population's cultural affiliation remains an open question. Other related Fort Walton sites are located at Velda Mound (also a park), Cayson Mound and Village Site and Yon Mound and Village Site.
Although the mounds were built and used during the Fort Walton period, the earliest occupation evidence at the site may date to the Early Archaic; the complex is nonetheless known primarily for its Fort Walton materials. Archaeological sites around the wider Lake Jackson basin record human presence from the Early to Middle Archaic period onward.
Territorial period Following the abandonment of the mound complex, the surrounding land was eventually incorporated into a larger estate owned by Colonel Robert Butler during Florida's Territorial period (1820–1860); a water-powered grist mill known as Butler Mill operated on the property in the 19th century, and its ruins survive within the park.
State acquisition In May 1966, a T-shaped tract containing was purchased by the State of Florida and designated the Lake Jackson Mounds State Archaeological Site, to be administered by the then Florida Department of Natural Resources. At the time of this purchase, three-quarters of Mound 2 was in the park, all of Mound 4 was included in the park, and about half of Mound 5, with the remaining mounds still privately owned. Additional tracts were purchased in subsequent decades, and Mound 1 remains the only mound outside the park boundary. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 1971.
Archaeology Research history The mounds first entered the documentary record through land surveys. James and John Donelson surveyed the township in 1825 without noting the earthworks, but in 1852 a General Land Office surveyor, A. M. Randolph, mapped "three indian mounds" near the lake and recorded that the land was then owned by Colonel Robert Butler. The first published notice came in 1918, when Nels C. Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History reported having visited, the previous year, "a group of artificial sand mounds on the shore of Lake Jackson near Tallahassee." In 1939 the historian Mark F. Boyd described the site in a study of 17th-century Spanish missions, believing it might correspond to the mission of San Damián de Escambé.
The first archaeological fieldwork was carried out in June 1940 by Gordon Willey and Richard Woodbury, then graduate students at Columbia University surveying the Florida Gulf coast for the National Park Service. Their work was limited to two test units placed north and south of Mound 2; the northern unit produced Fort Walton sherds to a depth of about , while the southern unit was nearly sterile. In 1947 John Griffin excavated a large block between Mounds 2 and 4, exposing dense occupation debris and features that led him to identify a cleared plaza. Mound 1 was tested in the mid-1950s by Charles H. Fairbanks and Hale G. Smith of Florida State University. Ahead of park construction projects, Daniel Penton excavated test pits north and east of Mound 2 in 1968, and in December 1969 Frank Fryman opened at a proposed building site north of Mound 4. The most consequential fieldwork came in the winter of 1975–1976, when B. Calvin Jones conducted a salvage excavation of Mound 3 ahead of its destruction, recovering the copper-plate burials for which the site is best known. Claudine Payne synthesized the accumulated work in a 1994 dissertation that established the site's ceramic chronology, and later research has applied ground-penetrating radar and off-mound survey to map the settlement beyond the mound precinct.
Mound complex When the site was abandoned it was a large complex that included seven platform mounds, six grouped around a plaza and a seventh (Mound 1) set about north of the main group. The mounds were built up over many years through the organized labor of a large workforce. The ceremonial plaza was a broad area, deliberately constructed and leveled, where ritual games and gatherings took place. Around the mounds and plaza were several areas of dense village habitation with individual residences, where artisans and workers lived. Maize was cultivated in communal fields in the surrounding countryside, sustaining the site's large population. Mound 3 has been the most fully excavated of the seven mounds; the others have seen only limited testing.
The arrangement of the mounds in the central part of the site suggests that there may have been two plazas. Mounds 2, 3, 4, and 5 form a large rectangular shape that was mostly free of debris. Mounds 2, 3, 6, and 7 also form a rectangular shape that suggests it too was a plaza. Both plazas would have had Butler Mill Creek (a small stream that once bisected these areas, but whose course was altered in historic times) running through them. Excavations have shown that a clean area between Mounds 2 and 4 was a plaza, but not enough work has been done elsewhere at the site to confirm the larger area implied by the first arrangement, or the existence of a plaza in the second.
The site itself is oriented on an east–west axis, perpendicular to the north–south axis of the Meginnis Arm, a nearby extension of Lake Jackson. All of the mounds are laid out to reflect this alignment, although it is unclear if this is symbolic or merely the result of the lake arm's orientation.
Chronology
During the Lake Jackson I phase, the site was a small village, possibly with Mound 2 just begun.
During the Early Lake Jackson II phase the population and the habitation areas of the site expanded greatly. Many of the areas that would later become mounds were village areas at this time, including the locations of Mounds 3 and 4, as well as areas north of Mounds 2 and 4. Mound 5 was begun and Mound 2 was started during this time. Mounds 3, 4, and 6 were probably not yet started. No evidence exists for occupation in the vicinity of Mound 6. A small area around Mound 5 continued to be occupied during early Lake Jackson II. The areas north of Mound 4 and between Mounds 2 and 4 show evidence of dense occupation during this time.
During the Late Lake Jackson II phase, all seven mounds had been started and most had seen numerous construction episodes. Mound 5 and Mound 6 were possibly finished, and Mounds 2, 3, and 4 were under way but had not had their final stages reached yet. The area to the south and west of Mound 4 and the area between Mounds 2 and 4 continues to be occupied. There is dense occupation north of Mound 2.
In the Lake Jackson III phase, the central part of the site was occupied more intensively especially around Mound 2 and spreading north. Mounds 4, 5, and 6 were completed before the beginning of the phase, and Mounds 2 and 3 were finished during the phase. After this point at about 1500, the site was virtually abandoned. There is occasional evidence that the site was still visited in the succeeding Velda phase (1500–1633), but very few artifacts or evidence of habitation from this time period have been found.
Archaeologists use changes in ceramic styles to determine timelines for sites and entire regions. The ceramics found at Lake Jackson have been reconstructed into the following sequences using these ceramic markers. + Ceramic chronology of the Lake Jackson site Site phase Dates Ceramic markers Lake Jackson I 1050–1150 Wakulla Check Stamped, Fort Walton Incised, engraved decoration, and mica inclusions; few of the Mississippian vessel forms, motifs, or appendages of later phases Early Lake Jackson II 1150–1250 Fort Walton Incised increases; Cool Branch Incised, Marsh Island Incised, and Lake Jackson Incised appear, with red-filmed pottery; Wakulla Check Stamped (in reduced proportions), Carrabelle Punctated var. Meginnis, and cob-marked pottery present; unaltered or folded rims; loop and strap handles; collared jars, carinated bowls, bottles, and beakers Late Lake Jackson II 1250–1400 Fort Walton Incised, Cool Branch Incised, Marsh Island Incised, Lake Jackson Incised, and red-filmed pottery; rims often notched, ticked, or scalloped; Wakulla Check Stamped, Carrabelle Punctated, and cob-marked pottery absent; strap handles more frequent, and lugs first appear Lake Jackson III 1400–1500 Fort Walton Incised (except varieties Cayson and Englewood), Lake Jackson Incised, and red-filmed pottery continue, with fluted rims becoming characteristic; Cool Branch Incised, mica inclusions, and carinated bowls no longer present
Mounds The forms, sizes, and histories of the seven mounds are summarized below. Mounds 2 and 3 are the only mounds with significant literature and have their own respective sections.