<< Other Photo Pages >> Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park - Artificial Mound in United States in The South
Submitted by AKFisher on Friday, 11 August 2023 Page Views: 108
Multi-periodSite Name: Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park Alternative Name: Lake Jackson Mounds, 8LE1Country: United States Region: The South Type: Artificial Mound
Nearest Town: Tallahassee, FL
Latitude: 30.500720N Longitude: 84.3137W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
Internal Links:
External Links:
Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park is one of the most important archaeological sites in Florida, the capital of chiefdom and ceremonial center of the Fort Walton Culture inhabited from 1050–1500. The complex originally included seven earthwork mounds, a public plaza and numerous individual village residences.
One of several major mound sites in the Florida Panhandle, the park is located in northern Tallahassee, on the south shore of Lake Jackson. The complex has been managed as a Florida State Park since 1966. On May 6, 1971, the site was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as reference number 71000241.[1]
Fort Walton Culture
The site was built and occupied between 1000 and 1500 by people of the Fort Walton culture, the southernmost 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.[2] 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.[3] Other related Fort Walton sites are located at Velda Mound (also a park), Cayson Mound and Village Site and Yon Mound and Village Site.
Site Description
When the site was abandoned it was a large complex (19.0 hectares or 47 acres[2]) that included seven platform mounds, six arranged near a plaza and a seventh (Mound 1) located 250 metres (820 ft) to the north.[4][better source needed] The mounds were the result of skilled planning, knowledge of soils and organization of numerous laborers over the period of many years. The ceremonial plaza was a large flat area, constructed and leveled for this purpose, where ritual games and gatherings took place. The area around the mounds and plaza had several areas of heavy village habitation with individual residences, where artisans and workers lived. There were also communal agricultural fields in the surrounding countryside, where the people cultivated maize in the rich local soil, the major reason such a dense population and large site were possible.[5] Only a few of the mounds in the park have been systematically excavated by archaeologists.
The site itself is oriented on an east–west axis, oriented 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.[2]
Citations
1. NPS Focus NRHP search. National Park Service. Archived from the original on August 3, 2012. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
2. Payne, Claudine (1994). "5: The Lake Jackson Site: Portrait of a Mississippian capital village" (PDF). Mississippian capitals: An archaeological investigation of Precolumbian political structure (PhD dissertation). University of Florida. pp. 229–287. OCLC 33354967.
3. Hudson, Charles M. (1997). "Winter 1539-1540". Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun. University of Georgia Press. pp. 120–128.
4. LeDoux, Spencer C. (2009). "Chapter 4: The Lake Jackson Site" (PDF). Embodying the Sacred: Temporal Changes in the Cosmological Function of Art and Symbolism in the Mississippian Period, AD 1250-1400 (Undergraduate honors thesis). Texas State University–San Marcos. hdl:10877/3248.
5. Brown, Robin C. (1994). Florida's First People: 12,000 Years of Human History. Sarasota, Florida: Pineapple Press, Inc. pp. 56–59. ISBN 978-1-56164-032-4.
Further reading and information:
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Jackson_Mounds_Archaeological_State_Park
Source: Florida State Parks
https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/lake-jackson-mounds-archaeological-state-park
Directions
From Tallahassee downtown via S Monroe St., US Hwy 27 N, 6.1 mi.
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