Sarasota County purchased this ten-acre property in 1964, where the archaeological site known as the Paulson Point Midden preserves evidence of people who lived here for over 2400 years, from 1000 B.C. to about A.D. 1400. On a cuspate spit extending into Lemon Bay, the midden contains the trash of a maritime culture, including pottery shards, stone points and knives, beads, shellfish, fish, and animal bones, the remnants of many meals. Some pottery shards suggest contact with communities as far north as Crystal River in Citrus County and as far south as Miami. Deep graves indicate some individuals were buried early in the site's history, and the lack of grave goods suggests an egalitarian society. Burials on Manasota Key across the bay provide insight into the physical characteristics and lives of these people, showing high birth rates, high infant mortality, survival to adulthood for many who reached age three, frequent broken bones, average heights of about 5'5" for males and 5'1" for females, a rich Gulf Coast diet, an average lifespan of about 30 years, and evidence that some people with skeletal defects depended on others for food and care. Toward the end of the Paulson Point occupation, circa A.D. 1350, the Englewood Mound was established about one-half mile to the southeast as a burial mound whose ceremonialism and grave goods suggest social stratification and a chiefdom level society, unlike the earlier egalitarian burials at Paulson Point. Early European accounts divided the west central Florida coast among the Tocobaga in the Saint Petersburg/Tampa region, the Uzita in the Manatee/Sarasota region, and the Calusa to the south, with the Calusa appearing most powerful; the people of Paulson Point may have shifted allegiance north or south as power changed. The site was inhabited until about A.D. 1400, when it was abandoned during a broader southeastern pattern of smaller sites being left as populations concentrated in larger villages.