The main burial complex at Crystal River, including Mounds C through F, served as a graveyard for Native Americans who buried their dead there one thousand to three thousand years ago. The large central mound contains graves of people buried with gifts that show contact with faraway places and peoples, or possibly that some of those people themselves came from distant places. Special objects buried in the central mound were made from meteoric iron, copper, quartz crystal, mica, and other exotic materials not found in Florida, and their design style points to connections with Native American cultures in present-day Ohio. Although an exhibit called "A Window into the Past" once allowed park visitors to view Native American burials, the structure was removed and the graves were reburied in the 1980s as laws and public sentiment began to change how the remains of Native peoples were treated. Today archaeologists show greater respect for contemporary Native Americans and try not to disturb burial places. The earlier people of Crystal River left no written record of their own, and while later Native groups such as the Calusa and Timucua were named by early European explorers in the 1500s, the clues left behind at Crystal River show deep links to thousands of years of Native American tradition along Florida's Gulf Coast.