Madira Bickel Mound and the adjacent Prine burial mound were part of an extensive Native American village and mound complex now called the Terra Ceia site that once occupied much of this peninsula. Nearly all of it was lost to residential development and road building, leaving a ten-acre park donated to the state by Karl and Madira Bickel and Mr. and Mrs. R.H. Prine. Research indicates the mounds were constructed and used from approximately 1500 to 800 years ago during the Weeden Island period. Large flat-topped mounds such as Madira Bickel typically supported large structures used for ceremonial events or as residences for important persons, and this site is one of several similar mound complexes in the Tampa Bay area. The native people who lived here in the centuries before European contact had an extremely diverse diet that included fish, shellfish, turtles, snakes, deer, bear, and various plants. Early historians and archaeologists once speculated that the site was the village of Ucita mentioned in narratives of the Desoto expedition of 1539, but archaeological investigation revealed virtually no Spanish artifacts. Pottery from the site, much of it from the Weeden Island and Safety Harbor periods, spans from 1500 years ago until the time of Spanish contact, and its variety, along with changes in burial techniques, indicates ongoing relationships with neighboring cultures. Evidence also shows that grasses, reeds, vines, shell, bone, and wood were used to make mats, baskets, fish traps, fishhooks, sewing needles, projectile points, hair pins, clasps, amulets, axes, and hammers.