Middens And Mounds

For thousands of years, Native Americans lived here and are known today through the middens and mounds they left behind. A midden was a buildup of discarded material, and the Marineland Midden, first described in 1885, stood 15 feet high and contained layers of shell, broken pottery, and bones of fish, fowl, turtle, alligator, and deer. Most of the ancient shell heaps are now gone because many were destroyed when shell was mined for roadfill. Mounds of sand and shell were also used for burials, and Native Floridians began building them to bury their dead about 1500 years ago. The Benton Mound in Flagler County contained the remains of 7 to 9 people between the ages of 4 and 30, including a young child buried in a deep central pit and then covered with sand. Archaeologists studying the mound found a quartz crystal, a shell dipper, a pot, and pieces of at least 15 pots scattered within it. In January 1998, Independent Florida Seminole Bobby Billie reburied the remains of a Native American whose bones had been accidentally unearthed in a parking lot area that was once the site of a prehistoric burial mound.

Marineland, Florida · United States