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LocationTallahassee FL
SizeMedium — about a day
Acres205 acres

Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park is a 82.94 ha (204.94 acres) Florida state park in Leon County, Florida, about 5 miles (8.0 km) north of downtown Tallahassee. It preserves the Lake Jackson Mounds (8LE1), the capital of a Fort Walton culture chiefdom that occupied the region between about 1050 and 1500 and one of the largest Mississippian mound centers in the lower Southeast. At its height the complex comprised seven earthen platform mounds grouped around one or more plazas, together with village residences and surrounding farmland. The largest, Mound 2, rose about 11 m (36 ft) and probably carried the residence of the paramount chief. Nearby Mound 3 served as a mortuary temple; the burials excavated from it yielded repousse copper plates, engraved shell gorgets, and other elite objects in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex style, most acquired through a long exchange relationship with the Etowah chiefdom in Georgia. Mound 3 lay on private land and was leveled for fill dirt in 1975-1976, prompting a salvage excavation that recorded its contents. After the site was abandoned around 1500, the chiefdom's seat moved to Anhaica, whose inhabitants the de Soto expedition met in 1539 as the Apalachee. Surveyors recorded the mounds as early as 1852, and archaeologists including Gordon Willey, John Griffin, B. Calvin Jones, and Claudine Payne investigated the site from 1940 onward.

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