Sarasota County Archaeologist Jodi Pracht
and affiliates of the Friends of Indian Mound Park
were among the contributors who informed the
public of Indian Mound Park's sacred human past.
On April 24, 2012 Sarasota County added Indian
Mound Park as the first archaeological site in the
Sarasota County Register of Historical Places.
Other findings from archaeological digs in the
area indicate that Indian Mound Park was one of
hundreds that dotted Florida's coast. This
suggests that the site, among others like it, were
once villages where fishing, pottery-making,
farming and animal husbandry were a common
way of life for these ancient native Americans. It
appears they lived heavily off the land with its
natural resources to provide for themselves and
their families.
JUST OFF
ISLAND
In the mid-1960s the remote and vacant land of
Paulsen Point would again experience human
contact, though only for research purposes. Late
archaeologist Ripley P. Bullen wrote an article in the
March 1971 edition of The Florida Anthropologist,
citing the excavations that took place at the site
before Sarasota County acquired the property rights
to build a recreational park. Studies of possible
artifacts at the time took place during the spring
seasons of 1965 and 1966. The goal for the Sarasota
County Mound excavation was to acquire relative
data on early pre-history of the county's earliest
residents, while collecting remaining artifacts for
further study outside the midden for the county to
resume with construction of the park.
Bullen's journal further documents that excavations
took place at the Sarasota County Mound site, with
Sarasota County work crews, members of the
Sarasota Historical Society and students from the
Manatee Junior College of Bradenton (what is now
known as the State College of Florida). They were
volunteering as a classroom project in drafting a
contour map of Paulsen Point to label designated
archaeological digging and test pits.