Sinking Sites: Mount Royal

Mount Royal is a Timucuan burial mound in Welaka, FL that is estimated to have been built between 1200 and 1500 CE. The mound was constructed gradually out of sand in order to bury important people from their community. While this is an interesting enough find on its own, the objects that we buried with the people provided evidence of trade with Mississippian and other southern tribes. For perspective, I often travel between St. Augustine and Nashville, TN and it takes me about nine and a half hours going eighty miles per hour to get there. Now imagine what sort of trade networks are needed to get ceramics and other goods in between here and the Mississippian tribes. It also provides great context for what life might have been like in prehistoric Florida as there are no written records for historians to use. There has been only one excavation of the site by CB Moore in the 1890s so all of the information on what is inside the mound is based on his findings. Because the standards of archeological excavations in the 1890s are not even close to what our modern standards are there is likely more that we do not know lies within the mound. 

Nowadays, the mound stands in the middle of a gated community with houses surrounding it as close as legally possible. I will be honest with you all, it really bothers me. This is a sacred place, a final resting place, and the fact that affluent people would just build a neighborhood, a gated one at that, around it really rubs me the wrong way. The people buried within the mound were able to live and die before European contact but even so, they were still subjected to colonization even in death. Additionally, hasn’t any of them seen Poltergeist? This seems like the exact plot of the movie. This encroachment of development is what truly threatens this site (for once it isn’t climate change). While the site is protected by Florida as a historic site how long will it be until the rules are changed just enough to encroach more and more? To continue to protect Mount Royal and other sacred burial mounds like it we must continue to advocate for the conservation of not only the mound but also the area surrounding it so it can maintain its historical context. Historical context is also what makes this site significant, besides the fact that it is a burial space. Because while this is the graveyard for this community, people did not live in the graveyard but rather the space around it. The space around has been bulldozed and destroyed and thus the life that existed below the ground has been destroyed. The most complete images always have a background and a foreground so by protecting the areas around the mound that we can, we are making sure the background of this longstanding image remains intact.

Words and images by Emily Hulet, FPAN intern.