Pre-Mississippian shell pyramids at Leech Lake Love, Turtle Mound and Crystal River

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Key facts

• Leech Lake Love Mounds outside Tallahassee has two pyramid-sized shell-and-dirt mounds reaching 46 and 51 feet tall, assigned to the Swift culture, 200-900 CE, centuries before Mississippian earthen pyramids
• Archaeologists estimate the larger Leech Lake Love mound represents about 27 million basket loads of dirt and shells
• Turtle Mound at Canaveral North Seashore stands about 50 feet today and is believed to have once been roughly 70 feet tall; it is made almost entirely of oyster shells, began in the early 800s CE and survived into the Mississippian period
• Crystal River on Florida's upper Gulf Coast has a 26-foot-tall terrace platform mound and a tall embankment surrounding a group of burial mounds, all made mostly of shell
• Clarence Moore excavated Crystal River twice, in 1906 and again in 1918; settlement there began around 300 CE and ended around 1050 CE, with the major construction predating 500 CE
• Moore found copper, mica and quartz in the Crystal River burials, demonstrating the site's links to the upper Midwest, yet the site was not a Hopewell transplant — its platforms drew on Florida traditions reaching back into Archaic times and it continued for roughly 500 years after Hopewell society collapsed

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