Shells are not found in the interior of Florida’s peat landscape; they had to come from somewhere, which means they had to be carried or traded.

The fact that such materials were incorporated into a small child’s burial goods suggests that either the community had access to coastal resources directly or was embedded in exchange networks that reached the coast.

These are the kinds of details that a cemetery can reveal about a community in ways that a scatter of stone tools at a campsite cannot.

The Windover pond preserved not just the people but the relationships and values embedded in their mortuary practice.