My research for Calusa Gold, my new historical fiction novel
For the past year and a half, I have been researching the Calusa tribe from Florida and the Aztec empire. I live in South West Florida, home of the Calusa while they existed, and I have visited many of their shell mounds and other locations where they once lived.
Here is a picture from the largest shell mound on Mound key, ancestral home of the Calusa Kings. This site once held a building large enough to hold 200 people: