BONITA BAY SITE COMPLEX: INDIGENOUS SETTLEMENT IN THE CALUSA HEARTLAND.

The article focuses on the Bonita Bay Site Complex, a group of 30 Indigenous archaeological sites and one historic site in coastal southwest Florida, representing Native American subsistence, habitation, and mortuary activities spanning approximately 4,000 years from the Archaic period to historic times. Key sites include the Archaic-period Bonita Bay Shell Enclosure (8LL717), the Strader Site shell midden (8LL709), and the Hopewellian-influenced Oak Knoll Mound (8LL729), which yielded radiocarbon dates and artifacts linking them to regional cultural phases such as the Glades and Deptford periods. The complex's sites are distributed across diverse habitats including estuaries, sandhills, and mangrove swamps, with larger shell middens near Estero Bay and the Imperial River and smaller inland extractive campsites on elevated sand ridges. Collaborative archaeological efforts with developers led to the preservation of several sites within Estero Bay Park, although many smaller sites have been destroyed by residential and marina development.