The dead were laid out on wooden racks and allowed to decompose, attended usually by high priests. After the bodies dried away, each set of bones was then bundled individually and interred with special ceremony. This method explains the great number of skeletons found in burial mounds.

The Timucua Indians were over 200,000 strong in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia when the French and Spanish came to Florida in the early 1500s.  With constant warfare among the rival chiefs and other Indian tribes, plus the lack of immunity to diseases brought by Europeans, the Timucua tribes rapidly diminished.

Associated with the Ormond Mound was a charnel house used to store bodies before burial. The Timucua used such structures to prepare corpses (mostly of prominent people) for the afterlife.