Significance An unexpected discovery made during the environmental impact surveys after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 was the remains of an ancient village on the northern Gulf Coast of Florida. Drone-mounted LiDAR reveals a complex of 37 rings of oyster shell, and archaeological testing shows that each of the households occupying the rings produced large numbers of beads from the shells of marine gastropods. Shell beads were integral to the political economy of chiefdoms in eastern North America, but archaeologists have very little knowledge about bead making at the source of the shells. The Raleigh Island village of AD 900 to 1200 is unprecedented in its architecture, its scale of bead production, and its place in regional geopolitics.