Although the Beasley Mounds site (40SM43) has been known since the early nineteenth century, only brief antiquarian notes and limited collections have been available to evaluate its relationship to the Middle Cumberland culture sites of the Central Basin. As part of the on-going efforts of the Middle Cumberland Mississippian Survey to refine the boundaries and chronology of the region, we directed a small-scale mapping and excavation project at Beasley Mounds in early 2008. Resulting ceramic samples suggest that the site residents were more closely affiliated culturally to those of the upper Cumberland and East Tennessee than to their nearer neighbors to the west. A single radiocarbon date from platform mound construction at the site suggests that it served as a socio-political center contemporaneous with those at the nearby Castalian Springs and Sellars sites to the west and south -- but was occupied by people whose material culture was (ethnically?) distinct from those to the west and south and more closely related to those from the east and north.