Weedon Island Preserve
The Weeden Island site is a large shell midden and burial mound complex. The site first gained national attention in the early 1920s when Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution excavated a portion of the burial mound. These excavations discovered the finely made and ornately decorated mortuary vessels that archaeologists have come to associate with the Weeden Island culture. William Sears of the Florida State Museum investigated the site again in the 1960s. Sears excavated a small area of shell midden near the burial mound, and there he found many sherds of plain, utilitarian pottery unlike the decorated pottery type recovered by Fewkes. This difference in pottery types in mortuary and domestic contexts is a pattern found at other Weedon Island sites along the central Florida Gulf coast. Recent research indicates that the Weeden Island culture actually may have been centered in north Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia. The Weedon Island Preserve website contains a fantastic virtual tour which includes pottery and other artifacts which you can rotate a full 360 degrees to see all sides of the artifact. (See links below)
Internal Links:
Ancient Civilizations of Florida
Ancient Civilizations of Georgia: Kolomoki
Public Indian Sites of Georgia: Kolomoki
Public Indian Sites of Florida: Letchworth Mounds
External Links:
