Hopewellian Affiliations of Certain Sites on the Gulf Coast of Florida

Abstract

AbstractThe Hopewellian Santa Rosa-Swift Creek culture, on the Florida Gulf Coast, includes seven or more burial mounds. Analysis of the individual complexes demonstrates that these mounds occupy points on a cultural continuum, with some clustering into two mortuary or ceremonial complexes. The earlier Yent complex, with the Pierce, Crystal River, and Yent mounds is in the Deptford time period. Some of the pottery has Tchefuncte characteristics, and there are Hopewell artifacts. The later, Green Point complex includes the Huckleberry Landing and Green Point mounds, with mostly complicated-stamped pottery and a few Hopewellian traits. The latest mounds, also placed in the Green Point complex, are Andersons Bayou and Alligator Bayou, which have Troyville or Troyville-like pottery associated with complicated-stamped pottery in an east-side deposit, a characteristic of the following Weeden Island period. The continuum originates in a Deptford-Tchefuncte period, in which there are direct Ohio-Illinois contacts, and ends in the Troyville period with Lower Mississippi Valley rather than midwest contacts. The inferred time span is from approximately 200 B.C. to A.D. 800.