Weeden Island Culture - Geographic and Temporal Variants

Geographic and Temporal Variants

Recent efforts have refined the Weeden Island culture concept so that the term "Weeden Island" includes several distinct regional manifestations which exhibited the same basic ceremonial complex (most likely associated with shared sociopolitical patterns), but that exhibited significant geographic variations. These include: the North peninsular Gulf Coast variant, found along the Gulf coast from Pasco County to the Aucilla River; the Cades Pond culture in north-central Florida; the McKeithen Weeden Island culture in northernmost inland Florida; the Manasota culture located within the central Peninsular Gulf Coast; the Northwest culture, extending from the Aucilla River through the Florida Panhandle to Mobile, Alabama; the early Kolomoki culture, located in the lower Chattahoochee Valley; the later Wakulla Weeden Island culture, in the lower Chattahochee Valley, the lower Flint River valley, in southwestern Georgia, and the upper Choctawhatchee River valley in southeastern Alabama. Undefined Weeden Island culture variants are found in southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia outside the Kolomoki/Wakulla Weeden Island areas.

Several attempts have been made to segregate Weeden Island components into chronological phases based on temporal changes in settlement patterns, artifact assemblage, and ceremonial activities, all of which recognize an inherent distinction between the material culture of earlier and later Weedon Island manifestations. It is most widely accepted that the Weeden Island culture be split into two time periods: the Weeden Island I Period (200 AD - 700 AD) and Weeden Island II Period (700 AD - 1200 AD). Some Weeden Island II cultures later developed into local variants of the Mississippian culture, collectively known as proto-Mississippian.

The Weeden Island culture was preceded by the Deptford culture (and the later Swift Creek and Santa Rosa-Swift Creek cultures in the panhandle). It was followed by the Alachua culture in the Cades Pond culture area, by the Suwannee Valley culture in the McKeithen culture area and by the Fort Walton Culture in the Northwest area (the panhandle).

Several archaeologists including William Sears indicate "that there was a sharp dichotomy between sacred and the secular" artifacts (particularly ceramics) within the Weeden Island culture, though this pattern has not been observed west of the Aucilla River. (quote from Fagan, p. 458).

"The social organization characteristic of ... Weeden Island sites appears to have lain somewhere between the basically egalitarian structure of Archaic hunter-gatherers and the chiefdoms characteristic of Mississippian society...over these centuries, the social, political, and ideological institutions of later Weedon Island agricultural communities and their contemporaries evolved into those associated with the Mississippian" (Fagan, p.460-461).