More CulturesWeeden Island culture was found along the Florida Gulf Coast and southwest Georgia from Pensacola to Tampa and beyond and along streams flowing to the Gulf of Mexico from the interior of this region. The Weeden Island culture seems to have been in place a long time, extending out of a tradition inspired perhaps by the Hopewell and local Santa Rosa and Swift Creek ceramic style cultures of the area. The Weeden Island cultures were part of the phenomenon that came to be called the Mississippian after about 800 to 900A.D. and came to resemble other Mississippian cultures up the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Tennessee River and the Cumberland Gap. The Weeden Island culture bridged the period from the Woodland to the Mississippian. As the more elaborate burials of the Temple Mound II period became prominent the Weeden Island culture demonstrated more varied and complex ceramic types including characteristic incised wares that were not designed for functional purposes but only as mortuary goods of excellent craft and artistic merit. There is evidence for large, pyramidal platform mounds with ramped approaches characteristic of Mississippian culture as well as trade goods from distant sites.