The Reading Warehouse

"By the end of 1950, only about a dozen publications in American archaeology might be said to stand as monumental contributions from the points of view of prodigious industry, presentation of new data, good organization, balanced interpretation, and clear writing. Of these, the reviewer regards Gordon Willey's great volume on the Florida Gulf Coast as perhaps the best of all."--American Antiquity

"Gordon Willey's Archeology of the Florida Gulf Coast literally set the agenda for archaeological research in north Florida. . . . It forms the basis for our understanding of the prehistoric period in this area. . . . It is impossible to do research in the Gulf Coast region without it."--Charles R. Ewen, East Carolina University

Fifty years after its first publication by the Smithsonian Institution, this landmark work is back in print. Written by the dean of North and South American archaeologists, Gordon Willey, the book initially marked a new phase in archaeological research. It continues to offer a major synthesis of the archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, with complete descriptions and illustrations of all the pottery types found in the area.

The book contains data that remain indispensable to archaeologists working in every region or state east of the Mississippi River. Nowhere else can the reader find as compact, and at the same time as detailed, a summary of the numerous ceramic types upon which Gulf Florida archaeological chronology is based. It includes an overview of all the work early archaeologists did in the area from the 1800s up through the time of the federal relief archaeology programs of the 1930s, and it has become the foundation upon which all subsequent research in the Gulf area has been constructed.

Gordon R. Willey, Bowditch Professor Emeritus of Harvard University, is former curator of anthropology at the Harvard Peabody Museum.