This manuscript in its original thesis form was published by Field Research Projects of Florida in 1974. It had a very limited circulation and was basically in the form of a mimeographed edition. The version now published here represents the work for the first time as a proper publication in book form and has been revised and edited and is appropriately produced as a regular archaeological book.

Fundamentally this was and remains the seminal work on the subject and was the first in its filed. It is an integral work of scholarship of permanent value. It is a work written in its own time and no attempt has been made to retrospectively interfere or change the nature of the text or its conclusions but to publish it for what it is.

The work has ushered in a series of field excavations and analyses that expand upon it and amplify the information already given in the work itself. Thus one could say that this original work has had a seminal and indeed catalytic impact on the archaeology of the Gulf over the last two decades.

This edition first published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.