The Weeden Island culture (alternate spelling) derives its name from the type-site located at Weedon Island on the west shore of Tampa Bay. The Weeden Island site is a large shell midden and burial mound complex. The site first gained national attention in the early 1920s when Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution excavated a portion of the burial mound. These excavations discovered the finely made and ornately decorated mortuary vessels that archaeologists have come to associate with the Weeden Island culture. William Sears of the Florida State Museum investigated the site again in the 1960s. Sears excavated a small area of shell midden near the burial mound, and there he found many sherds of plain, utilitarian pottery unlike the decorated pottery type recovered by Fewkes. This difference in pottery types in mortuary and domestic contexts is a pattern found at other Weedon Island sites along the central Florida Gulf coast. Recent research indicates that the Weeden Island culture actually may have been centered in north Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia.