Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
A sound cultural chronology is the primary step in discovering the prehistory of any region. The chronology of the northwest coast of Florida and the adjacent Mobile Bay region of Alabama was first outlined by Willey (1949), utilizing his own surface and excavated collections, as well as the extensive but unsystematic work of Clarence B. Moore. Later Ford (1952) incorporated a portion of Willey's data into a chronological comparison of the Gulf Coast region and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Recently Sears (1956), in a most thorough report on the excavations at the Kolomoki site in southern Georgia, has called certain details of the ceramic chronology developed by Willey into question; notably the time position of the abundant check-stamped ware.