The Florida materials represent type specimens assembled by Ripley Bullen, John Goggin, and Gordon Willey, pioneers of Florida archeology. The type collections serve as a primary comparative resource for museum scientists, graduate students, and visiting researchers. The Ceramic Technology Laboratory also curates fragments of pottery samples used in paste characterization studies. The Florida Archeology Collection includes artifacts spanning 12,000 years of human history in the Southeast. While the focus of this collection is on Florida, some materials from Georgia and other localities are included. These items are curated as a tangible record of the people who have made Florida their home. The Florida Archeology Collections come from Central and North Florida and the Panhandle regions. All counties including and north of Sarasota, De Soto, Hardee, Polk, Osceola, and Indian River counties are included in this collection. Exceptions to this rule are sites situated within Colonial St. Augustine and historical sites with no pre-Columbian material present, collections from these locales are included in the Historical Archaeology Collections. Counties to the south are part of the South Florida Archeology Collections. Information concerning policies associated with our collections are found below. The Excavated Collections include all archaeological materials that have been excavated using systematic recovery techniques. While recovery techniques vary depending on the project, site, and supervising archaeologist, all of these collections have associated provenience data. Documentation such as field notes, maps, and photographs are often available with the collection. Below is a select list of sites in the Florida Archeology Collections. Abraham's Old Town or Pilaklikaha is a multicomponent site in Sumter County. The site includes a ceramic period occupation (Pasco and Sand-Tempered Plain) and possibly a preceramic component. The site's significance is its identification as Pilaklikaha, a town inhabited by Black Seminoles during the early 19th century. The collection includes lithics, ceramics (both European and Seminole), glass beads, trade pipe fragments, bottle glass, brick, cut nails and other metal fragments recovered during excavations from 1998-2001. The collection contains prehistoric lithic, bone and mammoth ivory tools, ceramics, historic materials, plant remains, and Pleistocene and Holocene fossils from assorted sites along the Aucilla River. Notable items in this collection include the fossilized bones of Pleistocene animals exhibiting butcher and cut marks, numerous stone Paleoindian projectile points, and carved ivory shafts. Bolen Bluff is a multicomponent site located south of Paynes Prairie.