This book is a voyage of discovery into the past. Its author charts the waters of Alabama's Mobile-Tensaw Delta as he explores the Bottle Creek site, the principal late prehistoric mound center of the Pensacola Culture. This site, now a National Historic Landmark, was the scene of three seasons of archaeological fieldwork in the early 1990s. Ian Brown and his team of investigators not only provide a vivid picture of what swamp archaeology is like at the "trowel's edge," as seen from the day-to-day perspective of doing archaeology, but they offer the swamp itself in all its majesty, glory, and danger. This is a book about life in the swamp, both now and then. Any who follow in the wake of the Bottle Creek boat must do so with ample caution and due reflection.