Between A.D. 200 and 900, potters of the Weeden Island culture of the Southeastern United States produced a variety of elaborate incised, painted, and modeled animal (especially bird) effigy ceramics, as well as simple utilitarian forms. Stylistic differences, taken together with differing depositional contexts - i.e., in burial mounds versus residential middens - provided the basis for long-standing interpretations concerning specialized use and manufacture of the pottery. Recent technological and compositional analyses of effigy and utilitarian vessels from the McKeithen site, a Weeden Island site in northern Florida, have revealed more complex patterns of production and distribution of these vessels. Comparisons with local clays suggest that much of the McKeithen pottery, including the effigy figures, was locally made rather than imported from a larger center.