Bottle Creek is the second largest mound center in Alabama and the remnant of a large Mississippian Stage civic and ceremonial complex that dominated the Mobile-Tensaw Delta from A.D. 1250 to 1500. Located in the heart of the Delta approximately twenty miles from here, it included eighteen mounds along with canals and residential areas that covered much of the northern end of Mound Island. The people who built the mounds left artifacts showing a clear cultural connection to the massive mound complex of Moundville to the north and to the peoples of the Lower Mississippi River Valley to the west. The people who occupied Bottle Creek were connected to others throughout the region, trading in goods, materials, and ideas that helped build a thriving culture. They brought fish and shellfish from the coast to the south, stones for making tools, ornaments, and ceremonial items from lands to the north, and pottery styles from across the Gulf region and beyond. The site is very important to numerous Southeastern indigenous tribes who assert an ancestral connection with those who built and occupied Alabama's ancient mounds, and its earthwork landscapes and recovered objects and information reveal a rich cultural tradition that still thrives today among these tribes.