 The peoples of the Fort Walton culture used mostly sand, grit, grog, or combinations of these materials as tempering agents in their pottery, whereas the Pensacola culture peoples used the more typical Mississippian culture shell tempering for their pottery.The site was abandoned by 1500 A.D. but the exact reason for the abandonment is unknown.It has been speculated that this was due to the arrival of European settlers, but this statement is unproven because the sites were already found abandoned by Spanish explorers years before.