Weeden Island ceremonial pottery appeared in Cades Pond mounds around 300. Pottery found in Cades Pond villages and middens was largely undecorated, and resembled contemporary ceramics of the St. Johns culture. Cades Pond culture has been described as a Weeden Island culture, but St. Johns series pots always outnumbered Weeden Island pots in Cades Pond mounds, suggesting closer ties to the St. Johns culture area than to Weeden Island. The influence of Weeden Island culture on Cades Pond may have weakened by 500. Around 600 to 700 the Cades Pond culture was replaced by the Alachua culture. Wallis suggests that drought in north central Florida in 659 to 724 is related to replacement of the Cades Pond culture by the Alachua culture. The ritual and mounds of the Alachua culture were simpler than that of the Cades Pond culture. The subsistence patterns of the Alachua culture were oriented to upland areas, making little use of the wetlands that were so important to Cades Pond culture. Rolland offers three scenarios for consideration: (1) that the Alachua culture developed in place from Cades Pond, adopting pottery styles from inland cultures running up through Georgia and South Carolina into North Carolina, (2) that the predecessors of the Alachua culture moved into the area and coexisted with people of Cades Pond for a while (Cades Pond pottery may have remained in use in the area into the 9th or 10th century), eventually absorbing the Cades Pond people, or (3) the Cades Pond people left the area or otherwise disappeared before the people of the Alachua culture moved into the area.