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Learn by Period

Earliest to most recent. Dates are approximate and vary by region.

Paleoindian

c. 13,000 – 8,000 BCE

The first widely recognised peoples in the Americas, hunting and foraging through the end of the last Ice Age. Defined archaeologically by lanceolate and fluted stone points, and by association with animals that no longer exist.

Early Paleoindian

c. 13,000 – 10,900 BCE

The earliest securely dated occupations, and the sites that keep the question of first arrival open. Cactus Hill in Virginia has produced material dated to roughly 17,000 years ago — older than classic Clovis, and hard to reconcile with a Clovis-first model.

Pre-Clovis · First arrival · Lanceolate points

Middle Paleoindian

c. 10,900 – 10,200 BCE

The fluted point horizon. Clovis occupies a startlingly brief window of about three centuries yet appears across most of the continent, and Folsom overlaps its close rather than cleanly succeeding it.

Clovis · Folsom · Fluting · Extinct megafauna

2 lessons

Late Paleoindian

c. 10,200 – 8,000 BCE

Fluting is abandoned while lanceolate forms continue. Dalton runs for roughly two thousand years and becomes one of the most abundant early types in the mid-continent, and unfluted Plains forms such as Agate Basin and Scottsbluff appear.

Dalton · Plano · Agate Basin · Unfluted lanceolate

Archaic

c. 8,000 – 1,200 BCE

The longest of the eras by a wide margin. A warming continent, a broadening diet, notched and stemmed points, the atlatl, ground stone, the first containers — and, at Watson Brake and Poverty Point, monumental earthworks raised without agriculture.

Early Archaic

c. 8,000 – 6,000 BCE

Notching arrives and stays. Corner- and side-notched hafting spreads as the climate warms and the diet broadens away from the big-game emphasis of the preceding era.

Kirk · Corner-notching · Side-notching · Broadening diet

Middle Archaic

c. 6,000 – 3,000 BCE

Ground stone food-processing equipment becomes common, and it is heavy — its presence argues for groups returning to the same places. Watson Brake is raised around 3,500 BCE by people who were not farming.

Ground stone · Mano and metate · Watson Brake · Bannerstones

1 lesson

Late Archaic

c. 3,000 – 1,200 BCE

Long-distance exchange in mica, marine shell and native copper. Poverty Point flourishes between 1730 and 1350 BCE, and Great Lakes communities are working copper on a scale that makes them among the earliest metalworkers anywhere.

Poverty Point · Old Copper complex · Exchange networks · Gorgets

2 lessons

Transitional Archaic

c. 1,500 – 1,000 BCE

A regional term rather than a universal one, and it deliberately overlaps the Late Archaic. It marks the run-up to pottery in parts of the East and Southwest, and several Texas types — Kinney among them — are placed here.

Kinney · Charcos · Pre-ceramic transition

Overlaps the Late Archaic on purpose. Some regional schemes use this term and others fold the same span into the Late Archaic.

2 lessons

Woodland

c. 1,200 BCE – 1,000 CE · terminology used in Northeast & Great Lakes, Southeast, Plains

Fired pottery, cultivated plants and steadily less movement. Exchange networks widen until, at their height, a single burial mound can hold obsidian from the Rockies, copper from the Great Lakes and shell from the Gulf.

Early Woodland

c. 1,200 – 200 BCE

Fired pottery becomes common, and it arrives with a change in how people lived rather than as an isolated invention — heavy, breakable containers repay their cost only once you are staying put.

First pottery · Cord-marking · Burial mounds

Middle Woodland

c. 200 BCE – 500 CE

The Hopewell Interaction Sphere: communities across eastern North America connected by exchange, shared ceremony and overlapping artistic traditions, with no central political control anyone can point to.

Hopewell · Interaction sphere · Mica · Effigy pipes

Late Woodland

c. 500 – 1,000 CE

The bow and arrow spreads across western North America around 1,400 years ago, displacing the atlatl quickly in some regions and coexisting with it for a millennium in the far north. Maize becomes a significant crop late in the span.

Bow and arrow · Small triangular points · Maize

Mississippian

c. 1,000 – 1,500 CE · terminology used in Northeast & Great Lakes, Southeast

Intensive maize agriculture, platform mounds and ranked societies across the great interior river drainages. Cahokia becomes the largest settlement north of Mexico, and a shared body of imagery spreads with it.

Early Mississippian

c. 1,000 – 1,200 CE

Cahokia reaches its height in the Stirling phase, with 10,000 to 20,000 people in the city itself and tens of thousands more around it. Shell-tempered pottery spreads with the wider Mississippian way of life.

Cahokia · Monks Mound · Shell temper · Ramey Incised

Late Mississippian

c. 1,200 – 1,500 CE

The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex — repoussé copper plates, engraved marine shell gorgets and shell cups — carries a shared body of imagery across societies that were never politically unified.

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex · Repoussé copper · Shell gorgets

1 lesson

Ancestral Puebloan

c. 1,500 BCE onward · terminology used in Southwest

The Pecos Classification, agreed by consensus at a conference Alfred Kidder organised in 1927 and still in use. It divides the Ancestral Puebloan Southwest by changes in architecture, pottery and other remains rather than by the Eastern era names.

Basketmaker II

c. 1,500 BCE - 500 CE

Maize agriculture arrives in the Southwest well before pottery does. Named for the basketry that survives in the region’s dry caves and rockshelters in quantities the East can only envy.

Basketry · Early maize · Atlatl · Pre-ceramic

Nothing filed under this period yet.

Basketmaker III

c. 500 - 750 CE

Pottery and the bow arrive, and pithouse villages become the settlement form. The first structures recognisable as kivas appear.

First pottery · Pithouses · Bow and arrow · Early kivas

Nothing filed under this period yet.

Pueblo I

c. 750 - 900 CE

Above-ground masonry roomblocks replace pithouses as the primary dwelling, with the pithouse form persisting as ceremonial space.

Surface roomblocks · Masonry · Neck-banded pottery

Nothing filed under this period yet.

Pueblo II

c. 900 - 1,150 CE

The Chaco era. Great houses rise with hundreds of rooms, straight roads run for great distances between them, and painted whitewares such as Socorro Black-on-white carry dense fine-line hachure.

Chaco · Great houses · Roads · Black-on-white wares

1 lesson

Pueblo III

c. 1,150 - 1,350 CE

Population aggregates into large settlements, including the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, before much of the northern Southwest is depopulated toward the end of the span.

Cliff dwellings · Mesa Verde · Aggregation

Pueblo IV

c. 1,350 - 1,600 CE

Large plaza-oriented pueblos along the Rio Grande and to the south and west, with new painted traditions including glaze-decorated wares.

Plaza pueblos · Rio Grande · Glaze wares · Kachina imagery

1 lesson

Pueblo V

c. 1,600 CE onward

The historic and present-day Pueblos. This is not a period that ended — the communities it names are here now, which is the clearest argument against calling any of this "prehistory".

Historic Pueblos · Living communities

Nothing filed under this period yet.

Contact & Historic

c. 1,500 CE onward

European goods enter Indigenous networks and are reworked on Indigenous terms — brass kettles into tinkling cones, glass into knapped tools. The archaeology continues; only the documentary record begins.

Contact

c. 1,500 – 1,750 CE

Glass beads, gunflints and sheet brass enter Indigenous exchange networks — and are promptly reworked into Indigenous forms. Adoption was selective and creative, not the replacement of one material world by another.

Trade beads · Gunflints · Tinkling cones · Reworked brass

Historic

c. 1,750 CE onward

Documented history and archaeology running together, each correcting the other. The written record is a source here, not a replacement for the evidence in the ground.

Historical archaeology · Documentary record