Learn by Region

Alaska, northern Canada and Greenland. The far north is where the atlatl outlasted the bow’s arrival by more than a thousand years — north of the 55th parallel the two were used side by side long after the Southwest had switched.

Ice patch preservation · Late atlatl use · Organic tool survival

A waterlogged archaeology, and an unusually complete one. Wet sites here preserve basketry, cordage and worked wood that decay everywhere else, filling in a technological world dry-land excavation can only infer.

Wet sites · Basketry · Cordage · Anaerobic preservation

The Columbia and Fraser drainages between the Cascades and the Rockies. Its dart-and-arrow point sequences are among the most closely studied anywhere, and are central to how the two weapon systems are told apart.

Columbia Plateau · Dart and arrow points · Riverine fishing

Dry caves and rockshelters that preserve what almost nowhere else does. Bonneville Estates and its neighbours have yielded basketry, cordage and perishable tools across thousands of years of occupation.

Dry caves · Rockshelters · Perishable technology

Coast, island and interior. Daisy Cave on San Miguel Island produced the oldest fibre technology on the Pacific coast, dated between roughly 8,000 and 9,800 years ago.

Daisy Cave · Shell middens · Early maritime technology

Chaco, Mesa Verde, the Hohokam canals and the painted whitewares. Preserved construction timbers make this the one region where dendrochronology can date a building to the year its beams were felled.

Chaco · Mesa Verde · Hohokam · Mimbres · Socorro · Kivas

2 lessons

Bison country, and the source of two of the continent’s great toolstones. Folsom settled the question of human antiquity in the Americas; Alibates and Knife River Flint travelled from here to Canada and Mexico.

Folsom · Alibates · Knife River Flint · Bison kill sites

4 lessons

Where native copper outcrops pure enough to hammer without smelting, making Great Lakes communities among the earliest metalworkers anywhere. Later, the heart of the fur trade and its reworked brass.

Old Copper complex · Hopewell · Fur trade · Annealing

1 lesson

Mound country. Watson Brake and Poverty Point raise monuments without agriculture; Cahokia later becomes the largest settlement north of Mexico, and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex spreads its imagery from there.

Cahokia · Poverty Point · Watson Brake · SECC · Shell temper

2 lessons