Time Periods
Paleo
13,500–8,000 BC
The earliest Americans — big-game hunters pursuing mammoths and mastodons across an ice-age landscape.
Transitional Paleo
8,500–6,000 BC
The bridge between ice-age hunters and Archaic foragers — new tools, changing landscapes, and cultural adaptation.
Early Archaic
8,000–6,000 BC
Adapting to a warming world — diversified hunting, foraging, and the first settled territories.
Middle Archaic
6,000–3,000 BC
Population growth and regional traditions — shellfish mounds, groundstone tools, and long-distance trade.
Late Archaic
3,000–1,000 BC
Complex societies emerge — pottery begins, plant cultivation experiments, and elaborate burial practices.
Woodland
1,000 BC–AD 900
Mound builders and early farmers — the bow and arrow arrives, pottery flourishes, and villages grow.
Mississippian
AD 900–1,500
Temple mound cities and chiefdoms — corn agriculture, long-distance trade, and the rise of Cahokia.
Mississippian / Historic
AD 1,250–1,600
Late chiefdoms through European contact — the final era of indigenous stone tool production.