THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
9,600 - 1,000 BCE
William A. Richtie (1932) first used the term "Archaic" in American archeological literature to describe the cultural material, primarily chipped stone tools, from the Lamoka Lake Site in New York. During the Works Progress Administration (WPA) excavations of the 1930s and 1940s, southeastern sites that were recognized as producing lithic materials similar to LamokaLake were also classified as Archaic. Today, archeologists use the term to describe a temporal and cultural period, differentiated from the earlier Paleo Indian period and more recent periods on the basis of stylistic differences in stone point types, the appearance of other artifacts, and changes in economic orientation.
Before 1960, the major goal of Archaic period research was to develop a relative chronology. Information derived from excavations at deeply stratified quarry, habitation, and cave sites in the southeast, such as Russell Cave in Alabama, Indian Knoll in Kentucky, and the Hardaway and Doerschuk sites in North Carolina, and Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia was used to develop the following chronology for the Archaic period.
Early Archaic (9,600 - 6,000 BCE)
The Early Archaic period was defined on the basis of chipped stone projectile point technology and styles. This time period is associated with the final glacial retreat on the North American continent and an environment similar to that found in the southeast today.
Excavations at stratified Early Archaic sites near permanent water sources or along rivers have produced corner, basal, and some side-notched points, such as Palmer, Kirk, and LeCroy, which are found throughout the south-eastern United States. Other points, such as St. Albans, Kessell, Big Sandy, and Kanawah, have a limited southeastern geographical distribution. It is this introduction of new point types that differentiates the Early Archaic period from the preceding Late Paleo Indian sub period.
Like the Late Paleo Indian sub period, archaeologists presumed that the Early Archaic culture consisted of small mobile bands exploiting defined territories, but the increase in the number of sites and the recovery of nonlocal cherts tend to support an increase in population resulting in larger numbers of bands that traded resources with each other. The proliferation in point types appeared to also represent the ongoing regional specialization first apparent in the Late Paleo Indian sub-period.
The range of lithic tools included knives, perforators, drills, choppers, flake knives and scrapers, gouges, and hammerstones. In addition, wet sites, such as the Windover Site near present-day Titusville, Florida, which produced exceptionally well preserved organic materials, have enlarged this inventory to include: bone points, atlatl hooks, barbed points, fish hooks, and pins; shell adzes; wooden stakes and canoes; and fragments of cloth and woven bags. This new information on the Early Archaic has contributed to a view of a residentially stable hunting and gathering band society that seasonally occupied base camps along major water courses and exploited lithic and food resources within individual stream drainages.
Middle Archaic (6,000 – 4,000 BCE)
The Middle Archaic period in the southeast is marked by a further intensification of regionalization of prehistoric cultures. A variety of new chipped stone points (for example, Stanly, Morrow Mountain, Levy, Eva, Benton, Cypress Creek, Arrendondo, White Springs, Sykes, and Newnan) and a series of ground stone tools and implements first appear in this period. The latter were used mainly for plant food processing.
The Middle Archaic appears to involve a much generalized resource exploitation strategy that included the hunting of a variety of animals and the gathering of wild plants, such as nuts, fruits, berries, and seeds. This period demonstrated the first occurrence of shellfish collecting within river valleys and along the seacoast. Excavations of these "base" camps revealed storage pits, remains of house floors, and prepared burials, all indications of increased sedentism at certain sites. Recent radiocarbon samples in Louisiana provided considerable evidence of a mound-building tradition in Louisiana at least by 5,900 years ago (5000 rcbp). Artifacts indicate a moderate increase in the amount of trade in nonlocal chert materials supposedly due to a continued growth in prehistoric population. Trade networks that focused on specialized resources developed when people began to live in sedentary base camps.
LATE ARCHAIC (4,000 – 1,000 BCE)
The Late Archaic period in the southeast consisted of regional specialization using a generalized subsistence technology to efficiently exploit locally available plant and animal resources. For example, freshwater mussels from the Green River in Kentucky provided the basis for an expanded dietary inventory that included seed crops and native and tropical cultigens, suggesting experimentation with horticulture. Late Archaic cultures along the South Atlantic coast developed sedentary settlements based on the utilization of the saltwater oyster beds. The Late Archaic Poverty Point culture in the lower Mississippi RiverValley developed large permanent towns with satellite communities. These were linked in a program of trade in exotic nonlocal lithic raw materials as well as in the production and trade of finished goods made from these materials throughout much of the eastern United States. The treatment of burials at the Green River sites, some containing exotic trade materials, may reflect the beginnings of a hierarchy of individuals whose sole responsibility was the establishment and maintenance of these trade networks.
At the end of the Late Archaic, fiber-tempered plain and decorated ceramics appeared along the South Atlantic coast. This ceramic technology spread westward to the coastal plain of Alabama and Mississippi, to the Poverty Point culture area, southward into Florida, and eventually most of the southeastern United States. The appearance of this new technology has traditionally been viewed as the transitional period between the Archaic hunting and gathering societies and the emergence of settled Woodland period villages and communities, where existence depended on a combination of horticulture and hunting and gathering. Finally, the Archaic saw the beginning of a southeastern mound-building tradition that would be further elaborated on in the succeeding Woodland and Mississippian periods.
Archaic Moundbuilders left little to understand their culture. Adena, and later the Hopewell Culture left more, but today it is the Mississippians, the final, fantastic culture that evokes the most mystery. The time period between about 2500 and 1000 BCE should be considered a period of gradual transition from the Archaic to the Woodland.