National Park Service Ocmulgee Mounds U.S. Department of Interior Ocmulgee Mounds NHP

The Archaic Period 9,600-1,000 BCE

DEFINITION What comes to your mind when you think of the word “archaic”? Some words that might OF ARCHAIC pop into your head are “old”, “ancient”, or even “outdated”. While these are perfectly PERIOD accurate synonyms for “archaic” in our day-to-day lives, in archaeology the word means much more – it is the name of a whole culture and time period that once thrived in the Macon Plateau from 9,600 – 1000 BCE. The Archaic period was unique from the Paleo Indian period before it by the differences in stone point types, the appearance of new artifacts, and changes in economic orientation.

EARLY Imagine living in the Macon Plateau when by trading resources between bands. The ARCHAIC the last Ice Age began receding. Everything range of tools the Archaic Indians used (9,600 - 6,000 you and your ancestors have taken for included knives, drills, choppers, flake BCE) granted changes. As the last glaciers retreat knives and scrapers, gouges, and hammer from the North American continent, the stones. Wet sites, such as the Windover Site climate warms to temperatures similar near present-day Titusville, Florida, helped to what the southeast experiences today. produce exceptionally well-preserved Mammoths and other large game that organic materials such as bone points, atlatl you’ve relied upon for your food are now hooks, barbed points, fishhooks, pins, gone. How would you adapt to these shell adzes, wooden stakes and canoes, changes to survive? and fragments of cloth and woven bags. These discoveries reflect a residential, For the Early Archaic Indians, they adapted stable hunting-and-gathering band society to their new environment in two ways: that seasonally occupied base camps along by living in larger bands than the Indians major water courses. from the Paleo Indian time period, and

MIDDLE The Middle Archaic Indians’ diet consisted floors, and prepared burials at certain sites. ARCHAIC of a variety of animals like deer and small These remains along with other artifacts (6,000 - game, along with gathered wild plants such from these sites indicate a moderate 4,000 BCE) as nuts, fruits, berries, and seeds. Archaic increase of trading between bands for Indians were also the first to collect non-local chert materials. Historians shellfish within river valleys and along believe that the increase of trade during the seacoast. Archaeologists excavating this subperiod was due to increased band remnants of Archaic “base” camps have populations that lived in sedentary base discovered storage pits, remains of house camps.

LATE ARCHAIC The Late Archaic Indians became more satellite communities. These towns (4,000 - 1,000 specialized in their diets based on their were linked by trade in exotic nonlocal BCE) locations throughout the southeast. All lithic raw materials and finished goods. bands still used hunting-and-gathering The treatment of burials at the Green strategies for survival, but several began River sites, some containing exotic trade experimenting with horticulture as well. materials, may reflect the beginnings of The Late Archaic Poverty Point culture a hierarchy of individuals whose sole in the lower Mississippi River Valley responsibility was the establishment and developed large permanent towns with maintenance of these trade networks. LATE ARCHAIC At the end of the Late Archaic subperiod period villages and communities that (CONTINUED) fiber-tempered ceramics – both plain and focused on horticulture along with decorated – appeared along the South hunting and gathering. The Late Archaic Atlantic coast. This ceramic technology subperiod was also when the beginnings rapidly spread westward to the coastal of the southeastern mound-building plain of Alabama and Mississippi and tradition that would be further elaborated southward into Florida, soon reaching to on in the succeeding Woodland and most of the southeastern United States. Mississippian periods. The Archaic This became the tipping point between Indians may have an ancient name, but Archaic hunting-and-gathering societies they were vital forerunners of future and the emergence of settled Woodland cultures to come.

(A POTTERY SHERD FROM THE LATE ARCHAIC)

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