Talk:List of archaeological periods (North America)

Woodland Dates
In regard to the dates of the Woodland period in the East- any date is arbitrary, but the 0 AD date is traditional in archaeology. The 300 BC date previously used in this list is accurate for parts of Georgia and Florida, but not the Mississippi valley, not exactly Ohio, and not the Tennessee valley. 0 AD is a compromise and an approximation. I prefer to use it for convenience when speaking generally, and give accurate dates for specific areas (i.e. ~ 200 BC for Ohio Hopewell, ~0 AD for Marksville, etc.). I have also changed the Woodland period article to match with this, following Judith Bense's general book (which I added to the references). I welcome counter arguments, but I think this is in line with archaeological opinion and best represents the cultural changes occurring. TriNotch 02:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Five Stage Classification
Because this page is supposed to be a list, I have placed the complete information on Willey and Phillips' stages in Archaeology of the Americas, and made this part much more list-like. I think this is a superior organization. TriNotch 07:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

What next?
Now that the article has stabilized after I dumped all those Florida cultures in, I'm trying to see if there is a way to integrate them in. I moved the Deptford, Swift Creek and Santa Rosa-Swift Creek cultures to the Woodland period, as that seems to be where they belong. The Weeden Island cultures are a problem. Some sources describe them as proto-Mississippian, but they were contemporaneous with late Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland and ended shortly before the Mississippian period. The cultures in eastern and southern Florida are described as developing directly from the Archaic period outside of the Woodland-Mississippian sequence. There are hints of simlarities to cultures on the coastal plain in Georgia and the Carolinas. All of the Florida cultures, some going back to late Archaic, built mounds, but are most are not classified as Mississippian (The Fort Walton culture may be, I haven't checked yet).

So now, I haven't found a source that pulls this together, and my attempts to make sense of all this seems to be getting into original research. Does anyone know of any sources that would help sort this out? --  Donald Albury ( Talk )  14:07, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Pacific Northwest and Plateau
Noticed there's no section for these important areas; I'd come around looking as there's no entries on Xa:ytem Rock (9000BP), Keatley Creek (7000BP) or other important sites in this area (new one just got found near my old home, older than Xa:ytem). Anyway, I'm no archaeologist, just a participant in WikiProject_Indigenous_peoples_of_North_America the WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America]. Having a look at the "obverse" page here, and since it's summer semester, I'll try and write [[Brian Hayden at SFU to see if he can contribute a basic article on his sites (Keatley is the most famous, but not the only one) and the proper regional timeline to go with your other regional timelines overleaf.  Xa:ytem Rock is native-run and will likely assign someone to (gladly) write the Wikipedia article; there's also another interesting site, the Scowlitz Mounds, on Harrison Bay, which has as yet no conclusive results; there is no other mound or pyramid culture on the Pacific Coast anywhere north of Mexico.  The local Chehalis (part of the Sto:lo) themselves do not know what they mounds are, or who built them; one strange bit about them is they have log structures inside the dirt mound, but not to support a cavity or room/chamber; more on these when I find current materials.  There's also an emergent issue concerning underwater archaeology here and the old shoreline, which was 100m lower; a few habitation sites have already been found; what else might be is anyone's guess.Skookum1 16:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Another table of lists
I've been working on another table to replace the one for the Lower Yazoo phases. It has Cahokia phases and dates, as well as Ohio/ Mississippi Confluence phaseses and dates. I can't quit get all of the code right and was wondering if someone would like to help me out. I was also wondering if anyone thought it would be a worthwhile add to the page. Thanks in advance.

Culture, phase, and chronological table for the Mississippi Valley
Lower Mississippi, Lower Yazoo, and Tensas/Natchez table taken from "Emerging Patterns of Plum Bayou Culture:Preliminary Investigations of the Toltec Mounds Research Project", by Martha Ann Rolingson, 1982, Pg-66. Cahokia phases and dates taken from "Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians", by Timothy Pauketat, 2004, Pp-6. . Ohio and Mississippi River Confluence Phases and dates taken from "Kentucky Archaeology", edited by R. Barry Lewis, 1996, Pg - 16.

Well, thats it, with my list of references too. Heironymous Rowe (talk) 06:38, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

BC vs BCE-over turn of stable style that has been in place for 5 years as opposed to one month of the other usage
This article has been stable in its current usage for literally almost five years, since this edit on 20 March 2006 when it was put into table form less than a month after the page was created. Now, it has been unilaterally overturned by on editor. Per WP:ERA,is there consensus amongst the regular editors of this page to keep the BCE usage that has been in place on this page?  He  iro 07:18, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Considering the subject matter of this list, BCE is definitely the appropriate usage in it. -- Donald Albury 10:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Lower Mississippi Middle Archaic sites
Somehow we need to show the finds of multiple-mound complexes in Louisiana related to the Middle and Late Archaic period - the complex products of pre-ceramic, hunter-gatherer cultures in North America, who in some cases occupied the sites they built only on a seasonal basis. Examples for Middle Archaic are Watson Brake (3500 BCE), and Poverty Point (1500 BCE) for Late Archaic.Parkwells (talk) 14:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You could always try fleshing out the Archaic period in the Americas article, which has been a dismal stub for years, plus Early, Middle and Late Archaic have been redlinks in this chart for years, if you found enough you could start them. I noticed a similar hole in the Mississippi Valley stuff and have managed to fill in half of it so far.  He  iro 16:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I was just noticing that the Late Archaic Stallings culture of Georgia/South Carolina and the related Orange culture (northeast Florida) and Norwood culture (northwest Florida) cultures are missing. Yes, there does seem to be some work to do here. -- Donald Albury 14:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I correctly linked your post, hope you don't mind DA, just for clarity.  He  iro 15:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I left them unlinked because I knew there was no article for the Orange culture, and didn't realize that there was one for the Norwood culture. It was Parkwells who added the incorrect links. That is another one of my dormant projects, creating articles for all of the cultures that have been located in or near Florida. -- Donald Albury 22:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * As I try to sort out regional cultures to include in this list, things get sort of murky. I find the following in Milanich's Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida: The Late Archaic ceramic Orange culture was preceded by the non-ceramic Mount Taylor culture. In the panhandle of Florida there was the Elliott's Point complex, apparently related to Poverty Point. There were as yet unnamed Late Archaic ceramic cultures in the greater Tampa Bay area and in Southwest Florida. There was also the Middle to Late Archaic pre-ceramic year-round settlement at Horr's Island in Southwest Florida. It also looks like the Stallings and Norwood cultures were replaced by the Deptford culture at the end of the Archaic, while the Orange culture was replaced by the St. Johns culture, which makes me wonder just how distinct the Stallings, Orange and Norwood cultures were. I think we need to be careful trying to incorporate Archaic regional cultures into this table. Maybe we should push that to the Archaic period article and confine this article to post-Archaic cultures. -- Donald Albury 03:18, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Current BCE & CE vs. BC & AD
I've noticed that my change of certain dates from BC and AD to BCE and CE haven't been especially appreciated. I'd like to point out that my intent was not to change the era style for the page, but to strengthen what I perceived to be the established era style on this page, as major edits incorporating the BCE and CE have remained unchanged since 2008. I'd also like to point out that the dating system incorporated in the most recent edit after mine (In which neither CE or AD is used) is one that had so far only been used for a total of five cultures listed. If anyone could clear up this situation for me, that would be greatly appreciated.GreenMountainGaurd88 (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Although the first edit was BC/AD, by 2010 the article was BCE, which was confirmed by a (brief but sufficient) 2011 discussion above, making that the established style. So I will revert back to this. Somewhat wierdly, User:Donald Albury, who just reverted you, was the single confirming supporter of BCE in 2011! This undiscussed edit in 2014, though probably well-intended, was therefore illegitimate, and was reverted not long after.  Then this happened - back to BC by ip. Johnbod (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I have consistently used BCE/CE in the articles about about pre-Columbian archaeology and history in America that I have started, but MOS:ERA says to seek consensus on the talk page before changing the style. This article used BC/AD when it was first created, and though it has spent long periods using BCE/CE (not always consistently), there has never been a consensus established on this talk page to use that style. I will also note that your revert left the article again using a mix of BCE/CE and BC/AD styles, and restored 'CE' and 'AD' in many places where the MOS advises to leave them off dates (I do see that I had not caught all of those cases in my edit). I will now start a discussion, as suggested in MOS:ERA. Real life now calls, but if users who have previously changed the style in this article or expressed an opinion on it have not responded here by the time I return, I will ping them. - Donald Albury 20:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank youGreenMountainGaurd88 (talk) 20:28, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Which ERA style should be used in this article?
This article was created in 2006 using the BC/AD era style. One month later a user changed all the era denoters to BCE/BC without a discussion on whether to do so. Five years later the style was reverted to BC/AD, with an edit summary of "Per policy, an article started with BC/AD should stay that way." That triggered the brief discussion in the section above, and the article was reverted to the BCE/CE style the next day, but since then the article has spent months at a time using one style or the other, and recently has had a mix of styles. It would be hard to claim that one or the other style had an implied consensus, because each style has been left undisturbed for up to a year before being changed back. - Donald Albury 20:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Question: Should this article use the BCE/CE era style, or the BC/AD era style?
 * BCE/CE - Donald Albury 20:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * BCE/CE, but let's be VERY CLEAR - the 2011 discussion was entirely formal enough to constitute consensus per WP:ERA - on a page like this, and a question like this, that's typically as good as it gets. Johnbod (talk) 23:38, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I concede
On reflection, this is not something worth fighting over, especially as I prefer the BCE/CE style for this article. I accept that a consensus exists to use that style here. - Donald Albury 18:54, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

list of cultural types?
is there a sequence or list of cultural types, as they developed sucessively over time, the next obviously based on the earlier, wherby most of them survived longer than the one which developed later for the first time? I'm asking because such a 'tool' would be useful to categorize and understand 'archaic' cultures ('archaic' in the general sense of the word) that survived even until early industrial times, i.e. into the 19th century. I'm thinking of e.g. the selk`nam or the haush, who would belong into the late paleo-indian or lithic-period type of culture, the north-west-coast-cultures, like the kwakiutl, haida, tlingit, who - according to the cultural type - would belong into the early to middle archaic period, or the haudenausaunee, who would belong to the late woodland-period. as one can see easily it is somewhat awkward to denote a cultural type, appearing later, with the name of the time-period in which the type was first developed; not to speak of names that don't really fit the type, like "woodland-period" for the pueblo-cultures that originated in the same time and are on the same civilisatory level, or even "mississippian"-period-culture for pueblo III - V... till now astonishingly I didn't come across such a typology... ps: how can the evolutionary line from the woodland-period to the historic haudenosaunee be described? were there not just linguistic "proto-iroquois" people that can be archaeologically shown? and who were the ancestors of the north-west-coast-cultures (they do not appear in the various period-descriptions...)? HilmarHansWerner (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The strucure of periods in North American archaeology does not fit well with the history of individual peoples. I see the Woodland Period defined as including pottery, agriculture, the use of bow and arrows, and permanent settlements, but those traits arose in scattered locations and spread in different patterns. The peoples of southern Florida had been using pottery and living year-round in settlements (and buidling mounds) since the Archaic period, but had not adopted agriculture before they died out in the 18th century. Different groups practiced cultures that were adapted to their environments, and those cultures did not always "advance" in a particular sequence. It appears that the Haush and Selk'nam had lost elements of their culture that they once shared with the Tehuelche because of the limited resources of their environment. Donald Albury 13:04, 5 October 2023 (UTC)