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North American archaeological periods  divides the history of pre-Columbian North America into a number of named successive eras or periods, from the earliest evidence of human habitation through to the early Colonial period which followed the European colonization of the Americas.

Stage classification
One of the most enduring classifications of archaeological periods & cultures was established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips' 1958 book Method and Theory in American Archaeology. They divided the archaeological record in the Americas into 5 phases, only three of which applied to North America. These divisions have been replaced in most of North America by more local classifications with a more elaborate time breakdown.


 * 1. The Paleo-Indians stage and/or Lithic stage
 * 2. The Archaic stage
 * 3. Post-archaic stage - At this point the North America classifications system differs from the rest of the Americas.

For more detail on the five major stages, which are still in use in Mesoamerican archaeology, see Mesoamerican chronology and Archaeology of the Americas.