A summary of Georgia’s archaeological sequence
| Period | Time | Subsistence Pattern | Settlement Pattern | Diagnostic Features |
| Post war, global economy, information age | AD 1945 to Present |
Corporate agriculture, international trade, service industry, and civil service | Suburban-urbanization, second homes, rural abandonment | Public works, transistors, interstate highways, disposable products, railroad abandonment, Teflon, computers |
| Depression, recovery and war | AD 1929 to AD 1945 | Manufacturing, farming, retailing, services, civil and military service |
Small towns, farmsteads, mill towns, and company towns | Fiberglass, depression glass, fluorescent light, terracing, stream channelization, nylon, wire nails |
| Economic growth and expansion |
AD 1870 to AD 1929 |
Farming, tenant farming, manufacturing, retailing | Dispersed farms, tenant farms, small towns and mill towns | Incandescent light, zipper, diesel engine, vacuum tube, barbed wire, gasoline car, machine-made bottles and bricks, machine-cut nails |
| Civil War and recovery | AD 1861 to AD 1870 | Farming, military service, manufacturing, retailing | Farmsteads, small towns, and military camps and forts | Military earthworks, internal combustion engine, ironclads, military prisons |
| King Cotton |
AD 1783 to AD 1861 |
Farming, plantations, retailing, manufacturing | Family farmsteads, plantations, small towns, Indian Removal, land lotteries | Safety pin, cotton gin, molded bricks, canals, railroads, steamboats |
| Revolution | AD 1775 to AD 1783 |
Farming, trading, retailing, factoring, military service | Family farmsteads, plantations, small towns, and military camps and forts | Fort, earthworks, trenches, battlefields, cast iron parts, molded bricks, blown glass |
| European colonization |
AD 1632 to AD 1775 |
Farming, trading, pioneering, military service, exporting-importing | Family farmsteads, port towns, pioneer settlements, and Indian villages to unceded lands | Molded bricks, blown glass, wrought iron nails, cast iron vessels |
| European contact and exploration | AD 1541 to AD 1632 | Farming, trading, hunting, trapping, factoring, exploring | Trading outposts, missions, forts, cantonments, and smaller Indian villages | Glass beads, wrought iron tools and weapons, blown glass vessels, molded bricks |
| Mississippian | AD 900 to AD 1541 | Intensive agriculture supplemented by gathering and hunting | Large permanent fortified towns with many forms of public architecture, smaller communities, separate homesteads, extensive network of foot trails | Temple mounds, plazas, ditches, earth lodges; corn, beans, squash; grit and shell tempered pottery as effigy bottles; small triangular projectile points |
| Woodland | 1000 BC to AD 900 | Gathering and hunting supplemented by horticulture | Small, widely-dispersed villages inhabited most of the time occupying floodplains and clearing for gardens. | Bow and arrow; pottery decorated by stamping, incising and impressing; pottery tempered by sand and crushed quartz; food storage pits; stone and earth burial mounds; sturdy homes |
| Archaic | 8000 BC to 1000 BC | Gathering and hunting of wild plants and animals; clearing areas in forest to attract game to new plants | Larger seasonally occupied camps | Atlatl (spear thrower), projectile points/knives; soapstone vessels, fiber-tempered pottery, ground stone tools, axe grinding and hammer stones |
| PaleoIndian | >10,000 BC to 8000 BC | Small game hunting; fishing, foraging, and gathering of various plants; hunting of large game extinct today: mastodon, mammoth, giant beaver, ground sloth, musk oxen | Small seasonally occupied camps | Lanceolate projectile points/knives; Clovis projectile points/knives, end and side scrapers, burins |