Period Time Subsistence Pattern Settlement Pattern Diagnostic Features

Post war, AD\ Corporate Suburban-urbanization, Public works, global economy, 1945 to agriculture, second homes, rural transistors, information age Present international trade, abandonment interstate service industry, and highways, civil service disposable products, railroad abandonment, Teflon, computers

Depression, AD 1929 to AD Manufacturing, Small towns, farmsteads, Fiberglass, recovery and 1945 farming, retailing, mill towns, and company depression glass, war services, civil and towns fluorescent military\ light, terracing, service stream channelization, nylon, wire nails

Economic\ AD\ Farming, tenant Dispersed farms, tenant Incandescent growth and 1870 to AD farming, farms, small towns and light, zipper, expansion 1929 manufacturing, mill towns diesel engine, retailing vacuum tube, barbed wire, gasoline car, machine-made bottles and bricks, machine-cut nails

Civil War and AD 1861 to AD Farming, military Farmsteads, small towns, Military recovery 1870 service, and military camps and earthworks, manufacturing, forts internal retailing combustion engine, ironclads, military prisons

King\ AD\ Farming, plantations, Family farmsteads, Safety pin, Cotton 1783 to AD retailing, plantations, small cotton gin, 1861 manufacturing towns, Indian Removal, molded bricks, land lotteries canals, railroads, steamboats

Revolution AD\ Farming, trading, Family farmsteads, Fort, earthworks, 1775 to AD retailing, factoring, plantations, small trenches, 1783 military service towns, and military battlefields, camps and forts cast iron parts, molded bricks, blown glass

European\ AD\ Farming, trading, Family farmsteads, port Molded bricks, colonization 1632 to AD pioneering, military towns, pioneer blown glass, 1775 service, settlements, and Indian wrought iron exporting-importing villages to unceded nails, cast iron lands vessels

European AD 1541 to AD Farming, trading, Trading outposts, Glass beads, contact and 1632 hunting, trapping, missions, forts, wrought iron exploration factoring, exploring cantonments, and smaller tools and Indian villages weapons, blown glass vessels, molded bricks

Mississippian AD 900 to AD Intensive agriculture Large permanent Temple mounds, 1541 supplemented by fortified towns with plazas, ditches, gathering and hunting many forms of public earth lodges; architecture, smaller corn, beans, communities, separate squash; grit and homesteads, extensive shell tempered network of foot trails pottery as effigy bottles; small triangular projectile points

Woodland 1000 BC to AD Gathering and hunting Small, widely-dispersed Bow and arrow; 900 supplemented by villages inhabited most pottery decorated horticulture of the time occupying by stamping, floodplains and clearing incising and for gardens. impressing; pottery tempered by sand and crushed quartz; food storage pits; stone and earth burial mounds; sturdy homes

Archaic 8000 BC to Gathering and hunting Larger seasonally Atlatl (spear 1000 BC of wild plants and occupied camps thrower), animals; clearing projectile areas in forest to points/knives; attract game to new soapstone plants vessels, fiber-tempered pottery, ground stone tools, axe grinding and hammer stones

PaleoIndian >10,000 BC to Small game hunting; Small seasonally Lanceolate 8000 BC fishing, foraging, occupied camps projectile and gathering of points/knives; various plants; Clovis projectile hunting of large game points/knives, extinct today: end and side mastodon, mammoth, scrapers, burins giant beaver, ground
sloth, musk oxen

Posted online on Monday, March 9th, 2009