Archaic Period (America)

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The Archaic Period is an archaeological epoch in the prehistory of North America and reaching as far as Central America , which connects to the Paleo-Indian period . The term and its delimitation are controversial, the beginning is usually 8000 BC for Mesoamerica . And in North America about 6000 BC. B.C., the end depending on the region under consideration around 2000 B.C. For Mesoamerica and individual cultures of North America, 1000 BC For eastern North America and various times between 1500 BC. And around the year 500 for cultures of western North America. In several cultural areas such as the Great Basin , in California and on the Columbia Plateau , it did not end before contact with white people of European descent.

In the Archaic Period people continued to live as hunters and gatherers , but the importance of wild plants over hunting increased. Stone tools and wickerwork were available as technologies . In the course of the epoch, people developed new cultural techniques such as the construction of wells , at the end of the archaic period the first beginnings of agriculture , ceramics and generally settling took place .

Concept history

The term archaic was first used in 1932 by the archaeologist William A. Ritchie. He used it to describe a hunter-gatherer culture that he excavated in what is now New York State . Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips then used the term in their periodization of North American history in their Method and Theory in American Archeology (1958) roughly in its current meaning. In the 1960s the clear structure of a cultural development was questioned and the archaic period was viewed as a smooth transition.

Since around the 1990s it has been recognized that the change from hunter-gatherer cultures to arable farmers was different in each culture and was much slower than previously assumed. The gathering of wild plants also played an essential role in crops that were already familiar with irrigation farming and the creation of terrace fields. The question was raised whether the term is still suitable:

"We are so far removed from characterizing the archaic phase in the middle of the twentieth century that the concept has become misleading, if not simply meaningless."

Nevertheless, the term remains in use, but its definition has lost its meaningfulness. For clarification, a distinction is made in recent research between the archaeological period, which is referred to in English with capital letters as the archaic period , and archaic (with minuscule) as the way of life of the hunter and gatherer cultures also in later epochs.

Cultures

While the previous Paleo-Indians had almost identical forms of nutrition and tools everywhere in their area of ​​distribution, the ways of life in the archaic period differed greatly according to the regions of North America and the respective habitats.

  • In the Great Plains , the focus is on hunting big game, especially the bison . The beginning is said to be around 6000 BC It ended with the advent of bows and arrows and ceramics around 1500 BC. Chr.
  • The Great Basin and parts of what is now California east of the Sierra Nevada are characterized by a desert climate . Here the cultures did not develop beyond the archaic phase until the contact with Europeans, which sometimes only took place in the 19th century. Even the Fremont culture as the latest clearly definable culture in the region shows only the beginnings of sedentariness.
  • The development on the Columbia Plateau in northwest North America was similar . The beginning of the Archaic period is difficult to date here and lies between 6000 and 3000 BC. BC, the very late contact with whites and the introduction of the horse around 1800 is assumed to end here.
  • California has been excellently studied and there are also several cultures here, some of which developed differently. In the south, the beginnings of the Archaic Period can be found as early as 8000 BC. The latest forms begin around the turn of the Christian era and last until contact with Europeans in the 18th century.
  • In the Southwestern United States , different cultures developed spatially next to each other during the Archaic Period, but only partially overlapping in time: Southwestern Archaic . Under the name Picosa culture , Cynthia Irwin-Williams attempted in the 1960s to cover the region from the middle archaic phase (approx. 3050-1050 BC). As a regional subgroup of the Picosa culture, she defined the Oshara tradition . The tradition originally only covered the so-called Arroyo Cuervo region in the northwest of what is now New Mexico , but the term is now applied to the entire north of the American Southwest and expanded over time. Oshara now ranges from 5500 BC. BC far beyond the limitation of the archaic period that is customary elsewhere until around the year 500 or 600. A special feature of the southwest is the contact with the much earlier developed Mesoamerican cultures, through which the first forms of agriculture were introduced earlier than elsewhere. However, the use of ceramics can also be seen here at about the same time as other North American cultural areas. The two technological changes that otherwise take place together fall apart here.
    In the south-west, because of the dry climate, wooden artifacts and building materials have been preserved that can be dated using dendrochronology . Therefore, the chronological assignment of finds is much better possible than in other regions of the world. The fact that a clear periodization is hardly possible here, or because of it, makes archaeologists doubt the usefulness of overarching classifications:

    “The series of the different traditions are fixed by absolute dates - and thus coordinated in time - but they begin and end at different points in time; there are no overarching periods. Whether this is due to the good knowledge of the local archeology, the early onset of an absolute chronology (dendrochronology) - which would mean that periodizations are only possible with imprecise knowledge! - or whether it can be explained with large geographical and / or cultural differences cannot currently be decided. "

  • The most clearly developed is the archaic phase in the so-called eastern woodlands from the Mississippi River to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes . Here are the lines of development of the Dalton-culture at the transition between the Paläoindianern and the Archaic period to the early Archaic finds with corner notched / bifurcate - projectile points across the Middle archaic cultures as L'Anse Amour , Labrador and Neville site , New Hampshire to the late archaic cultures, among which the poverty point culture is the most prominent, almost completely understandable. The late archaic cultures of the Eastern Woodlands built around 4000 BC. The first mounds on the lower Mississippi ; artificial mounds, some of which served as burial sites, some of which were seen as magical in their form, which consciously changed the landscape as a symbol for creation , but above all had a community-building effect through coordinated cooperation and served as a place for regular get-togethers. Around 1000 BC The Woodland period begins , which is characterized by sedentariness and is no longer to be regarded as archaic.

literature

  • Wolfgang Haberland: American archeology . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-534-07839-X .
  • Brian M. Fagan : Ancient North America . Thames and Hudson Ltd, London / New York 1991, ISBN 0-500-27606-4 (also German: The early North America - Archeology of a continent , translated by Wolfgang Müller. CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37245-7 )
  • Guy Gibbon: Archaic . In: Ders .: Archeology of Prehistoric Native America. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, ISBN 0-8153-0725-X , p. 26 f. (with further evidence)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guy Gibbon: Archaic . In: Ders .: Archeology of Prehistoric Native America. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, ISBN 0-8153-0725-X , p. 26.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Haberland: American Archeology . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-534-07839-X , p. 158
  3. ^ National Park Service, Southeast Archeological Center
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Maxine E. McBrinn: Everything Old is New Again - Recent Approaches to Research on the Archaic Period in the Western United States. In: Journal of Archaeological Research , Vol. 18, No. 3 (2010), pp. 289-329, doi: 10.1007 / s10814-010-9039-5
  5. ↑ Kenneth E. Sasserman: The new Archaic - it ain't what it used to be. In: SAA Archaeological Record , Vol. 8, Issue 5 (November 2008), p. 6.
  6. ^ Brian M. Fagan : Ancient North America . Thames and Hudson Ltd, London / New York 1991, ISBN 0-500-27606-4 , p. 124 f.
  7. ^ Brian M. Fagan : Ancient North America . Thames and Hudson Ltd, London / New York 1991, ISBN 0-500-27606-4 , p. 247 ff.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Haberland: American Archeology . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-534-07839-X , p. 132
  9. ^ Jon Gibson: The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point . University of Florida Press, Gainesville et al. 2000, ISBN 0-8130-1833-1 , pp. 270 f.
  10. ↑ George R. Milner: The Moundbuilders - Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America . Thames & Hudson, New York 2005, ISBN 0-500-28468-7 , p. 45