A Summary of Georgia's Archaeological Sequence

Period:

Time:

Subsistence Pattern:

Settlement Pattern:

Diagnostic Features:

Post war,

global economy, information age

A.D. 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

A.D. 1929 to A.D. 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

A.D. 1870 to A.D. 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

A.D. 1861 to A.D. 1870

Farming, military service, manufacturing, retailing

Farmsteads, small towns, and military camps and forts

Military earthworks, internal combustion engine, ironclads, military prisons

King Cotton

A.D. 1783 to A.D. 1783

Farming, plantations, retailing, manufacturing

Family farmsteads, plantations, small towns, Indian Removal, land lotteries

Safety pin, cotton gin, molded bricks, canals, railroads, steamboats

Revolution

A.D. 1775 to A.D. 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

A.D. 1632 to A.D. 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

A.D. 1541 to A.D. 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

Mississippi

A.D. 900 to A.D. 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

B.C. 1000 to A.D. 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

B.C. 8000 to B.C. 1000 

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