Archaic period (North America)

[2] This classification system was first proposed by Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in the widely accepted 1958 book Method and Theory in American Archaeology.

[4] Since the 1990s, secure dating of multiple Middle Archaic sites in northern Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida has challenged traditional models of development.

Across the Southeastern Woodlands, starting around 4000 BC, people exploited wetland resources, creating large shell middens.

These shell rings are numerous in South Carolina and Georgia but are also found scattered around the Florida Peninsula and along the Gulf of Mexico coast as far west as the Pearl River.

In some places, such as Horr's Island in Southwest Florida, resources were rich enough to support sizable mound-building communities year-round.

[15] The prominent Canadian archaeologist J. V. Wright argued in 1976 that the Shield Archaic had emerged from the Northern Plano tradition, but this was questioned by Bryan C. Gordon in a 1996 publication.