Woodland period
[3] It can be characterized as a chronological and cultural manifestation without any massive changes in a short time but instead having a continuous development in stone and bone tools, leather crafting, textile manufacture, cultivation, and shelter construction.
The Early Woodland period continued many trends begun during the Late and Terminal Archaic periods, including extensive mound-building, regional distinctive burial complexes, the trade of exotic goods across a large area of North America as part of interaction spheres, the reliance on both wild and domesticated plant foods, and a mobile subsistence strategy in which small groups took advantage of seasonally available resources such as nuts, fish, shellfish, and wild plants.
The Adena culture built conical mounds in which single- or multiple-event burials, often cremated, were interred along with rich grave goods including copper bracelets, beads, and gorgets, art objects made from mica, novaculite, hematite, banded slate, and other kinds of stone, shell beads and cups, and leaf-shaped "cache blades".
Pots were usually made in a conoidal or conical jar with rounded shoulders, slightly constricted necks, and flaring rims.
As such, researchers are now redefining the period to begin with not only pottery, but the appearance of permanent settlements, elaborate burial practices, intensive collection and/or horticulture of starchy seed plants (see Eastern Agricultural Complex), differentiation in social organization, and specialized activities, among other factors.
People tended to settle along rivers and lakes in both coastal and interior regions for maximum access to food resources.
Most groups relied heavily on white-tailed deer, but a variety of other small and large mammals were hunted also, including beaver, raccoon, and bear.
Shellfish formed an important part of the diet, attested to by numerous shell middens along the coast and interior rivers.
Seasonal foraging also characterized the strategies of many interior populations, with groups moving strategically among dense resource areas.
Recently evidence has accumulated a greater reliance on woodland peoples on cultivation in this period, at least in some localities, than has historically been recognized.
Throughout the Southeast and north of the Ohio River, burial mounds of important people were very elaborate and contained a variety of mortuary gifts, many of which were not local.
Among the traded materials were copper from the Lake Superior deposits; silver from Lake Superior and especially Ontario; galena from Missouri and Illinois; mica from the southern Appalachians; chert from various places including Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; pipestone from Ohio and Illinois; alligator teeth from the lower Mississippi Valley eastward to Florida; marine shells, especially whelks, from the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts; Knife River chalcedony from North Dakota; and obsidian from Yellowstone in Wyoming.
Alternatively, the efficiency of bows and arrows in hunting may have decimated the large game animals, forcing the tribes to break apart into smaller clans to use local resources better, thus limiting the trade potential of each group.
[citation needed] As communities became more isolated, they began to develop in their own unique ways, giving rise to small-scale cultures that were distinctive to their regional areas.
Some groups in the north and northeast of the current United States, such as the Iroquois, retained a way of life that was technologically identical to the Late Woodland until the arrival of Europeans.
During Hernando de Soto's travels through the Southeastern Woodlands around 1543, for instance, his expedition noted the groups living at the mouth of the Mississippi who still preferentially used the spear.
