Northeastern North America

Overview

The history of the First Peoples of northeastern North America is marked by complex and diverse cultural journeys that the integration of archaeological data and Indigenous knowledge helps to reveal, despite several persistent blind spots. This vast territory was inhabited by hunter-fisher-gatherers for approximately 10,500 years (12,000–1,500 BCE) before the adoption of agriculture, initially marginal and later more intensive, by some populations concentrated around the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Valley. Elsewhere, nomadic lifestyles based on hunting, fishing, and gathering prevailed until the colonization of the territory by Europeans. A reductive and homogenous view of these nomadic groups has long prevailed, due in part to biases in the representation of archaeological research, the poor preservation of organic materials, the use of ethnographic analogies, and the nature of the material traces left behind.

Paradigm-shifting archaeological discoveries and new biomolecular methodologies have began challenging this view, pointing to important demographic and cultural fluctuations in NENA over the course of the Holocene. One such demographic cycle (ca. 3,000–2,500 BP) characterizes the Archaic to Woodland transition, initially coinciding with local innovation of pottery (Figure 1 - Vinette I), increased social complexity, the appearance of elaborate new mortuary practices, and the rise of long-distance interaction networks circulating prestige items. As populations contract following this timeframe, mortuary ceremonialism and the circulation of prestige objects declines, but there is a dramatic increase in the quantity of pottery usage.