You’ll encounter a wide range of historical evidence, including ancient stone tools, oil paintings, broadsides, photographs, archaeological sites, oral histories, rivers, maps, antique furniture, flags, musical instruments, and much more. Nearly 100 stories (and counting!) connect you to snapshots of our past and resources to continue learning. ;xNLx;;xNLx;History is never complete, and neither is this timeline. Let us know if you have ideas about people, events, places, or other topics that should be included. Scroll to the last “story” to find out how to share your idea with us. ;xNLx;;xNLx;We look forward to hearing from you! ;xNLx;
To make ceramic cooking and storage vessels, local clay was collected and cleaned before being coiled and smoothed into shapes, then hardened and baked in open fires. Woven plant materials were pressed into the outside of these first pots to make them look like woven baskets, but over time, pottery took on its own artistic style and was decorated with incised and pecked mark designs.
The Woodland Period marks a dramatic shift in the lifestyle of people who lived in this area, including the creation of ceramic vessels, the invention of the bow and arrow, a transition to a more sedentary way of life, and the development of agriculture and farming.
At this time, the spear and atlatl (a throwing spear) were replaced with the bow and arrow, a weapon with better accuracy and more power.
The wildly fluctuating temperatures of the last 8,000 years have given way to a climate and landscape much like we see around us today. By this time coastline has reached its present-day location.
Woodland people take on a more sedentary way of life, living in villages on the coast where they farmed and fished. They visited smaller outlying sites to acquire specific resources like stone for tools, clay for pottery, and forest foods.
While it is likely that Native peoples were strategically selecting, encouraging, and weeding plants over the last several thousand years, it wasn’t until this time that they developed full-fledged agriculture, using the slash and burn technique to grow squash, gourds, corn, and other wild plants that produced edible seeds. Storage pits lined with bark and grasses have been found at archaeological sites indicating that communities stockpiled surplus food for periods of scarcity.
Located in present day Yarmouth (Cape Cod) Smith's Point site is a Woodland period home and agricultural area. Archaeologists studying the preserved charred plant remains at the site have discovered that the residents at Smith's point were burning fields to clear them for farming maize as well as to promote more growth of wild edible plants like barberry and hazelnuts. In addition to agriculture, fishing and shellfishing were key reasons for the site's location and summer occupancy. Evidence of trade items like pipe stems and european ceramics shows that this site was occupied into the Colonial period.
Archaeologists refer to this period in history, after the Ice Age when the first people settled the region, as the Paleoindian period. There are very few Paleoindian sites in the area which suggests that there were not many people living here at this time.
Stone artifacts show that people could easily travel more than 100 miles as part of their hunting and materials gathering range. Archaeologists refer to these first Americans who made this style of stone tool as Clovis people.
Archaeologists believe the earliest people arrived in the region approximately 12,000 years ago. It's not known whether they arrived via a land bridge across Beringia from Siberia, by boat across the Pacific, or by boat via the Atlantic Ocean.
