North America's Archaic Period is roughly equivalent to the Mesolithic of the Old World, when hunter-gatherers learned to exploit a wide range of animals and plants, and began the first steps to their domestication. The term generally refers to North America between 8000 and 3000 years ago or so; but I've expanded it to include both American continents, and hunter-gatherer sites of whatever age. Together, the sites teach us what it was like to live as a hunter-gatherer, in many different climates, at many diferent elevations.
This list of sites is part of the About.com Guide to the Archaic Period.
Bat Cave (New Mexico, United States)
Bat Cave is an archaeological site in New Mexico, in the American southwest. The name actually refers to a complex of rockshelters, occupied beginning about 10,000 years ago up to the present, with evidence for early maize agriculture.Blackwater Draw (New Mexico)
Ed Nellis, photographer
Blackwater Draw is where generations of the earliest occupants of the New World lived, including Clovis (radiocarbon dated between 11,600-11,000 years before the present), Folsom (10,800-10,000 years BP), Portales (9,800-8,000 years BP), and Archaic (7,000-5,000 years BP) period occupations. The Archaic period occupations include evidence for some of the earliest wells ever dug.
Boylston Street Fish Weir (Massachusetts, United States)
The Boylston Street Fish Weir is a Late Archaic fish trap, the remains of which was discovered under the city streets of the Back Bay area of Boston, Massachusetts.Brook Run (Virginia, United States)
Caral (Peru)
The Caral-Supe Civilization sites on the coast of Peru together they represent the earliest known urban settlement in the Americas--nearly 4600 years before the present
Chilca (Peru)
Chilca is the name of an early Archaic period site located on the Peruvian coast about 70 kilometers south of Lima.Gatecliff Shelter (Nevada, United States)
Gatecliff Shelter is the name of an Archaic period site in Mill Canyon of the Toquima Range, Monitor Valley of Nevada, in the southwestern US.Guila Naquitz (Oaxaca, Mexico)
Guilá Naquitz is a small cave located within the eastern range of mountains in the Valley of Oaxaca. The site was occupied at least six times between 8000 and 6500 BC, by hunters and gatherers, probably during the fall (October to December) of the year.
Hinds Cave (Texas, United States)
Hinds Cave, a dry rockshelter in southwest Texas, has archaeological evidence of occupation from about 9280 years BP to 1820 years BP. The site includes excellent preservation of organic material, including several buried living floors and over 300 human coprolites (fossil feces).
