1st millennium in North American history

1st millennium BCE - 1st millennium - 11th century

The 1st millennium in North American history provides a timeline of events occurring within the North American continent from 1 CE through 1000 CE in the Gregorian calendar. This time period is part of the Post-archaic period (Post-archaic stage), and 1 CE through 500 CE is known as the Middle Woodland Period, while 500 CE through 1000 CE is known as the Late Woodland Period in Eastern North America. Although this time line segment may include some European or other world events that profoundly influenced later American life, it focuses on developments within Native American communities. The archaeological records supplements indigenous recorded and oral history.

Because of the inaccuracies inherent in radiocarbon dating and in interpreting other elements of the archaeological record, most dates in this timeline represent approximations that may vary a century or more from source to source. The assumptions implicit in archaeological dating methods also may yield a general bias in the dating in this timeline.

List of events

• 500 BCE–700 CE: Old Bering Sea culture thrives in the western Arctic^[1]
• 50 BCE–800 CE: Ipiutak culture thrives in the western Arctic.^[1]
• 1 CE: Some central and eastern prairie peoples learned to raise crops and shape pottery from the mound builders to their east.
• 100–1000: Weeden Island culture flourishes in coastal Florida. They are known for their extraordinarily well-preserved wood carvings.
• 200: The Adena culture of the Ohio River valley evolves into the Hopewellian exchange.
• 200–800: Late Eastern Woodlands cultures flourish in the Eastern North America.^[1]
• 200–1450: Hohokam cultures flourish in Arizona and north Mexico^[1]
• 400: Cultivation of maize (corn) begins in the American South and soon reaches the Northeast. Originally domesticated in Mesoamerica, maize transforms the Eastern Agricultural Complex.
• 400: Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest weave extraordinarily long nets for trapping small animals and make yucca fibers into large sacks and bags.
• 500: Late Basketmaker II Era phase of Ancestral Pueblo culture diminishes in the American Southwest.
• 700: Basketmaker III Era of the American Southwest evolve into the early Pueblo culture.
• 755±65—890±65: likely dates of the Blythe Geoglyphs being sculpted by ancestral Quechan and Mojave peoples in the Colorado Desert, California^[2]
• 8th and 9th centuries: Ancestral Pueblo people of the American Southwest or Oasisamerica transition from pit houses to multi-story adobe and stone apartments called pueblos.
• 800-1500: Mississippian culture spawns powerful chiefdoms of great agricultural Moundbuilders throughout the Eastern woodlands.
• 875: Patayan people learn to farm along the Colorado River valley in western Arizona.
• 900: Earliest event recorded in the Battiste Good (1821–22, Sicangu Lakota) Winter count^[3]
• 900: Pueblo culture dominates much of the American Southwest.
• 900: American Southwestern tribes trade with Mexican natives to obtain copper bells cast through the lost-wax technique.
• 1000 (exact date): Vikings from Europe land in Vinland on the coast of Newfoundland..

Notes

1. "North America, 1–500 A.D." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. (retrieved 19 June 2011)
2. Malki Museum. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. 1994. Volume 16, Issue 1: 63
3. Greene and Thornton, 42

References

• Greene, Candace S. and Russel Thornton, ed. The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2007. ISBN 0-8032-2211-4.