The desert peoples of the Southwest
Baskets, seeds and knowing where the water is
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The Archaic is the archaeologists' name for the period between the big-game hunters and the first farmers, in North America from around 8000 to 1000 BCE. The Archaic period is often presented as an interlude between big-game hunting and farming, but it lasted eight thousand years — longer than all of written history — and it developed a detailed knowledge of an arid landscape that later farming cultures built on directly. Ground stone and milling equipment show an economy that was stable precisely because it was broad-spectrum.
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When the great animals vanished, people in the Southwest turned to gathering seeds, nuts and plants and hunting small game. They wove baskets so tight they could cook in them by dropping in heated stones.
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