OVERVIEW OF ARCHEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY IN TEXAS
|
| Period | Dates | Characteristics | Artifacts |
|
| HISTORIC |
1600-1800 |
Cabeza de Vaca; Spanish missions; entry of Tonkawas, Apaches, and Comanches |
Spanish Colonial artifacts; gunflints; metal arrowpoints |
| LATE PREHISTORIC |
700-1600 |
Toyah phase bison hunters; villages in the Panhandle; Caddo cultures in East Texas |
pottery; introduction of bow and arrow (tiny arrowpoints); agriculture in parts of state |
| TRANSITIONAL ARCHAIC |
300 B.C.-A.D. 700 |
first mounds in East Texas; hunters and gatherers continue elsewhere |
dart points are smaller: Ensor, Frio, Fairland, Paisano |
| LATE ARCHAIC |
1000-300 |
bison hunting in Panhandle, lower Pecos, Central Texas; increased trade; cemeteries in Southeast and South Texas |
large points for hunting; Castroville, Montell; "corner tang" knives |
| MIDDLE ARCHAIC |
2500-1000 |
hunters and gatherers across Texas; rock art begins in lower Pecos; burned-rock middens in Central Texas |
Langtry points in West Texas; Pedernales points in Central Texas |
| EARLY ARCHAIC |
6000-2500 |
development of modern vegetation and fauna; hunting and gathering; possible period of aridity 5500-3000 B.C. |
widespread point types cut across regions: Bell, Uvalde, Martindale, Gower |
| PALEO-INDIAN |
9600-6000 |
earliest occupations by Native Americans, with Pleistocene or ice age ending around 8000 B.C.; first peoples are known as Clovis and hunted mammoths and other ice-age animals |
distinctive point types: Angostura, Golondrina, Plainview, Folsom, Clovis |
| From Ron Tyler, Douglas E. Barnett, Roy R. Barkley, Penelope C. Anderson, Mark F. Odintz, eds., "Prehistory," The New Handbook of Texas, 6 vols., (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), Vol. 5, p. 321. |
