The Paleo-Indian Period in North Carolina

PALEO-INDIAN CHRONOLOGY || PALEO-INDIAN SETTLEMENT AND SUBSISTENCE

THE COAST || THE PIEDMONT || THE MOUNTAINS

The time of the earliest, generally accepted arrival of people in the southeastern United States is between 9000 and 10,000 B.C. Although migrations of people into the New World have been hypothesized, currently there is no firm evidence of people anywhere on the continental United States prior before 10,000 B.C.

Our level of understanding of the Paleo-Indian period across the state is highly uneven, due to both the history of North Carolina archaeology and environmental and geological factors.