ARCHAIC CULTURE

any of the ancient woodlands cultures of North America, in what is now the northeastern United States, dating from about 8000 BC to 1000 BC. Variants of these cultures persisted considerably later to the west and to the north. The people subsisted on small-game hunting, fishing, and collecting and characteristically made such tools as large, broad, chipped-stone projectile points, milling and grinding stones, and bone implements and ornaments; by about 5000 BC they had developed such ground and polished stone objects as axes, spear-thrower weights, and bowls. From the 5th to the 2nd millennium BC, there appeared a related Old Copper culture in the upper Great Lakes region, which used copper for tools and weapons.