The Sequence in Northern Plains Prehistory

L. C. Steege

The Sequence in Northern Plains Prehistory

Year: 2007

Summary

The State of Wyoming is located in a region known to archaeologists as the northern Plains. Through the medium of archaeology much information has been gathered and compiled which has given us a rather complex picture of the area’s first inhabitants. Although much of the evidence has come from outside our borders, many of the characteristic artifacts are displayed from surface collections which proves the existence of these people in Wyoming also. The exact date of man’s entry into the New World is not known. Evidence suggests that he may have been here for 20,000 years. No evidence of any great antiquity has been found in Wyoming which tells us that man has been in this region for more than 10,000 years. Anthropologists will agree that man’s origin undoubtedly is in the Old World where he has existed for thousands of years. No skeletal remains have ever been found in the New World which suggests anything but “homo sapiens” or modern man. The Bering Straits appear to be the only logical route by which man made his entry into the New World from the Old. A framework in which archaeological evidence from the northern Plains is classified has been tentatively divided into four major time periods. These are the “Early Prehistoric Period, Middle Prehistoric Period, Late Prehistoric Period and the Historic Period”.