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Piedmont cultures graphic organizer

This activity will assist students in understanding Piedmont cultures as they read the article "Peoples of the Piedmont."

A lesson plan for grade 8 Social Studies

By Pauline S. Johnson

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Two worlds: Educator's guide
Lesson plans and activities to be used with "Two Worlds: Prehistory, Contact, and the Lost Colony" -- the first part of a North Carolina history textbook for secondary students.
Page 2.3

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  • Peoples of the Piedmont In the years between 1000 and 1200 CE, Native life in the north and central Piedmont hadn’t changed much from prior Woodland times. People still lived in small hamlets whose houses strung out along river and stream banks. At times, the hamlets sat empty when people left to hunt and gather wild foods. But times were about to change. Around 900 CE, corn agriculture began. As a result, population began to grow, people began gathering in larger villages, and conflicts erupted.

Related pages

  • Coastal Plain cultures graphic organizer: As students read the article "Peoples of the Coastal Plain," this graphic organizer will help them develop an understanding of the cultures that existed in North Carolina's Coastal Plain hundreds of years ago.
  • Mountain cultures graphic organizer: As students read the article "Peoples of the Mountains," this graphic organizer will help them develop an understanding of the cultures that existed in North Carolina's mountains hundreds of years ago.
  • The village farmers: North Carolina sat on a crossroads by AD 1000. Cultural ideas from other places breezed through it and around it: how to decorate pottery, how to orient political and social life, how to honor the dead, how to structure towns.

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This activity will assist students in understanding Piedmont cultures as they read the article Peoples of the Piedmont.

Piedmont cultures

  The Hogue site The Wall site Pee Dee culture
Time period      
Shelter/Settlement      
Food      
Containers/Tools      
Culture (including burial practices      

Piedmont cultures (teacher guide)

  The Hogue site The Wall site Pee Dee culture
Time period
  • 1000 to 1200 CE
  • About 1600 CE
  • 950 to 1500 CE
Shelter/Settlement
  • A few houses — may have been round
  • An acre village with seven round houses and a few small outbuildings
  • Stockade around whole village
  • Stockade surrounding platform mound
  • Thatch-roof huts — a round burial hut is pictured in the article; rectangular houses and public houses are described in the reading
Food
  • Some agriculture (maize, sunflower)
  • Wild foods (acorns, hickory nuts)
  • Hunting (deer, squirrel, rabbits)
  • Agriculture (corn, bean, squash)
  • Gathering (nuts, berries)
  • Hunting (deer, small mammals, fish)
  • Hunting, fishing, and gathering, but mostly corn agriculture
Containers/Tools
  • Pottery (broken pieces were found)
  • Pottery — simple stamped. This design consists of a series of parallel lines running in one direction that people etched on a wooden paddle; the design was transferred on the wet clay by striking the paddle against it.
  • Pottery with geometric designs, some were used to hold cremations.
  • It can also be inferred that there were projectile points because hunting is mentioned in the article, and either spear or hooks because fishing is mentioned.
Culture (including burial practices
  • Most archaeologists believe these were small villages
  • Pits used for food cupboards, then garbage pits
  • Burial practices — round or oval graves, knees were brought up to the chest, some had large rocks at the feet of the deceased
  • Burials inside or just outside homes — sealed with timbers or rocks, burial offerings, shell decorations on burial garments, clay pots of food
  • Community ceremonies which included feasts
  • Ceremonial and/or political centers — Town Creek
    temples and civic buildings set atop earthen platform mounds
  • Social and political hierarchies, with priests and chiefs
  • Religious symbolism artistically represented in jewelry and ritual items
  • Corn agriculture and a variety of ceremonies surrounding it — Busk ceremony

North Carolina curriculum alignment

Social Studies (2003)

Grade 8

  • Goal 1: The learner will analyze important geographic, political, economic, and social aspects of life in the region prior to the Revolutionary Period.
    • Objective 1.02: Identify and describe American Indians who inhabited the regions that became Carolina and assess their impact on the colony.

  • North Carolina Essential Standards

    • Social Studies (2010)

      • Grade 8

        • 8.C.1 Understand how different cultures influenced North Carolina and the United States. 8.C.1.1 Explain how exploration and colonization influenced Africa, Europe and the Americas (e.g. Columbian exchange, slavery and the decline of the American Indian populations)....