🇺🇸 United States · Earthwork
Watson Brake
Middle–Late Archaic (3500–2800 BCE) · Middle Archaic Watson Brake culture
Oldest North American mound complex: 11 mounds 5400 BP enclosing oval plaza, hunter-gatherer monument without agriculture.
🇹🇷 Turkey · Ancient village
Pınarbaşı (Bor)
Epipalaeolithic to Aceramic Neolithic · Central Anatolian Epipalaeolithic (Kebaran-like) → PPNA
Epipalaeolithic to Early Neolithic rockshelter and open-air spring-site (c.14,000–7000 BCE) on limestone spur at Pınarbaşı, type-site for Central Anatolian hunter-gatherer sedentism before…
🇵🇪 Peru · Rock art
Toquepala Caves
Early Holocene (~9500–7000 BCE) · Andean high-desert hunter-gatherer (Toquepala tradition)
Shallow Andean quebrada cave where Roger Ravines documented polychrome paintings of camelids, deer and corpulent hunters brandishing bows, one of the earliest figurative traditions on the Pacific…
🇯🇵 Japan · Ancient village
Sannai-Maruyama Site
Middle to Late Jomon 3900–2300 BCE (peak Early-Middle) · Jomon (northern Honshu hunter-gatherer)
Largest Jomon hunter-gatherer settlement (3900–2300 BCE) with 40 ha including six-pillar 15 m building (reconstructed), 500+ pit dwellings, longhouses, burial pits with red ochre, and jade exchange…
🇮🇳 India · Archaeological wonder
Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka
Lower Paleolithic 100,000 BCE to Early Historic 1st c BCE (Mesolithic art 10,000–5000 BCE) · Early Indian hunter-gatherer to Mesolithic
Seven hills of Vindhyan sandstone with >750 painted rock shelters spanning Lower Paleolithic to Historical (100,000 BCE–1st c BCE), including Auditorium Cave with cupules and Zoo Rock.
🇺🇸 United States · Earthwork
Poverty Point (Monumental Earthworks of Poverty Point)
Late Archaic 1700–1100 BCE (peak 1500–1200 BCE) · Poverty Point culture
Late Archaic earthwork complex (1700–1100 BCE) with six concentric C-shaped ridges (1.2 km outer diameter) and six mounds, including 22 m-high Mound A – one of largest Archaic earthworks in North…