TIME BEFORE HISTORY

North Carolinas written history begins in the sixteenth century with the voyages of Sir Walter Raleigh and the founding of the illfated Lost Colony on Roanoke Island But there is a deeper unwritten past that predates the states recorded history The region we now know as North Carolina was settled more than 10000 years ago but because early inhabitants left no written record their story must be painstakingly reconstructed from the fragmentary and fragile archaeological record they left behind Time before History is the first comprehensive account of the archaeology of North Carolina Weaving together a wealth of information gleaned from archaeological excavations and surveys carried out across the statefrom the mountains to the coastit presents a fascinating readable narrative of the states native past across a vast sweep of time from the PaleoIndian period when the first immigrants to North America crossed a land bridge that spanned the Bering Strait through the arrival of European traders and settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries