Visual arts of indigenous peoples of the Americas

Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America, Mesoamerica, North America including Greenland, as well as Siberian Yup'ik peoples who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yup'iks.

In North America, the Lithic stage or Paleo-Indian period is defined as approximately 18,000–8000 BCE. The period from around 8000–800 BCE is generally referred to as the Archaic period. The production of bannerstones, Projectile point, Lithic reduction styles and pictographic cave paintings are some of the art that remains from this time period.

Belonging in the Lithic stage, the oldest known art in the Americas is a carved megafauna bone, possibly from a mammoth, etched with a profile of walking mammoth or mastodon that dates back to 11,000 BCE. The bone was found early in the 21st century near Vero Beach, Florida, in an area where human bones (Vero man) had been found in association with extinct animals early in the 20th century. The bone is too mineralized to be dated, but the carving has been authenticated as having been made before the bone became mineralized. The anatomical correctness of the carving and the heavy mineralization of the bone indicate that the carving was made while mammoths and/or mastodons still lived in the area, more than 10,000 years ago.

The oldest known painted object in North American is the Cooper Bison Skull from 10,900–10,200 BCE. Lithic age art in South America includes Monte Alegre culture rock paintings created at Caverna da Pedra Pintada dating back to 9250–8550 BCE.Guitarrero Cave in Peru has the earliest known textiles in South America, dating to 8000 BCE.

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