Rock art consists of paintings (pictographs) and engravings (petroglyphs). They depict past Blackfoot people engaging in activities such as warfare and hunting.

The Blackfoot territory contains numerous effigies made with stones placed on the ground. They depict Napi, other persons, or animals.

Medicine wheels are made of stones that are arranged in a circle with radiating spokes or a central cairn, or a combination of both of these characteristics. They can mark the location of important events in Blackfoot history, or the final dwelling place of important Blackfoot people.

Up to several feet of volcanic ash (or tephra) covered much of the Northwestern Plains following the eruption of Mount Mazama (now Crater Lake, in Oregon) about 7600 years ago. Since much of the vegetation must have died, animals and people were probably forced to move out of the region for some time before they could return.
Mazama ash is often found at archaeological sites, where it provides a useful chronological marker. Everything found below it is older than 7600 years.

Animals inhabiting the Blackfoot Traditional Homeland during the last Ice Age (about 115,000 to 12,000 years ago) were very different than today. These animals, many of them extinct today, were well adapted to the far colder temperatures of the time. Many were large (human-size or larger) and are collectively referred to as "megafauna". They sported thick coats and dangerous body parts such as large tusks and teeth. Some of the megafauna found in the region include mammoths, American horses, saber-toothed tigers, short faced bears, muskoxen, camels, caribou, and extinct bison. Of these, the bison and grizzly bear remain in Blackfoot Aboriginal territory today as descendants of their older counterparts, but the rest were extirpated form the region. Others, such as moose or elk are more recent newcomers that arrived at the very end of the Ice Age (modern horse were introduced by Europeans only a few centuries ago).
Fossils of Ice Age megafauna and other animals are tied to Blackfoot oral traditions and ceremonialism. Elders transmit memories of a time when ancestors lived alongside powerful animals, and know that the First Blackfoot, Matumaatapi, set their first camp among them.
“We remember the Furry Animal times, when some creatures were half-animal and half-human. This was long ago, when we had no language but lived long lives.” (Andy Blackwater, Kainai, 2017)
“In the beginning, ancient bison and other animals were cannibals. We had to learn how to kill them.” (Francis First Charger, Kainai, 2004)
Some stories from 19th century oral tradition center on Blackfoot ancestors overcoming monsters with help of the hero, Kutoyis, and Old Man Napi. The biography of Kutoyis references his slaying of evil beings and a cannibal, possibly representing either various species of megafauna or evil humans entering Blackfoot territory. Napi is said to have taught the people how to make weapons and what techniques to use to hunt and kill these animals, particularly bison, so that the beasts would no longer cannibalize the Matumaatapi.

The first archaeological evidence of people in Blackfoot Territory dates to about 13,000 years ago. Sites of that age and until about 9000 years ago are grouped under the term "Paleoindian" or "Paleoamerican". They share commonalities including often large projectile points probably used as part of dart-atlatl hunting implements. Some of these projectile points are highly well-made and recognizable, for instance so-called Clovis points. Often times, Paleoindian sites contain evidence of specialized bison hunting, and in some cases other megafauna such as horse, camel, and even mammoth (though not yet in the Blackfoot territory for the latter).

Blackfoot bison hunting in the ~1300 years before contact with Europeans generally employed a combination of stone drives, jumps or pounds, and processing/ camping sites. Stone drives follow the undulating terrain characteristic of the glaciated ridges and upland valleys of the Blackfoot territory. Entire valleys were permanently modified by Blackfoot ancestors specialized in large-scale communal bison hunting, hide processing, and pemmican production for storage and trade

The so-called Archaic period starts around 9000 years ago when people in the Northern Plains started to eat more diversified foods in addition to bison, particularly plants. Bison hunting techniques also changed, with the appearance of driving systems such as jumps and corrals at the latest 4000 years ago (but probably earlier).
A major event of the Archaic was the ash fall from the Mazama eruption (today Crater Lake, in Oregon) 7600 years ago. It covered the Blackfoot territory with a thick layer of ash. This event, combined with the effects of an unusually hot and arid climate, probably explains the relative rarity of archaeological sites around that time.
Population probably increased again around 5000 years ago. The earliest materials that archaeologists recognize as specifically Blackfoot, including medicine wheels and iniskim, also date to that time. So do large communal burials (cemeteries) in the vicinity of the Great Sand Hills.

Vision quest sites consist of temporary shelters, often no more than a stone windbreak, constructed to protect Blackfoot from the elements during their vision quests.

The Blackfoot territory was part of the vibrant trade of beaver and bison skins during the 18 th and 19 th century. French, British, and American traders established posts and forts alongside important travel routes such as major rivers.

The Blackfoot territory contains numerous landforms created by glaciers.
Mountain valleys and lakes such as St Mary and Waterton were carved by the glaciers flowing out of the Mountains.
In the Plains, the melting of a very large ice mass at the end of the Ice Age left a large imprint on the landscape. Rock chunks carried by the ice came to form the train of erratics, or okotoks, along the foothills. Very large lakes formed in front of the melting ice masses. As they drained, they created deep and wide river valleys and coulees, and left vast amounts of fine sediment that eventually was to form the local sand hills.