Please join us for the launch of the newly published “Mantle Site: An Archaeological History of an Ancestral Wendat Community”, written by Dr. Jennifer Birch and Dr. Ron Williamson. Dr. Williamson will lecture about the famous Mantle Site – an almost completely excavated, early sixteenth-century, ancestral Wendat community discovered in what is now the township of Stoufville-Whitchurch, Ontario. The site yielded evidence of a complex, well-integrated community of 1800 people living in approximately 60 longhouses, and surrounded by an earthwork fortification encompassing three rows of palisade. Mantle was the culmination of the coalescence of several villages, likely in response to regional hostilities. The tens of thousands of artifacts recovered from the Mantle site further demonstrate the evolving social, political and economic spheres of ancestral Huron-Wendat life at that time. A reception will follow the lecture, including a meet-and-greet with Dr. Williamson, and an opportunity to buy the book and have it signed – a key publication for those interested in the archaeology of eastern North America, the archaeology of communities and the socio-economic organization of Iroquoian societies. Hosted by the Archaeology Centre and ASI.
