An Early Woodland Domesticated Chenopod (Chenopodium Berlandieri Subsp. Jonesianum) Cache From the Tutela Heights Site, Ontario, Canada

A cache of charred, domesticated chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri subsp. jonesianum) seeds is reported from the Early Woodland (930–915 cal BC) Tutela Heights site (AgHb-446) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This is the northernmost report of the crop, approximately 800 km northeast of Kentucky where the previous northernmost occurrences contemporary with Tutela Heights are reported. The Tutela […]

Initial Northern Iroquoian Coalescence

In this chapter, we employ the rich corpus of archaeological settlement data available for southern Ontario and New York State to examine the processes associated with village formation. This included the establishment of maize-based agricultural economies, the emergence of village-communities and the long-house-based residential pattern, and the development of social institutions that served to integrate […]

Steatite characterization using X-ray fluorescence and insights into Northern Iroquoian interregional interaction

The research presented here evaluates the applicability of energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) for characterizing steatite. We present compositional data from an assemblage of 100 steatite beads and pipes deriving from 11 Northern Iroquoian sites in southern Ontario and New York State. Percentages of major elemental constituents and principal components analysis define two compositional groups and various […]

Archaeological Heritage Management: The Last and Next Half Century

This article is part of the Canadian Journal of Archaeology’s Special Edition celebrating the Canadian Archaeological Association’s 50th anniversary. Williamson takes a look back at the last fifty years of commercial archaeology in Canada, and how it has developed from a budding to a thriving industry in a matter of decades. This transformation also offers […]

Policy Planning For Managing Cultural Heritage Landscapes: A Case Study

Policy Planning for Managing Cultural Heritage Landscape Rebecca Sciarra Lauren Archer

In 2016, ASI’s Cultural Heritage Division prepared a Cultural Heritage Landscape Feasibility Study on the Mohawk Canal and Alfred Watts Hydro Generating Station Ruins for the City of Brantford. ASI recommended that the City protect this multi-component landscape with a rich, complex history as a significant Cultural Heritage Landscape and as a part of an Official Plan […]

“He Must Die Unless the Whole Country Shall Play Crosse:” The Role of Gaming in Great Lakes Indigenous Societies

Prehistoric Games of North American Indians Subarctic to Mesoamerica Barbara Voorhies featuring chapter by Ron Williamson and Martin Cooper

Prehistoric Games of North American Indians is a collection of studies on the ancient games of indigenous peoples of North America. The authors, all archaeologists, muster evidence from artifacts, archaeological features, ethnography, ethnohistory, and to a lesser extent linguistics and folklore. Chapters sometimes center on a particular game (chunkey rolling disc game or patolli dice […]

Multi-Scalar Perspectives on Iroquoian Ceramics: Aggregation and Interaction in pre-Contact Ontario

Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology Multi-Scalar Perspectives on Iroquoian Ceramics: Aggregation and Interaction in Pre-Contact Ontario Jennifer Birch Robert B Wojtowicz Aleksandra Pradzynski Robert H Pihl

The research in this volume represents a new wave of spatial research­—exploring beyond settlement patterning to the process and the meaning behind spatial arrangement of past communities and people—and describes new approaches being used for better understanding of past Northern Iroquoian societies. Addressing topics ranging from household task-scapes and gender relations to bioarchaeology and social […]

Maize, Fish, and Deer: Investigating dietary staples among ancestral Huron-Wendat villages, as documented from tooth samples

Following the entry of Zea mays to northeast North America, Northern Iroquoian populations expanded their numbers and range. Isotopic values from bone collagen have shown fluctuations in reliance on this dietary staple. With permission of the Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake, Quebec, we measured d13Cenamel, d13Cdentine and d15Ndentine from 167 permanent teeth, retained before reburial of […]

Organizational Complexity in Ancestral Wendat Communities

During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Northern Iroquioan societies of northeastern North America experienced a process of widespread settlement aggregation. In southern Ontario, Canada, dozens of small villages came together into fewer large, nucleated settlements with populations of up to 1,500 to 2,000 individuals. The formation of these coalescent communities resulted in […]

Navigating ancestral landscapes in the Northern Iroquoian world

After the transition to settled village life ca. AD 1300, the Northern Iroquoian peoples of northeastern North America relocated their settlements every few decades or less. Frequent village location meant that, after less than 100 years, the landscape they inhabited would have contained more abandoned than occupied village sites. We draw upon ancestral Wendat site […]