Nineteenth-century Working-Class Residential Transience and Stability in Toronto’s St. Andrew’s Ward: Examining Differential Effects on Artifact Assemblages
When excavating historical archaeological sites, we often view them through the lens of assumed permanence, or at least an extended and significant occupation. Our interpretations about the intersections of social realities with material culture are then built upon a framework of stability and longevity. These assumptions create a one-to-one relationship between occupants and assemblage; Family […]
Teiaiagon on the Humber River: Controlling the Western Branch of the Toronto Carrying Place
The settlement of Teiaiagon, located on the Humber River near the limit of upstream travel by canoe, existed for less than a generation between the early 1670s and late 1680s. During this brief period, however, it may have become the most important of the Haudenosaunee villages established on the north shore of Lake Ontario, as […]
Ware is Point Peninsula? Or, Who was living on the lower Credit River during the Middle Woodland Period?
When the compilation volume The Archaeology of Southern Ontario to A.D. 1650 volume was published nearly 30 years ago, three distinct Middle Woodland complexes were discussed in detail, but the authors of that article (myself included) provided a proviso that “…we expect a picture to emerge of a series of localized complexes extending across the southern part […]
Public Communications in the Ontario CRM Industry
In Ontario’s Cultural Resource Management industry, we are experiencing a profound change in how we communicate with the public. Where once we relied on newspapers, academic journals, and museums to disseminate our knowledge, we can now communicate directly with the public through social media. This change has led to new questions about what information we […]
Time, Space and Ceramic Attributes: The Ontario Iroquoian Case
Ontario Iroquoian chronology has been largely based on observed or inferred changes in the frequency of rim sherd types or attributes through time. Such observations include the increasing development of collars, decreasing complexity in collar motif, decreasing frequency of horizontals and changes to the location of their placement and decreasing neck decoration through time, to […]
Sharing the CRM Wealth: Creating a Searchable Archaeological Database with GIS
Academic excavations are no longer the driving force behind archaeological research in North America. In the current economy, private cultural resource management firms (and also those based within academic institutions) complete most archaeological field activities. However, the results of these surveys and excavations are often confined to the grey literature, though not from any lack […]
Forget Me Not: Charles Orser’s Unearthing of Hidden Ireland
In 1994, Charles Orser began a multi-year excavation program in County Roscommon, Ireland, that would help to legitimize the nascent field of post-medieval (modern-world) archaeology in the country. In a place rich with passage tombs and golden hordes, a focus on post-1700 deposits was unusual enough, but to have an archaeologist interested in the poorest […]
A Modest Proposal for GIS-Based Data Sharing in Ontario Archaeology
Academic excavations are no longer the driving force behind archaeological research in North America. In the current economy, private cultural resource management firms (and also those based within academic institutions) complete most archaeological field activities. However, the results of most surveys and excavations are often confined to the grey literature, though not from any lack […]
A Summer to Remember: Searching for the 1847 Fever Sheds at the Toronto General Hospital
In 1847, the Toronto General Hospital served as a temporary place of refuge for thousands of Irish typhus victims who arrived during the Great Famine migration. To the Irish that live in Toronto today, that experience is symbolized by the “fever sheds,” 12 to 14 large wooden outbuildings that were erected on the grounds to […]
Wendat and the St. Lawrence Valley: New Understandings of Travel, Trade and Homeland
It is becoming clear with the discovery of rare objects in traditional Wendake, both south and north, that long established trading routes from the St Lawrence Estuary to the lower Great Lakes are a reflection of a close and long-standing relationship between the Huron-Wendat and Saint Lawrence Iroquoian populations. Not only was this trade indicative […]
