The Huron-Algonkian boundary: the view from Haliburton and the Kawartha Lakes. What I wish to deal with in this paper is the nature of the boundary between the Hurons and their northerly Ojibwa neighbours in south-central Ontario. Current evidence for the nature of this boundary is largely based on ethnohistoric records pertaining to the small region known as Huronia in the early 17th century. I will suggest that these records pertain to an historically unique situation, and that the traditional nature of the Huron-Ojibwa boundary in that area is masked by a massive protohistoric influx of Hurons and other people into the area. Moreover, I suggest that the ethnohistoric records do not accurately or completely reflect the situation there. In order to assess the more `normal' or traditional nature of the Huron-Ojibwa boundary, it is necessary to look in a comparable area where there is no interference from the protohistoric or historic events. Such an area is the region of Balsam Lake in the upper Trent River-Kawartha Lakes, just east of Lake Simcoe, where archaeology suggests that Hurons and Ojibwa interacted for two hundred years prior to abandoning the area in the late 16th century. The general region under consideration is the southern margin of the Canadian Shield where it cuts in a southeasterly direction across south-central Ontario. Our interpretation of the ethnohistoric situation, and by inference the prehistoric past, is that, generally speaking, to the north of this line lived a number of groups of Algonkian speakers who subsisted primarily by fishing, hunting and gathering, supplemented in areas close to the southerly margin by casual horticulture; south of the Shield were Iroquoian speakers who subsisted by horticulture, supplemented by fishing, hunting and gathering. We usually correlate with these differences in language and economy contrasts in demography, settlement and degree of sedentism. This Huron-Algonkian boundary has never been seen as a solid line: trade in commodities such as corn, fish and nets is well documented between the Hurons and the southeastern Ojibwa in the early 17th century; Hurons are known to have made fishing trips as far as Manitoulin Island, and trading trips to the Ottawa River and beyond; and groups of Ojibwa are recorded to have visited and even spent winters in Huronia. Nonetheless, the usual perception is that there was a boundary, a line, north of which the `normal', long-term inhabitants were Algonkian-speaking seminomads. These people inhabited the Bruce Peninsula and the eastern and northern shores of Georgian Bay. South of the line, the `normal', longterm inhabitants were Iroquoian-speaking horticulturalists. In the 17th century these people were clustered in a small triangular area between Orillia,Collingwood and Midland, but their archaeological remains are distributed eastwards down the Trent River system, and southwards to the shores of Lake Ontario. What I wish to suggest in this paper is that the perception of a boundary line, albeit a permeable one,between the Hurons and the Ojibwa is inaccurate, and I propose instead that there existed a broad area of cultural transition, encompassing much of south-central Ontario. Across this broad area I suggest that there were clines in many aspects of culture, including subsistence, settlement,technology and language, and this is generally consistent with the ecologically transitional nature of the area. Nearly ten years ago, in another orally delivered paper, I argued that the reconstruction of Huron prehistory was complicated by the possibility that some sites in Huronia which we have always presumed to be Huron were in fact Ojibwa, but that, according to the normal analytical standards of Iroquoian prehistory, they were not obviously distinct from Huron sites. Several people who heard or read that paper enthusiastically urged me not to attempt to publish it, or indeed ever to mention the subject again. Believing that the moratorium on that hypothesis has now expired, I wish to take up that argument again and expand it. There is ample documentary evidence from the early 17th century for the presence of Ojibwa groups in Huronia. More than one observer noted that Ojibwa groups spent their winters in Huronia, either in Huron communities, or in separate ones (Incidentally, the pattern of wintering in Huronia and summering elsewhere seems also to have been true for some Hurons). There are no archaeological sites in Huronia which have been viewed as sufficiently distinctive in any way to have prompted the suggestion that they are not Huron. I submit that it is expecting too much of coincidence to maintain that of the hundreds of late Woodland sites known from the Huron area, they all happen to be the Huron ones,and that the communities which we know were established there by Ojibwa have somehow failed to come to light. This has suggested to me that, in Huronia at least, Ojibwa sites are not consistently and obviously different from Huron ones, and that the Huron archaeological pattern is a function of place,not of ethnicity. Our conventional picture of Huronia as occupied by a solid block of Iroquoian speaking Hurons, divided into 4 or 5 named tribal groups, who were ethnically and linguistically distinct from groups of Ojibwa to the north is derived essentially from the Jesuit Relations of the 1630s. Ethnohistorians have insisted on extrapolating this picture backwards in time, so as, for instance, to label the town of Cahiague visited by Champlain in 1615 as belonging to the Rock Nation of the Huron confederacy, on the basis that it was located in the area occupied by the Rock Nation twenty years later. Champlain himself did not so identify it; he referred to the inhabitants of Cahiague simply as `les sauvages', a term he also applied to many other groups, including the Nipissings and Cheveux Releves. Champlain appears to have subsumed all the inhabitants of Huronia under the name `Attiouautan', which probably translates as `Bear', and which reappears later as the name of a Huron tribe living near Midland, where Champlain landed. From Midland, Champlain journeyed almost to the other end of Huronia, to the town of Cahiague, which he described as the major village of the country. On the way to Cahiague, Champlain passed through several other villages, one of which was named `Carmaron'. Because of the presence of a bilabial consonant in this word, it cannot be a Huron name, and attempts to explain it as some kind of mangled derivative of a Huron word seem to me less than parsimonious. A reasonable explanation may be that this was one of the Ojibwa communities that we can be sure existed within Huronia. A decade after Champlain, Sagard recorded that within Huronia were three named tribes, all with Huron names. Another decade after Sagard, the Jesuit missionaries described the division of Huronia into 4 or possibly 5 named territories, which have become familiar to us as the people of the Bear, the Cord (according to Trigger more plausibly interpreted as the people of the Deer), the people of the Rock, the single village known as the One White Lodge, and the mysterious People of the Fens. The Bear and the Deer claimed to be related to each other, calling each other `brother' and `sister'. The other groups were apparently not related to them in the same way, and are reported to have arrived in Huronia late, between 1590 and 1620. It may be more than coincidence that the two groups that considered each other close relatives bore names that might be traditional clan designations: Bear and Deer; while the others bore more descriptive or geographical names, such as people of the Rock, or people of the Fens. In this regard, we might note that one of the Huron names for the group of Ojibwa known as the Cheveux Releves was People of the Woods. What I am suggesting here is that Huronia was an ethnically and linguistically diverse area, but that between 1615 and 1630 there was a progressive amalgamation of these diverse groups into a Huron-controlled political confederacy, and that the stories of the late `arrival' of people like the Rock in Huronia, may refer in fact to their recent incorporation into that confederacy. They may well have been considered Hurons by the French, first because it is recorded that everybody spoke Huron in Huronia, regardless of their native tongue, and second, because the French were initially interested in dealing with the political construct, rather than its constituent ethnic groups. The reasons for the political and linguistic domination of the confederacy by Hurons can perhaps be seen in the political events of the preceeding century. Archaeological work in many parts of southern Ontario has shown that in the late 16th century there was a general contraction of Iroquoian people from many parts of southern Ontario northwards and northwestwards into Historic Huronia. Among the Iroquoian groups who can be shown archaeologically to have contributed to this convergence on Simcoe County are remnants of the St. Lawrence Iroquois, Hurons from the lower part of the Trent River, Hurons from the regions adjacent to the north shore of Lake Ontario, possibly other Iroquoian groups from the shores of Lake Erie, and Hurons from the upper Trent valley just east of Lake Simcoe. This amounts to a fairly large-scale influx into Huronia in the late 1500s and early 1600s of Iroquoian people, the majority of whom were probably Huron in ethnic and linguistic affiliation. This could have had two results: first, it would have produced a population linguistically, and probably politically, dominated by Hurons; and second, such a large scale immigration could have prompted some of the previous inhabitants of the area to move out, presumably in the opposite direction: that is westwards, towards the Bruce Peninsula, or northwards along the shore of Georgian Bay. In other words, the `Huronization' of Huronia may be a relatively recent phenomenon, produced by the political circumstances of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and the more `traditional' nature of the area may be masked, both ethnohistorically and archaeologically, by this recent overlay of predominantly Huron people. Perhaps a better model for the pre-confederacy situation in Huronia can be found outside of Huronia itself, in an area that is similarly situated, but in which the condensation of the Huron confederacy is less evident. I suggest that such a model can be found in the region of the upper Trent River valley and the Kawartha Lakes. In this area are numerous Huron sites dating from about A.D. 1400 up to about A.D. 1590, when the area was abandoned. Recently, I have been investigating the relationship between the Hurons of Balsam Lake and the Algonkian people who presumably exploited or inhabited the Shield area to the north of them, in the District of Haliburton. This has involved survey from Balsam Lake northward into the Shield, looking specifically for evidence of Huron presence, as indicated by Huron ceramics or other artifacts, and of the use of the area by non-Huron people, as might be indicated by non-Huron Late Woodland ceramics or other artifacts. Huron style ceramics have been known from the Canadian Shield in central Ontario for decades, and have provided a fruitful ground for ethnic speculation. In his report on the Glen Site, Wright listed a number of ways in which Ojibwa components, such as Glen and Michipicoten, can be distinguished from Iroquoian ones, of which he used the Sidey-Mackay site as an example. I believe there are a number of methodological problems with Wright's study, including comparison of fishing camp assemblages with a village site assemblage, the recently depleted nature of the Sidey-Mackay collection, and, perhaps most importantly, the unsupported assumption that Sidey-Mackay is an Iroquoian (Petun) village, based presumably on its location in historic Petunia. Nonetheless, Wright did show significant differences between his Ojibwa components and SideyMackay in artifact class frequencies, lithic assemblage, and ceramic attributes. Among the ceramic differences are poor paste characteristics in the Ojibwa ceramics, causing a tendancy for sherds to exfoliate, and a generally poorer control of ceramic technology. Based on Wright's illustrations, some of the Glen site vessels he used in his comparison might very well be included in the category of `juvenile ceramics' by other Iroquoian researchers, which makes comparison of his results with other sites suspect. The bottom line, in my view, is that there are undoubtedly differences between fishing camps in the Canadian Shield, or other marginal areas on the northern fringe of Huronia, and village sites in historic Iroquoia, in terms of assemblage composition, lithic artifacts, and probably ceramic design and technology. I do not believe, however, that there is any good reason to presume that these differences are primarily a function of ethnicity. Moreover, the evidence from Haliburton and Balsam Lake suggests to me that they are more parsimoniously interpreted primarily as reflections of site location and perhaps function. Near the headwaters of the Gull River in Haliburton are sites containing Huron-style ceramics. These Huron sherds do not appear to me to be significantly different in style or paste from Huron sherds further south, and might represent actual Huron vessels imported by trade or by visits from Huron fishers. In an attempt to clarify this, I have done some chemical analysis of them, as well as non-Huron sherds from the same sites, and this work is still in progress. Some preliminary results, however, do not give any reason for believing that the sherds were not produced locally. A tentative suggestion, then, is that these vessels, which do not appear readily distinguishable from `real' Huron ceramics, were a part of a local ceramic repertoire. Does this mean that Hurons, with their superior ceramic technology, were habitual residents in the area; or does it mean that the technological distinctions between Huron and Algonkian ceramics are not as clear cut as has been supposed? Of the sites in the Balsam Lake area, a few are of particular interest here. They are small sites, or show evidence of being repeatedly occupied by small populations. They are in situations that are very atypical of Huron sites elsewhere: on a series of rolling knolls, or on rocky terraces near springs. The Rumney Bay Site near the east shore of Shadow Lake is a case in point. The assemblage from this site is in some ways anomalous. Lithic items predominate over ceramics, and include wedges, small bipolar cores, unifacial edge-retouched tools, as well as several items of quartz and quartzite. In these respects, the lithics are more similar to those from Algonkian sites in the Shield than to nearby Huron villages. Turning to the ceramics, these are typical of early Huron ceramics in the Balsam Lake area, and cannot be distinguished on any stylistic ground, nor on most technological grounds, from other Huron ceramics. The number of sherds that are exfoliated is somewhat higher than is the case at village sites, but is lower than is the case at Ojibwa sites such as Wright's Glen Site on Flowerpot Island. There is a high proportion of what would usually be called juvenile ceramics on the site, as well as juvenile pipes. In the context of this discussion, one explanation of the Rumney Bay site is that it represents an Ojibwa camp, as indicated by the decidedly non-Huron aspects of its lithics and its settlement pattern. In this case, the ceramics used by these particular Ojibwa are virtually indistinguishable from those used in surrounding Huron villages. The alternative explanation, that Rummey Bay is some kind of specialized Huron camp makes little obvious sense from the point of view of its location or faunal remains. Moreover, the site can be seen to fit into a pattern of cultural transition that is evident as one moves from south to north in this area. Taking a transect from the area just south of Balsam Lake to the area just north of it, the number of large Huron village sites decreases, and the number of small, anomalous sites, like Rumney Bay, increases. This is coincident with a gradual change in the terrain from the relatively fertile soils south of the lake to the more rock-strewn, shallow soils to the north of it. Similarly, one can show along this south-tonorth transect clines in the nature of lithic assemblages, ceramic paste attributes, and faunal assemblages. What this suggests is that the settlement pattern, technology, and pattern of faunal exploitation of sites in this general area are predominantly results of where the sites are, and in all of these things there appears to be a gradual transition from a more typically `Huron' pattern in the South to a more typically `Ojibwa' pattern in the North. These aspects of archaeological culture do not consistently co-vary, however, and it would be difficult in this area to show a clear distinction between a `total Huron pattern' and a `total Ojibwa pattern'. Taking together the ethnohistoric information from Huronia and the archaeological evidence from the Balsam Lake area, I suggest that prior to the 17th century, throughout this entire ecologically transitional zone, there was also a broad zone of cultural transition shared by both Ojibwa and Hurons, who simultaneously, and perhaps from our point of view inconsistently, shared to varying degrees at different times and places, in many aspects of two broad cultural patterns: a sedentary horticultural one in the Great Lakes Lowlands to the South of them, and a nomadic hunting-fishing-gathering one in the Canadian Shield zone to the North. I would maintain that at no time did either ethno-linguistic group have a monopoly on any aspect of either of these broad cultural patterns. In the final analysis, I believe that within this transitional area, which on ecological grounds could have spanned south central Ontario between the interlobate moraine and the Canadian Shield, the problem of ethno-linguistic identity is archaeologically insoluble. More importantly, from the point of view of attempting to understand prehistoric cultural dynamics in the area, if ethno-linguistic distinctions are not consistently reflected in archaeological patterns, the question of ethnicity may ultimately be irrelevant.