Huron Archaeology

We employ social network analysis of collar decoration on Iroquoian vessels to conduct a multiscalar analysis of signaling practices among ancestral Huron-Wendat communities on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Our analysis focuses on the microscale of the West Duffins Creek community relocation sequence as well as the mesoscale, incorporating several populations to the west. The data demonstrate that network ties were stronger among populations in adjacent drainages as opposed to within drainage-specific sequences, providing evidence for west-to-east population movement, especially as conflict between Wendat and Haudenosaunee populations escalated in the sixteenth century. These results suggest that although coalescence may have initially involved the incorporation of peoples from microscale (local) networks, populations originating among wider mesoscale (subregional) networks contributed to later coalescent communities. These findings challenge previous models of village relocation and settlement aggregation that oversimplified these processes.

Evidence from house structures, artifacts and fauna are used to infer political and economic changes at the Benson site, a late sixteenth century Huron village near Balsam Lake, Ontario. It  is suggested that one household acquired trade links to Europeans in the St. Lawrence valley, and as a result became the largest and most prestigious household in the community. Subsequently, a second household expanded to a comparable size, but did so in opposition to the first house, and represented the “traditionalist” faction.  Ultimately, the traditionalist faction prevailed, and the more progressive house was dismantled, and its inhabitants moved elsewhere.

This bibliography is intended as a research guide for archaeologists studying the Huron-Petun branch of Iroquoian development in Ontario as chronologically and geographically delimited by J. V. Wright in his monograph The Ontario Iroquois Tradition (1966:66-7). A set of six main indices has been used to distinguish sub-areas of study. While this bibliography refers most specifically to the Huron and Petun, numerous references to related Iroquoian groups have been included for comparative purposes. The net result is coverage of Iroquoian developments in the Great Lakes region throughout the Late Woodland period.  Given the sometimes variable accuracy of ethnic identification in 17th century French records, included materials will also refer to some Algonquin peoples of the Ontario Woodland Tradition..  This is a unique compendium of many rare and hard to locate books and articles.

Until recently, much of the history and archaeology of the Huron-Wendat have been written by Euro-Canadians without, for the most part, involving the Huron-Wendat. The events of the seventeenth century in particular was written in a way that precluded agency on the part of the Huron-Wendat and did not consider sufficiently an important inherent relationship between the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and the Huron-Wendat. This paper seeks to address these deficiencies and at the same time link the events surrounding the decisions on the part of some St. Lawrence Iroquoian planners with those made by north shore of Lake Ontario Huron-Wendat. The effect of this linkage is to redefine the “Great Canadian Mystery” and to do so from an Indigenous perspective.

This study documents and theorizes the processes behind the coalescence of ancestral Huron-Wendat populations on the north shore of Lake Ontario. A multi-scalar analytical approach is employed to examine settlement aggregation at the regional, local and community levels. The study draws upon cross-cultural models of coalescent societies and the archaeology of communities while being theoretically situated within an historical-processual approach.

The settlement data presented demonstrate that during the fifteenth century AD, small, previously distinct communities came together into large village aggregates. Through an examination of settlement relocation sequences and the occupational histories of individual villages, the transformations in social and political organization that accompanied this process are examined. Differences between site sequences suggest that while it is possible to identify similar processes in coalescence, the actual experience of coming together varied at the local level due to particular historical contingencies.

A major contribution of the study is a detailed analysis of one village relocation sequence involving the aggregation of several small village communities at the Draper site, during the late fifteenth century. In the early sixteenth century, this coalescent community relocated to establish the Mantle site, the largest Iroquoian village excavated to date in the Lower Great Lakes. A detailed analysis of the occupational history of the Mantle site is presented here. The results point to the increasing integration of the community over time. A comparison of the built environments and other features of the Draper and Mantle sites elucidate practices that directly address the lived experience of coalescence. These community-level processes are ultimately situated in, and form the basis for, the broader socio-political realignments that characterized the Late Precontact Lower Great Lakes.

This review of Birch and Williamson's book "The Mantle Site.  An Archaeological History of an Ancestral Wendat Community" was written for North Atlantic Archaeology, Vol. 3.  Even though I had written another review of the book for Ontario Archaeology, the editor of NAA felt the book was important enough that I should write a differently focussed review, aimed at the journal's more international audience.

Richard B. Johnston and L. J. Jackson
Although the Huron are well known from an extraordinarily rich body of documentation recorded during the 35-year contact period prior to 1650 A.C., there has been relatively little substantial descriptive reporting or analysis of this large group of village agriculturalists based on modern archaeological fieldwork.  A long term project at the Le Caron Huron site has produced a significant body of well-controlled data, including extensive and detailed settlement information.  This report of the excavation of about 20% of the 4-acre village, especially a section containing five congiuous longhouses and a large part of the enclosing palisade, is the first archaeological study of the site and a contribution to our general understanding of late-period Huron village life.

* Note: A recent criticism of this paper (Hawkins and Lesage 2018) appears to confuse a general statement on destruction of the Huron nation with the authors believing the Huron as a people were destroyed. Ethnohistoric sources, French and Ojibway, clearly describe the movement and subsequent history of survivor groups.

A case study is presented from the Benson site, a small, late 16th century community in south-central Ontario, that appears to have been occupied by members of two or possibly three ethnic groups.  While ceramic motifs and pipe styles, among other artifacts, carried traditional ethnic significance, this paper argues that while ethnicity may have been the language employed, the conversation was about politics.  It goes on to generalize from this and to suggest that it may commonly be the case that what we recognize as ethnicity is really a political conversation employing readily understood ethnic metaphors.

The richness of the archaeological record of 'Huronia' is favorably compared with that of the Valley of Mexico and the Neolithic in southern Britain.  This demonstrated richness, both realized and potential, is then contrasted with the limitations to interpretation which are created by the reliance on historical approaches to Huron archaeology.

In 17th century Huron society, the distribution of material items associated with the fur trade (beaver pelts, wampum and European metal goods) was a prominent feature of certain
ritualised activities, including burial, gambling, dream fulfillment and crime payment. This paper suggests that these activities became elaborated during the historic period because they were capable of redistributing or eliminating new forms and quantities of wealth which would otherwise have had a socially disruptive effect.

Pottery is a mainstay of archaeological analysis worldwide. Often, high proportions of the pottery recovered from a given site are decorated in some manner. In northern Iroquoia, late pre-contact pottery and early contact decoration commonly occur on collars-thick bands of clay that encircle a pot and extend several centimeters down from the lip. These decorations constitute signals that conveyed information about a pot's user(s). In southern Ontario the period A.D. 1350 to 1650 witnessed substantial changes in socio-political and settlement systems that included population movement, coalescence of formerly separate communities into large villages and towns, waxing and waning of regional strife, the formation of nations, and finally the development of three confederacies that each occupied distinct, constricted areas. Social network analysis demonstrates that signaling practices changed to reflect these regional patterns. Networks become more consolidated through time ultimately...

This paper lays out the evidence for contact between the Balsam Lake region in south central Ontario and the St. Lawrence valley, in the late 15th to late 16th centuries.  An important issue is the variability in the nature and scale of contact over this time period, ranging from individual trade partnerships in the late 15th century, to adoption of St. Lawrence Iroquoian families into Huron-Wendat households in the late 16th century.  It is also suggested that this contact was initiated by Algonkians living at the north end of Balsam Lake, but ultimately came to include the Huron-Wendat living around the southern end of the lake.

This paper examines the occurrence and distribution of a new ceramic motif among the Upper Trent Valley Huron-Wendat of the mid 16th century: stamped horizontal bars on the neck of the vessel.  I suggest that the motif originally occurred on the pipes used by St. Lawrence Iroquoian men, and became transferred to pots during the process of negotiating the adoption of St. Lawrence Iroquoian refugees into Trent Valley Huron-Wendat communities.  I try to demonstrate that this was part of a wider process of negotiating and internalizing a new hybrid St. Lawrence/Huron-Wendat identity.

The basic unit of the Iroquoian village, and thus of the interpretation of Iroquoian prehistory is the household.  An innovative approach to investigating household features at the Benson site reveals that life histories of Iroquoian houses are both specific and complex.  By contrast, many interpretations have assumed a simplistic uniformity between Iroquoian households and communities and do not take into account the uniqueness of the individual house.  By confronting this complexity on a smaller scale, i.e. through the lifecycle of the house, it becomes clear that larger scale analyses, including things like demography and village dynamics are equally complex and therefore must be re-evaluated.

We employ social network analysis of collar decoration on Iroquoian vessels to conduct a multiscalar analysis of signaling practices among ancestral Huron-Wendat communities on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Our analysis focuses on the microscale of the West Duffins Creek community relocation sequence as well as the mesoscale, incorporating several populations to the west. The data demonstrate that network ties were stronger among populations in adjacent drainages as opposed to within drainage-specific sequences, providing evidence for west-to-east population movement, especially as conflict between Wendat and Haudenosaunee populations escalated in the sixteenth century. These results suggest that although coalescence may have initially involved the incorporation of peoples from microscale (local) networks, populations originating among wider mesoscale (subregional) networks contributed to later coalescent communities. These findings challenge previous models of village relocation...

This paper summarizes four common interpretations of the presence of Saint Lawrence Iroquoian artifacts on Huron sites in the Trent Valley, Ontario, and evaluates them in the light of recent archaeological data from the Balsam Lake area.  It is noted that acceptance or rejection of any interpretation is in part a function of theoretical orientation.  An explanation involving the adoption of Saint Lawrence Iroquoian population remnants by allied Huron communities is considered most consistent with the archaeological data, within a theoretical framework that incorporates issues of power relations and the social meaning of material culture.