The Use of Style in Social/Political Resistance and the Negotiation of Identity (original) (raw)
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Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien dArcheologie, 2016
The late sixteenth century Huron-Wendat Benson site in the Balsam Lake area of south-central Ontario has produced substantial quantities of a characteristic 'barred' ceramic motif found virtually nowhere else. In addition, it has produced ceramics that are "hybrids" of Huron-Wendat and St. Lawrence Iroquoian styles. An analysis of these ceramics leads to the interpretation that they are part of a complex process of power brokering by women in the community. In part this entails symbolic resistance on the part of adopted St. Lawrence Iroquoian women. At the same time, it reveals a strategy used by both St. Lawrence Iroquoian and Huron-Wendat women of sending signals of ambiguous political allegiance, either to achieve a degree of political flexibility, or to attempt to mediate between the community's two competing political factions.
Emergent Ceramics and Identity at the Fifteenth-Century Iroquoian Keffer Village
Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 2021
The recent interpretation of ceramic types as fluid and relational (Fowler 2017) has facilitated their use in the exploration of relational identity. In this study, ceramics from the fifteenth-century southern Ontario Iroquoian Keffer (AkGv-14) village are employed in the exploration of matrilineal, matrilocal household self-identification as seen through ceramic communities of practice. The Keffer assemblage is separated into two categories; local tradition ceramics which I suggest represent genealogies of family practice, and non-local tradition pottery, which I propose communicates contemporary relations and long distance interaction. In addition, a new, third category of ceramics is proposed “emergent vessels.” Emergent ceramics are materialized in two separate and distinct vessel forms in the collection, the Everted Lip and North Shore Durfee Underlined. Their sudden and geographically restricted materialization reflects the equally sudden appearance of newly emergent facets of the polyvalent identities of potting communities as seen at Keffer and other north shore sites. The short-term production and use of these emergent ceramics attests to the quickly diminishing importance of these new emergent aspects of identity while the ceramics of the latest village occupations verify the endurance and gradual transformation of those facets of identity tied to family
Nation Building and Social Signaling in Southern Ontario: A.D. 1350–1650
PLOS ONE, 2016
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 resulting in a “small world” network with small degrees of separation between sites reflecting the integration of communities within and between the three confederacies.
London Museum of Archaeology, an Affiliate of The University of Western Ontario, Special Publication 1 , 1998
Since 1973, a long-term, variable-scale, multi-disciplinary program of archaeological research has been conducted in the Crawford Lake area, above and below the Niagara Escarpment, north of Lake Ontario in southern Ontario, Canada. This study in settlement archaeology has revealed an intensive and complex occupation of the area by Ontario Iroquoian peoples between approximately A.D. 1000 and 1650. These Iroquoians were slash-and-burn horticulturalists, who grew corn, beans, squash, sunflower and tobacco, and who also hunted, fished and gathered. They lived in villages of longhouses often surrounded by palisades. The Niagara Escarpment is the most prominent geological feature of the local landscape, and it served as a frontier area between the two major confederacies of Iroquoians, the Huron and Neutral. J.V. Wright’s Ontario Iroquois Tradition (1966) is adopted as the cultural-historical model best suited to the study, and is refined with the definition of Early and Late Pickering substages of the Early Ontario Iroquois stage and the proposal that Glen Meyer peoples were ‘proto-Algonquians’, not ‘proto-Iroquoians’. This study has revealed that the Crawford Lake area was initially occupied by ‘proto-Huron’ Pickering, Uren and Middleport peoples. During the occupation by these ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport peoples, several communities of ‘proto-Neutral’ Middleport peoples moved into the area from the west and evolved into the prehistoric and historic Neutral peoples documented by French missionaries in the early 17th century. The fate of the ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport people remains unknown; four hypotheses are presented as possible explanations. Using data on phases of forest clearance and non-clearance inferred from the palynological study of the varved sediments of Crawford Lake by Roger Bryne, the chronology of the Ontario Iroquois Tradition has been refined. It is proposed that the Early Pickering substage of the Ontario Iroquois stage dates from A.D. 1030 to 1180; the Late Pickering substage from A.D. 1180 to 1330; the Uren substage of the Middle Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1330 to 1420; the Middleport substage of the Middle Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1420 to 1504; and the prehistoric Neutral division of the Late Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1504 to 1550. This fine-grained chronology suggests that the Middleport substage lasts considerably longer and ends later than previously thought, while the prehistoric Neutral division starts and ends earlier than current interpretations based on course-grained C-14 dates. Using this chronology, the culture history of the Crawford Lake area is presented, including new data in support of J.V. Wright’s (1992) Conquest Theory in which Pickering peoples of southeastern Ontario conquered the Glen Meyer people of southwestern Ontario in the early 14th century. This conquest was possible due to the formation of militaristic confederacies by Early Pickering substage people in the 12th century which resulted in very large villages on the western frontier. After the conquest, the frontier moved west and with the threat of imminent attach lessened, the Uren peoples no longer had to live in palisaded villages. One of the most important contributions of the study is the presentation of evidence that Middleport peoples in these frontier communities made their tools, articles for personal adornment and motifs on ceramics as badges of their identity. Characteristics of the Crawford Lake locality ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport sites include: pottery vessels with high frequencies of lip and interior decoration ; high collared vessels with an average of 11 relatively narrow horizontal lines of decoration; ceramic pipes with elaborated decoration comprised of squares and rhomboids filled with parallel incised lines; modified deer phalanges with the proximal end cut off to expose the marrow cavity; and projectile points which are predominantly triangular. By way of contrast , the ‘proto-Neutral’ Middleport sites of the Mountsberg and Kelso localities are characterized by very low frequencies of lip and interior decoration, high collared vessels with an average of eight rows of relatively wide horizontal lines, ceramic pipes with flaring bowls; modified deer phalanges with distal ends perforated; a variety of bone projectile points and projectile points for the Mountsberg locality, which are predominantly side-notched. Further, there are sufficient differences amongst contemporaneous “proto-Neutral’ Middleport communities which assist in their definition. The data gathered in this four-volume study are used to test a model developed from ethnographic data on the Yanomamo, a society of slash-and-burn horticulturalists in Brazil and Venezuela, and from the ethnohistorical data for the Huron to explain interactions amongst these contemporaneous Middleport settlements in the Crawford Lake area. Current evidence suggests that alliance formation and maintenance were the key factors in the changes which these societies and their material culture underwent. The study concludes with a retrospect on the results of the first 25 years of research with suggested directions for research in the 21st century.
London Museum of Archaeology, an Affiliate of The University of Western Ontario, Special Publication 1, 1998
Since 1973, a long-term, variable-scale, multi-disciplinary program of archaeological research has been conducted in the Crawford Lake area, above and below the Niagara Escarpment, north of Lake Ontario in southern Ontario, Canada. This study in settlement archaeology has revealed an intensive and complex occupation of the area by Ontario Iroquoian peoples between approximately A.D. 1000 and 1650. These Iroquoians were slash-and-burn horticulturalists, who grew corn, beans, squash, sunflower and tobacco, and who also hunted, fished and gathered. They lived in villages of longhouses often surrounded by palisades. The Niagara Escarpment is the most prominent geological feature of the local landscape, and it served as a frontier area between the two major confederacies of Iroquoians, the Huron and Neutral. J.V. Wright’s Ontario Iroquois Tradition (1966) is adopted as the cultural-historical model best suited to the study, and is refined with the definition of Early and Late Pickering substages of the Early Ontario Iroquois stage and the proposal that Glen Meyer peoples were ‘proto-Algonquians’, not ‘proto-Iroquoians’. This study has revealed that the Crawford Lake area was initially occupied by ‘proto-Huron’ Pickering, Uren and Middleport peoples. During the occupation by these ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport peoples, several communities of ‘proto-Neutral’ Middleport peoples moved into the area from the west and evolved into the prehistoric and historic Neutral peoples documented by French missionaries in the early 17th century. The fate of the ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport people remains unknown; four hypotheses are presented as possible explanations. Using data on phases of forest clearance and non-clearance inferred from the palynological study of the varved sediments of Crawford Lake by Roger Bryne, the chronology of the Ontario Iroquois Tradition has been refined. It is proposed that the Early Pickering substage of the Ontario Iroquois stage dates from A.D. 1030 to 1180; the Late Pickering substage from A.D. 1180 to 1330; the Uren substage of the Middle Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1330 to 1420; the Middleport substage of the Middle Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1420 to 1504; and the prehistoric Neutral division of the Late Ontario Iroquois stage from A.D. 1504 to 1550. This fine-grained chronology suggests that the Middleport substage lasts considerably longer and ends later than previously thought, while the prehistoric Neutral division starts and ends earlier than current interpretations based on course-grained C-14 dates. Using this chronology, the culture history of the Crawford Lake area is presented, including new data in support of J.V. Wright’s (1992) Conquest Theory in which Pickering peoples of southeastern Ontario conquered the Glen Meyer people of southwestern Ontario in the early 14th century. This conquest was possible due to the formation of militaristic confederacies by Early Pickering substage people in the 12th century which resulted in very large villages on the western frontier. After the conquest, the frontier moved west and with the threat of imminent attach lessened, the Uren peoples no longer had to live in palisaded villages. One of the most important contributions of the study is the presentation of evidence that Middleport peoples in these frontier communities made their tools, articles for personal adornment and motifs on ceramics as badges of their identity. Characteristics of the Crawford Lake locality ‘proto-Huron’ Middleport sites include: pottery vessels with high frequencies of lip and interior decoration ; high collared vessels with an average of 11 relatively narrow horizontal lines of decoration; ceramic pipes with elaborated decoration comprised of squares and rhomboids filled with parallel incised lines; modified deer phalanges with the proximal end cut off to expose the marrow cavity; and projectile points which are predominantly triangular. By way of contrast , the ‘proto-Neutral’ Middleport sites of the Mountsberg and Kelso localities are characterized by very low frequencies of lip and interior decoration, high collared vessels with an average of eight rows of relatively wide horizontal lines, ceramic pipes with flaring bowls; modified deer phalanges with distal ends perforated; a variety of bone projectile points and projectile points for the Mountsberg locality, which are predominantly side-notched. Further, there are sufficient differences amongst contemporaneous “proto-Neutral’ Middleport communities which assist in their definition. The data gathered in this four-volume study are used to test a model developed from ethnographic data on the Yanomamo, a society of slash-and-burn horticulturalists in Brazil and Venezuela, and from the ethnohistorical data for the Huron to explain interactions amongst these contemporaneous Middleport settlements in the Crawford Lake area. Current evidence suggests that alliance formation and maintenance were the key factors in the changes which these societies and their material culture underwent. The study concludes with a retrospect on the results of the first 25 years of research with suggested directions for research in the 21st century.
Figured practices: the material heritage of ritual in the Great Lakes region
Landscapes of Ritual Performance in Eastern North America, 2023
Ceramic vessels recovered from two thirteenth century Central Algonquian villages in southwestern Ontario bear incised motifs reminiscent of Canadian Shield pictographic imagery, as well as those present on birch bark scrolls. Parallels with Midewiwin symbolism are strong.