Transformation and Disease: Precontact Ontario Iroquoia (original) (raw)

The timing and impact of depopulation of the Wendat-Tionontate (Huron-Petun) was examined using historical, epidemiological, archaeological, and bioarchaeological data. Historical and epidemiological research indicates that the documented 1634–40 epidemics that devastated Wendat-Tionontate villages had their origins in the large numbers of European children who emigrated in the 1630s to the New World colonies from the disease-ridden cities of England, Netherlands, and France. There is no evidence in Wendat-Tionontate archaeological settlement remains or large burial populations for any significant outbreak of European disease prior to AD 1634.

Iroquoians become recognizable in the archaeological record of southern Ontario about AD 500, with the appearance of Princess Point sites and maize agriculture in the lower Grand River valley. AfterA.D. 1000, Iroquoians lived in longhouse villages situated in the interior, north ...

The foundations for modern scholarship concerning Wendat history and archaeology were laid in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by researchers, such as Andrew Hunter and Arthur Jones, investigating hundreds of sites and ossuaries that had been reported to provincial authorities. The focus of their work and of the work of many of those who followed was the search for places that could be related to villages and missions mentioned in early documentary accounts. Avocational, academic, and government agency archaeologists working in the mid-twentieth century had only these early archaeological studies to inform their investigations ofWendat sites. During the past 30 years, however, a revolution in archaeological data collection has occurred. Some of these data are published and thus accessible to current researchers, but much of it remains unpublished and some of it has not even been reported on. This paper is an overview of most of this work, especially of those sites where substantial excavations have occurred. It is intended to provide a guide for those who wish to use these studies to delve deeper into various aspects of the history of historic-period or ancestralWendat communities.

The archaeological record of Northern Iroquoian peoples contributes to global questions about ethnogenesis, the emergence of settled village life, agricultural intensification, the development of complex organizational structures, and processes of cultural and colonial entanglement. In the last decade, the rapid accumulation of data and the application of contemporary theoretical perspectives have led to significant advances in Iroquoian archaeology, including new insights about how demographic, ecological, and cultural processes intersect at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Internal and external factors accelerated processes of cultural change, particularly during periods of conflict, coalescence, and encroachment. This review considers the historical development of Northern Iroquoian societies from the beginning of the Late Woodland through the colonial era. The dynamism of the settlement landscape is highlighted, together with the fluidity of sociopolitical identities

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 relocation sequences on the north shore of Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada to explore factors influencing village relocation and how the continued abandonment of village sites created ancestral landscapes that included sites of pilgrimage, resource extraction, and ceremony. As communities of the dead, abandoned villages and associated ossuaries were part of a larger set of spiritual responsibilities to meaningful places in the landscape. As ancestral sites, these places were part of ongoing processes of emplacement through which Wendat communities laid claim to politically-defined territories.

Chronic infectious respiratory disease in a past human population is investigated through the quantification of maxillary sinusitis among Iroquoian horticulturists. Three hundred forty-eight right and left maxillae of a Southern Ontario Iroquoian skeletal sample, Uxbridge Ossuary, ca. AD 1440, were examined for evidence of chronic infection (minimum number of individuals 5 207: 114 adults, 22 adolescents, 38 juveniles and 33 infants). Modern clinical criteria were applied to differentiate lesions of respiratory and dental origin. Osseous lesions of the maxillary sinuses were observed in 50% of the individuals examined. These lesions are morphologically consistent with nonspecific lesions observed in other past populations that have been attributed to the presence of pathogens. The prevalence of maxillary sinusitis increases with age. Osseous changes suggestive of maxillary sinusitis of respiratory origin are at a maximum prevalence in juveniles and adolescents. In adults, infection of dental origin becomes a confounding factor in the identification of sinusitis of respiratory origin. Fifteenth century Iroquoians were experiencing high airborne pathogen levels and poor indoor air quality. The prevalence of maxillary sinusitis and the exploration of the origin of tissue injury may contribute to our reconstruction of the quality of life and the respiratory health status of past human populations.

This paper, written for a publication in 2015 that was never published, summarizes the state of our knowledge concerning the Iroquoian occupation of northern New York. Long a curiosity, these sites have at times been considered as part of the Onondaga-Oneida development, as aligned with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, and more recently, as an independent entity with multiple origins and a unique culture history. Current research continues to add knowledge to that culture history, as well as to questions of settlement and subsistence, political relationships and trade. Their fate during the St. Lawrence valley diaspora of the 16th century is a topic of continuing research. At present, it appears that population pressure and hostility set events in motion during the 15th century to cause population movements out of northern New York. Rather than having a common fate, populations in northern New York appear to have gone in multiple directions to join neighboring Iroquoian groups.