In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

265 Chapter 6 Using Native Artifacts to Interpret Petun Sites 6.0 Introduction To understand what happened in the Petun Country during the 70 years or so (ca. A.D. 1580-1650) that the Wyandot peoples collectively nicknamed Petun were present there, it is necessary to date their archaeological remains as accurately as possible, ideally to within 10 years, and certainly to within a Glass Bead Period (see Chapter 1.2.5).This chapter examines certain Petun artifacts which, at our present level of understanding, seem to offer varying potential for suggesting the approximate date or time period (as GBP) when there was activity and occupancy in the villages or campsites where they were found.These are the rimsherds of clay pots, clay smoking pipe bowls, cherts, some shamanic ritual artifacts, and marine shell. No radiometric (radiocarbon) dating has been undertaken in the Petun Country because such dates have too large a range of error for this method to be useful (Kennedy 1976: 12;Timmins 1997: 27;Warrick 1990: 250). 6.0.1 THE USE OF ARTIFACTS TO DATE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN THE PETUN COUNTRY Archaeological work in the Petun Country (Garrad 2010) has revealed that many peoples have come and gone in this area in the thousands of years since the departure of permanent ice.The Petun were but one of presumably many Native groups who, in their own time, had lived in or passed through the territory that became known as the Petun Country for some 70 years. However, of these occupations, the Petun was the largest and most continuous .The Petun left remains in sufficient abundance to be the most evident of all occupations in the Petun Country, and to somewhat obscure the evidence of the previous populations. Not only is there artifactual evidence in the Petun Country of other peoples in earlier Palaeo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland periods, but during our own work we unexpectedly interpreted some artifacts and sites as belonging to other, unrelatedWyandot peoples who were contemporaries of the Petun. There were also Algonquin/Odawa peoples, owners of the territory into which the Petun came, with whom they related and whose archaeology cannot definitely be separated from that of the Petun. Much later, after the Petun were gone, came the Ojibwa, and it was they who surrendered the Petun Country to the Crown by Treaty #18 in October 1818 (Canada 1891: 47; Shaw 1932).They were still using the land when European settlers began arriving in the late 1830s. Evidences of all these peoples were recorded during our research but are not 266 USING NATIVE ARTIFACTS TO INTERPRET PETUN SITES mentioned in detail here because this present work is devoted to the Petun and their contemporary Odawa/Algonquin allies. The vast range of Native-made goods recovered in the Petun Country all show great skill in manufacture. Following the arrival of Europeans, and with them European diseases, the level of skill noticeably declined, presumably because the elders, keepers of traditions, knowledge, skills, and experience, died prematurely from the new diseases. Iron knives and axes, copper and brass pots,glass beads and other goods from Europe,came to replace those of stone,wood,clay,and bone the Petuns had made previously.At the same time a resurgence of ritual in the hope of propitiating the diseases that the Europeans brought may have resulted in new artifacts, or changed ratios of artifacts. Consequently, changes within the numbers, types, and ratios of Native-made goods can be instructive for both the date of the site where they are found and the social conditions that prevailed there. Fragments of well-made pottery are prolific on Petun archaeological sites. Certain combinations of shape and decoration, termed “types” (MacNeish 1952), constantly reoccur on the rims of Petun pots. Fortunately, the type can often be discerned from a small fragment of the pot rim. For a variety of reasons, some pottery types increased in usage over time while others declined.Thirty-eight pottery types are presently recognised in the Petun Country, although they may not all be Petun (Appendix A).The most popular type is called“Sidey-Notched.”This name commemorates the Sidey family near Creemore on whose farm this pottery type was found in abundance byWintemberg during his 1926 excavation, and the fact that the lip of the pot is notched or incised across.The second most popular type is called “Huron Incised,” a similar vessel in shape, paste, and decoration to a Sidey-Notched pot but with a plain...

Share