Dataset Information

Radiocarbon re-dating of contact-era Iroquoian history in northeastern North America.

ABSTRACT: A time frame for late Iroquoian prehistory is firmly established on the basis of the presence/absence of European trade goods and other archeological indicators. However, independent dating evidence is lacking. We use 86 radiocarbon measurements to test and (re)define existing chronological understanding. Warminster, often associated with Cahiagué visited by S. de Champlain in 1615-1616 CE, yields a compatible radiocarbon-based age. However, a well-known late prehistoric site sequence in southern Ontario, Draper-Spang-Mantle, usually dated ~1450-1550, yields much later radiocarbon-based dates of ~1530-1615. The revised time frame dramatically rewrites 16th-century contact-era history in this region. Key processes of violent conflict, community coalescence, and the introduction of European goods all happened much later and more rapidly than previously assumed. Our results suggest the need to reconsider current understandings of contact-era dynamics across northeastern North America.

SUBMITTER: Manning SW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6281431 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Radiocarbon re-dating of contact-era Iroquoian history in northeastern North America.

Manning Sturt W SW Birch Jennifer J Conger Megan A MA Dee Michael W MW Griggs Carol C Hadden Carla S CS Hogg Alan G AG Ramsey Christopher Bronk CB Sanft Samantha S Steier Peter P Wild Eva M EM

Science advances 20181205 12

A time frame for late Iroquoian prehistory is firmly established on the basis of the presence/absence of European trade goods and other archeological indicators. However, independent dating evidence is lacking. We use 86 radiocarbon measurements to test and (re)define existing chronological understanding. Warminster, often associated with Cahiagué visited by S. de Champlain in 1615-1616 CE, yields a compatible radiocarbon-based age. However, a well-known late prehistoric site sequence in souther ...[more]

PMID: 30525108

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Project description:The timeframe of Indigenous settlements in Northeast North America in the 15th-17th centuries CE has until very recently been largely described in terms of European material culture and history. An independent chronology was usually absent. Radiocarbon dating has recently begun to change this conventional model radically. The challenge, if an alternative, independent timeframe and history is to be created, is to articulate a high-resolution chronology appropriate and comparable with the lived histories of the Indigenous village settlements of the period. Improving substantially on previous initial work, we report here high-resolution defined chronologies for the three most extensively excavated and iconic ancestral Kanien'kehá꞉ka (Mohawk) village sites in New York (Smith-Pagerie, Klock and Garoga), and a fourth early historic Indigenous site, Brigg's Run, and re-assess the wider chronology of the Mohawk River Valley in the mid-15th to earlier 17th centuries. This new chronology confirms initial suggestions from radiocarbon that a wholesale reappraisal of past assumptions is necessary, since our dates conflict completely with past dates and the previously presumed temporal order of these three iconic sites. In turn, a wider reassessment of northeastern North American early history and re-interpretation of Atlantic connectivities in the later 15th through early 17th centuries is required. Our new closely defined date ranges are achieved employing detailed archival analysis of excavation records to establish the contextual history for radiocarbon-dated samples from each site, tree-ring defined short time series from wood charcoal samples fitted against the radiocarbon calibration curve ('wiggle-matching'), and Bayesian chronological modelling for each of the individual sites integrating all available prior knowledge and radiocarbon dating probabilities. We define (our preferred model) most likely (68.3% highest posterior density) village occupation ranges for Smith-Pagerie of ~1478-1498, Klock of ~1499-1521, Garoga of ~1550-1582, and Brigg's Run of ~1619-1632.

Dataset Information

Radiocarbon re-dating of contact-era Iroquoian history in northeastern North America.

Publications

Radiocarbon re-dating of contact-era Iroquoian history in northeastern North America.

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