B.1
The Archaeology of the Petun:
A World Class Opportunity
Ronald F. Williamson, PhD,
Archaeological Services Inc. and
University of Toronto
Archaeological Services Inc. 528 Bathurst Street Toronto, Ontario M5S 2P9
As long as it has been possible to inhabit the southern Ontario
landscape, First Nations people have lived here
Most sites of this period consist of single projectile points
The few sites that have been subject to
larger scale excavation suggest
exploitation of caribou, arctic fox and
perhaps mastodon
For the next seven thousand years, small Algonquianspeaking bands inhabited the Great Lakes region
These Algonquian-speaking bands lived in small settlements
on the edges of lakes and rivers
The Five Nations Iroquois of New York State and the Ontario Iroquoian-speaking groups
(i.e., Neutral, Huron and Petun) emerged from local communities who adopted an
agricultural way of life and developed Iroquoian dialects
Maize was introduced into the Grand River Valley from the south by 1,700 years ago;
first villages occupied by Iroquoian-speaking peoples appear by 1,000 years ago
A.D. 500-1600
• Gradual adoption of agricultural way of life
• By 1300, agriculture represented the main
subsistence pursuit of all those groups living
in areas of suitable farm land
• These agriculturalists, for the most part,
inhabited large semi-permanent villages
• Ancestral Neutral peoples lived west of the
west end of Lake Ontario while Ancestral
Huron and Petun peoples lived along the
north shore of Lake Ontario and in Simcoe
and Grey Counties
• Algonquian peoples continued to live all
around these Iroquoian-speaking groups
By AD 1450-1500, these villages reached nine to ten acres in size with
hundreds of acres of cornfields surrounding the settlement
The location of various First Nations in the early
seventeenth century
Contact HuronWendat sites
Location of Petun sites:
1. St Pierre and St Paul (Ehwae) – HamiltonLougheed
2. St André - Connor-Rolling
3. St Thomas - Glebe
4. St Jacques – Graham-Ferguson
5. St Jean (Etharita) – Kelly-Campbell
6. St Jacques and St Phillippe - McEwen
7. St Barthelemy- Pretty River
8. St Matthieu (Ekarenniondi)- Plater-Martin
9. St Simon and St Jude – Plater-Fleming
Adapted from Garrad and Heidenreich (1978:Figure 1)
Location of the Plater-Martin and Plater-Fleming sites
Location of the Plater-Martin and Plater-Fleming sites
Plater-Martin
BdHb-1
Plater-Fleming
BdHb-2
Artifacts from the Plater – Martin site (BdHb-1)
Rim portion of a brass kettle
Chert Arrow Tips (upper row)
European Iron Arrow Tip ( lower left)
European Brass Awl (lower right)
Artifacts from the Plater – Martin site (BdHb-1)
Shell gorget (upper left)
and shell and copper beads (upper right)
Two bear canine pendants
Ceramic smoking pipe bowl (left)
and
limestone pipe stem (right)
A Local Hero with Petun and Huron Elders:
Charles Garrad