Major Implications of the Dating Iroquoia Project: Rethinking Coalescence, Conflict, and Early European Influences in the Lower Great Lakes Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper details the preliminary results of the Dating Iroquoia project and reviews some of the most significant implications of our revised radiocarbon chronology as they relate to current understandings of Iroquoian cultural development. First, a brief review of traditional approaches to chronology-building in Northern Iroquoia and associated temporal schema are outlined. Next, the results of our dating program are presented and timeframes for key sites and site sequences summarized in the context of how our new chronology serves to reframe existing understandings of Iroquoian archaeological history. The major component of these findings includes a shift in the timing of coalescence and conflict from the mid-fifteenth century to the early-to-mid sixteenth century. These results have significant implications for understanding the directionality of conflict, understandings of "traditional" enmity between the Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee, factors contributing to confederacy formation. Major insights also stem from identifying how community-level events diverge from regional culture-historical schema, including the timing and processes through which European goods appear in certain site sequences. The conclusions outline directions forward for the project and future research plans.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23714