Radiocarbon Dating the Iroquoian Occupation of Northern New York

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.

Fifty new, high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates have been obtained on maize, faunal remains and ceramic residues from 18 pre-contact Iroquoian village sites in northern New York. These dates add significant new information to the chronology of the Iroquoian occupation of the region. Once thought to span AD 1350-1500, these new dates suggest an AD 1450-1520 period of occupation. The evidence now points to their arrival in the region in the late pre-contact period from as many as four different origins. In roughly 70 years, they occupied 40-50 village sites. Village space among some of the village sequences tripled during this period, marked by increasingly larger and more fortified villages- some as large as 3 ha. During their time in northern New York, they were integral to social networks between ancestral Haudenosaunee, Wendat and other St. Lawrence Iroquoian groups. The new chronology points to population pressure and local warfare as being major contributors to their dispersal from the region by 1520.

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): 23206