Struggling with Radiocarbon Dates at the Dawson Site in Downtown Montréal

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.

In 2016, construction work on Sherbrooke street in downtown Montréal has led to the discovery of late St. Lawrence Iroquoian remains that are part of the Dawson site, an Iroquoian village first discovered in 1859. Two years of excavations, in 2016 and 2017, provided new data representing a welcome addition to the former Dawson collection that was thoroughly analyzed and published in 1972 by James F. Pendergast and Bruce G. Trigger. One major concern brought about by the Dawson site was the possibly of it being the famous village of Hochelaga visited by French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535. A series of AMS radiocarbon dates suggests that the Dawson is about 150 years older than previously thought based on ceramic typology. Several avenues of explanation are examined to address this apparent discrepancy, including different aging effects on radiocarbon dates, the low degree of resolution in ceramic typologies, as well as aspects of Iroquoian settlement patterns.

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): 22842