Timing the Circulation of Nonlocal Materials in Seneca- and Onondaga-Region Sites

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 this paper, I evaluate newly acquired AMS radiocarbon dates for Seneca- and Onondaga-region sites, focusing on what these new dates can tell us about the regional exchange of non-local materials in the circa fourteenth- to seventeenth- century ancestral Haudenosaunee homeland (what is today central New York State). I examine the material properties of non-local marine shell and copper objects (including copper objects of both North American and European origin) and their associated relations and practices. Through the use of macroscopic analyses, digital radiograph imaging, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and digital mapping via ArcGIS software, I study artifact forms, manufacturing methods, sources of raw materials, and distributions of artifacts. Lastly, I establish a refined temporal understanding of the incorporation of these materials by employing radiometric dating and Bayesian chronological modeling via OxCal software. The combination of chronology-building and artifact analyses provides new details with which to discuss the exchange of nonlocal materials in the ancestral Haudenosaunee homeland.

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): 23997