Small Sites as Evidence for Seneca and Cayuga Settlement Expansion, circa 1640-1690

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recognizing and Recording Post-1492 Indigenous Sites in North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sites in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territory that yield small numbers of artifacts diagnostic of Postcolumbian indigenous occupations typically are treated as ephemeral occurrences: travel stop-overs, resource-procurement stations, and the like. Concentration on obvious diagnostic artifacts such as glass beads or Christian-themed items neglects other less-flashy, temporally ambiguous materials (such as lithic debitage, faunal remains, or iron tools) that could demonstrate more substantial Postcolumbian occupation. Moreover, many of these small sites cluster in time to the mid-to-late 1600s. This paper uses examples from Seneca (Onöndowa'ga:') and Cayuga (Gayogohó:no') territory to argue that seventeenth-century Haudenosaunee nations expanded occupation with small-scale settlements and agricultural endeavors in a way that archaeologists have not previously recognized. This expansion likely was related to a peak period in Haudenosaunee political-economic power and prosperity. Small-scale settlements appear largely to have been abandoned when a series of French invasions swept through Haudenosaunee territory in 1684-1696. Subsequent Haudenosaunee territorial expansion in the eighteenth century had a very different spatial footprint.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recognizing and Recording Post-1492 Indigenous Sites in North American Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23122