CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 30Archaeology and ancient environmental studiesHistorical and Cultural Archaeology StudiesArchaeological Research and Protection

Contact-Era Chronology Building in Iroquoia: Age Estimates for Arendarhonon Sites and Implications for Identifying Champlain's Cahiagué

Open access
Manning, Sturt W., Birch, Jennifer, Conger, Megan Anne, Dee, Michael W., Griggs, Carol, Hadden, Carla S.·2019·American Antiquity
DOI 10.1017/aaq.2019.60
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Radiocarbon dating is rarely used in historical or contact-era North American archaeology because of idiosyncrasies of the calibration curve that result in ambiguous calendar dates for this period. We explore the potential and requirements for radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis to create a time frame for early contact-era sites in northeast North America independent of the assumptions and approximations involved in temporal constructs based on trade goods and other archaeological correlates. To illustrate, we use Bayesian chronological modeling to analyze radiocarbon dates on short-lived samples and a post from four Huron-Wendat Arendarhonon sites (Benson, Sopher, Ball, and Warminster) to establish an independent chronology. We find that Warminster was likely occupied in 1615–1616, and so is the most likely candidate for the site of Cahiagué visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1615–1616, versus the other main suggested alternative, Ball, which dates earlier, as do the Sopher and Benson sites. In fact, the Benson site seems likely to date ~50 years earlier than currently thought. We present the methods employed to arrive at these new, independent age estimates and argue that absolute redating of historic-era sites is necessary to accurately assess existing interpretations based on relative dating and associated regional narratives.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/aaq.2019.60

Cites

3 of 3 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Indigenous sites in North America with strong, well-replicated connections with European trade goods and their date ranges, or association with historically attested episodes, yield compatible 14C dated calendar age ranges.

    “Indigenous sites with strong, well-replicated, connections with European trade goods and their date ranges, or association with historically attested episodes (like Samuel de Champlain spending a winter at a site), yield compatible 14 C dated calendar age ranges”

    From Second Intermediate Period date for the Thera (Santorini) eruption and historical implications (2022) · cites this paper as [193]

    The Abstract reports radiocarbon dates compatible with Champlain’s 1615–1616 visit at Warminster, supporting the historical-association example. But it also reports sites previously placed 75–100 years apart by trade goods that radiocarbon dating found to be partly contemporary. The paper therefore does not support the claim that trade-good date ranges generally yield compatible radiocarbon ranges. Page numbers were not provided in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 30

  1. Biggar, Henry Percival (editor) 1922-1936 The Works of Samuel de Champlain. 6 vols. Translated by H. H. Langton and W. F. Ganong. Cham- plain Society, Toronto. Reprinted in 1971, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
  2. Birch, Jennifer 2015 Current Research on the Historical Development of Northern Iroquoian Societies. Journal of Archaeo- logical Research 23:263-323.
  3. Bonneau, Adelphine, Jean-François Moreau, Ron G. V. Hancock, and Karlis Karklins 2013 Archaeometrical Analysis of Glass Beads: Potential, Limitations, and Results. BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 26:35-46.
  4. Bradley, James W. 2007 Before Albany. New York State Museum Bulletin 509. New York State Education Department, Albany.
  5. Fitzgerald, William R. 1986 Is the Warminster Site Champlain's Cahiagué? Ontario Archaeology 45:3-7. 1990 Chronology to Cultural Process: Lower Great Lakes Archaeology, 1500-1650. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal.eScholar- ship@McGill, http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/?func= dbin-jump-full&object_id=39234&local_base=GEN01- MCG02.
  6. Fitzgerald, William R., Dean H. Knight, and Allison Bain 1995 Untanglers of Matters Temporal and Cultural: Glass Beads and the Early Contact Period Huron Ball site. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 19:117-138.
  7. Fitzgerald, William R., Laurier Turgeon, Ruth Holmes Whitehead, and James W. Bradley 1993 Late Sixteenth-Century Basque Banded Copper Ket- tles. Historical Archaeology 27(1):44-57.
  8. Fogt, Lisa, and Peter Ramsden 1996 From Timepiece to Time Machine: Scale and Com- plexity in Iroquoian Archaeology. In Debating Com- plexity: Proceedings of the 26th Annual Chacmool Conference, edited by Donald T. Hanna, Daniel A. Meyer, and Peter C. Dawson, pp. 39-45. Archaeo- logical Association of the University of Calgary, Calgary.
  9. Garrad, Charles 2014 Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Petun from the Six- teenth Century. Edited by Jean-Luc Pilon and William Fox. University of Ottawa Press, Gatineau.
  10. Hancock, Ronald G. V. 2012 European Glass Trade Beads in Northeastern North America. In Modern Methods for Analyzing Archaeo- logical and Historical Glass, edited by Koen Janssens, pp. 457-469.
  11. Hancock, Ronald G. V., J. McKechnie, Susan Aufreiter, Karlis Karklins, M. Kapches, M. Sempowski, J.-F. Moreau, and Ian Kenyon 2000 Non-Destructive Analysis of European Cobalt Blue Glass Trade Beads. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 244:567-573.
  12. Hunter, Andrew 1902 Notes on Sites of Huron Villages in the Township of Medonte (Simcoe County). In Annual Archaeological Report for 1901 to the Report of the Minister of Education for Ontario, pp. 56-100. Warwick Bros & Rutter, Toronto.
  13. Jones, Travis, Jennifer Birch, Ronald F. Williamson, Timothy J. Abel, Robert J. Speakman, and Louis Lesage 2018 Steatite Characterization Using X-Ray Fluorescence and Insights into Northern Iroquoian Interregional Inter- action. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 20:506-515.
  14. Kenyon, Ian T., and Thomas A. Kenyon 1983 Comments on 17th Century Glass Trade Beads from Ontario. In Proceedings of the 1982 Glass Trade Bead Conference, edited by Charles F. Hayes III, pp. 59-74. Research Records No. 16. Rochester Museum & Sci- ence Center, Rochester, New York.
  15. Loewen, Brad 2016 Sixteenth-Century Beads: New Data, New Direc- tions. In Contact in the 16th Century: Networks among Fishers, Foragers, and Farmers, edited by Brad Loewen and Claude Chapdelaine, pp. 269-286. Canadian Museum of History and University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa.
  16. McIlwraith, Thomas F. 1946 Archaeological Work in Huronia, 1946: Excavations Near Warminster. Canadian Historical Review 27:394- 401. 1947 On the Location of Cahiagué. Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 4:99-102.
  17. Martelle, Holly 2002 Huron Potters and Archaeological Constructs: Researching Ceramic Micro-Stylistics. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto. Collections Canada. http://www.collectionsca nada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk4/etd/NQ69090.PDF.
  18. Michelaki, Kostalena, Ronald G. V. Hancock, Gary Warrick, and Dean Knight 2013 17th Century Huron Village Life: Insights from the Copper-Based Metals of the Ball Site, Southern Ontario, Canada. Journal of Archaeological Science 40:1250- 1259.
  19. Noble, William C. 1968 Iroquois Archaeology and the Development of Iro- quois Social Organization (1000-650 AD): A Study in Culture Change Based on Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Ethnology. PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta. PRISM. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/2133. 1971 The Sopher Celt: An Indicator of Early Protohistoric Trade in Huronia. Ontario Archaeology 16:42-48.
  20. Ramsden, Peter G. 1978 Late Iroquoian Occupations of South-Central Ontario: A Preliminary Report on the 1977 Field Sea- son. Manuscript submitted to the Canada Council. 1988 Palisade Extension, Village Expansion, and Immi- gration in Iroquoian Sites in the Upper Trent Valley. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 12:177-183. 1990 Saint Lawrence Iroquoians in the Upper Trent River Valley. Man in the Northeast 39:87-95. 2009 Politics in a Huron Village. In Painting the Past with a Broad Brush: Papers in Honor of James Valliere Wright, edited by David L. Keenleyside and Jean-Luc Pilon, pp. 299-318. Archaeological Survey of Canada. Mercury Series Paper No. 170. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau. 2016a Becoming Wendat: Negotiating a New Identity around Balsam Lake in the Late Sixteenth Century. Ontario Archaeology 96:121-132.
  21. 2016b Sixteenth-Century Contact between the Saint Law- rence Valley and the Upper Trent Valley. In Contact in the 16th Century: Networks among Foragers, Fishers, and Farmers, edited by Brad Loewen and Claude Chapdelaine, pp. 219-234. Canadian Museum of History and University of Ottawa Press, Gatineau.
  22. Steckley, John L. 2007 Words of the Huron. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. 2009 Gabriel Sagard's Dictionary of Huron. ALR Sup- plement Series Vol. 2. Evolution Publishing, Merchant- ville, New Jersey.
  23. Stuiver, Minze, and Thomas F. Braziunas 1998 Anthropogenic and Solar Components of Hemi- spheric 14 C. Geophysical Research Letters 25:329-332.
  24. Sykes, Clark M. 1980 Swidden Horticulture and Iroquoian Settlement. Archaeology of Eastern North America 8:45-52. 1983 An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Analysis of Huron Intra-Community Exchange Systems. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto.
  25. Tooker, Elizabeth 1964 An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 190.
  26. Trigger, Bruce G. 1969 The Huron: Farmers of the North. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York. 1976 The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
  27. Trigger, Bruce G., L. Yaffe, M. Diksic, J.-L. Galinier, H. Marshall, and James F. Pendergast 1980 Trace-Element Analysis of Iroquoian Pottery. Can- adian Journal of Archaeology 4:199-145.
  28. Walder, Heather 2013 Stylistic and Chemical Investigation of Turquoise- Blue Glass Artifacts from the Contact Era of Wisconsin. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 38:119-142.
  29. Warrick, Gary A. 1988 Estimating Ontario Iroquoian Village Duration. Man in the Northeast 36:21-60. 2008 A Population History of the Huron-Petun, A.D. 500- 1650. Cambridge University Press, New York.
  30. Whittle, Alisdair, Fances Healy, and Alex Bayliss 2011 Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Manning, S. W., Birch, J., Conger, M. A., Dee, M. W., Griggs, C., & Hadden, C. S.
Affiliations
  • Cornell University (US)
  • University of Georgia (US)
  • University of Groningen (NL)
Corresponding author
Manning, Sturt W.
ORCID
Venue
American Antiquity
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2019-10
Volume
84
Issue
4
Pages
684-707
ISSN
  • 0002-7316 (ISSN-L)
  • 2325-5064
DOI
10.1017/aaq.2019.60
OpenAlex
W2979390977
Cited by
30
References
3
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 1
FWCI
4.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • American Antiquity (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
National Science Foundation (1727802)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Archaeological Research and Protection
Keywords
Huron-Wendat, Samuel de Champlain, radiocarbon dating

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review