So where do all the artefacts go?

Current Provincial legislation requires I believe that all artefacts recovered from archaeological sites in Ontario be “held in trust for the people of Ontario”.

It soon becomes obvious from reading the reports submitted to the Provincial Museum (now the ROM) that that was not the policy in the late 19th or early 20th century.

In review of the data currently available to me while investigating sites within our cluster search areas it is clear that many of these items were left in the hands of the landowner to do with as they wished, kept by the archaeologist for further evaluation or to add to their personal collections or sent to a museum for curation.

Old Barrie Rd cluster

As we move further west from Orillia we come across a cluster of 6 archaeological sites just north of the Old Barrie Rd close to the baseline between Orillia and Oro Township. This cluster includes 4 sites that some have dated to the historic period, 1 site dated

Orillia/Mt Slaven cluster probably not what we are looking for.

As noted in an earlier comment, Marg and I toured the Orillia cluster sites and I have gone over the data available to me about the sites that I am aware of. There would appear to be only one site that is described as a large village within the cluster (Calverley site on the east 1/2 of lot 6 Con 4) up near the Orchard Pk school. This site however is dated by Gary Warrick (Thesis 1990) to be in existence from 1640 - 1647 and perhaps the site of the St. Jean Baptist mission of that time. As such it does not meet the dating period for the 1610 site of the Brule/Iroquet site. While the Mt Slaven sites noted in the reports by A. Hunter and H. Hammond (c1904) near Mt Slaven creek (Mt Slaven school/Mary St area) show potential for winter camps and the numerous burials found appear to be of both Huron and Algonquin origin, without a major Huron village dating to the right time period the Orillia cluster would not appear to be the one we are looking for.
Unless and until further data is forthcoming that would alter these finds I am recommending to the chapter that we drop this cluster from our search area and move on to further investigation of one of the six remaining clusters.

Mount Slaven discussed in newspaper article

http://www.mail-archive.com/frostysamerindian@yahoogroups.com/msg03549.html
Another newspaper article FYI

next Chapter meeting April 8 - Dr. Martha Latta presentation

Dr. Martha Latta recently retired from the University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology,  will be presenting a discussion on the Huron sites and the collections housed at the University of Toronto on Thursday April  8 , 2010 at 7 pm at  the Huronia Museum, Little Lake Road Midland. This is being sponsored by the Huronia Chapter and the Huronia Museum.

Dr Latta is no stranger to the archaeology of Huronia having spent many field seasons  at the Auger site, Robitaille site, Thompson/Walker site, Beeton site  and other sites. Dr. Latta has carried out extensive research  into many aspects of Huron prehistory including settlement patterns, ceramic studies,  copper-based artifacts studies and gender studies all pertaining to the Huron/Ouendat cultural developments of the past 900 years. It should prove to be a very interesting presentation and the public is invited to attend.

Maps, Maps, Maps

Jamie Hunter was digging around in both his own library and that of the Huronia Museum (available for use by researchers) and refound these two excellent works, both of which deal with maps from the Champlain era:

Cartographica: Explorations and Mapping, of Samuel de Champlaion 1603-1632 by C. E. Heidenreich. Monograph No. 17 / 1976. Univ. of Toronto Press.  ISBN 0-919870-17-1  ISSN 0317-7173

Early Printed Maps of Canada 1540-1703 by Kenneth A. Kershaw. Kershaw Publishing, 1993. ISBN 0-9697184-0-3  pp 311 with index

Archaeology in the News

some recent newspaper articles of interest

http://www.orilliapacket.com/PrintArticle.aspx?e=1736486

http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/PrintArticle.aspx?e=2494205

Filtering results in 7 distinct clusters

When the Ahrendarrhonon territory map was first considered we were looking at a potential of 260 archaeological sites that were situated within Oro-Medonte, Severn township and the City of Orillia. By first defining our search area to sites that were east of the Coldwater River and west of Lake Simcoe and Couchiching the number of candidate sites dropped to just under 200. When we apply a filtering based on size and dating the number drops to under 60.

Filtering the database shows results in mapping.

Subsequent to our meeting of March 11th I have applied some filtering to the database used to create the map that was put forward as part of the presentation on the Ahrendarrhonon territory.

March 11 Chapter meeting agenda

Ontario Archaelogical Society Huronia Chapter meeting agenda

March 11, 2010 Thursday

7:00 PM

At the Huronia Museum