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Shark remains are common in coastal archaeological sites in southern Brazil. Here we present an analysis of microwear visible on shark teeth found at the Rio do Meio site in Florianópolis, Brazil. It demonstrates that hafted shark teeth were used to work soft materials such as leather, as well as semihard materials such as wood and bone, whereas others probably functioned as arrowheads. The results also show a possible preference for tiger shark teeth use for woodworking. The identified technical motions include piercing, cutting, and scraping, as well as scaling and sawing. These findings allow us to question the common interpretation of shark teeth use as ornaments and as having symbolic value. Instead, shark teeth seem to have been used as tools and weapons in daily life.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a project initiated by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawa:ke and the Groupe de recherche ArchéoSociale/ArchéoScience (Université de Montréal) to create a database of archaeological sites in Quebec that included Indigenous human remains. This document will be a useful tool for the repatriation/rematriation process. Using existing inventories, the database collated various data points for each site, such as the Borden code, location, date, minimal number of individuals (MNI), location of remains, reports, etc. Three site categories were identified: 1) those describing the discovery of human remains associated with Indigenous people (103 sites); 2) those with­out skeletal remains despite mentioning the presence of burial(s) (8 sites); and 3) those not reporting any information (81 sites). From these sites, information on more than 678 individuals have been collected so far. Site mapping has allowed the visualization of site distribution spatially and through time. Further research is needed to clarify the cultural affiliation and the storage location of these human remains.

The Quackenbush site (BdGm-l) is located in what is now Ontario, at the northeastern limit of the area known to have been occupied by the Huron-Wendat pre-dispersal and visited by the Anishinaabeg of the Canadian Shield. Excavations of portions of the site half a century ago uncovered parts of three longhouses and midden deposits. We generated the data presented here as part of a larger scholarly effort aimed at analyzing and writing up all of the material culture from the site. We investigate ways in which faunal remains can be used to inform on the nature of the activities conducted at the site and to trace past interactions between the site’s occupants and people living on the Canadian Shield and in the St. Lawrence Valley at that time, finding tentative evidence for the former and more conclusive evidence for the latter. We hypothesize that people originating from the St. Lawrence Valley were present at the Quackenbush site and making bone artifacts as a way of maintaining or negotiating identity.

The study presented in this chapter uses archaeological and ethnohistorical data to discuss the role of black bears (Ursus americanus) among Pre-Contact Iroquoian societies from Northeastern North America. This role is proving to be complex and multifaceted, and the analysis of the archaeological and ethnohistorical records provide contradictory conclusions. According to the ethnohistorical documents considered in this study, black bear appears to be predominantly mentioned in subsistence and hunting contexts. In contrast, bones from black bear have been identified in a majority of Iroquoian faunal assemblages, but always in small numbers, indicating a ubiquitous, yet minor role for black bear in Pre-Contact Iroquoian foodways. Moreover, ethnonyms, myths, and legends also suggest that the symbolic and identity dimensions of black bear outweighed their economic role. The results of the ZooMS analysis of a set of Iroquoian bone projectile points is especially revealing in this respect.

Tattoos can be conceptualized as embodied experiences, ideas, and meanings expressed by groups and individuals. In Northeastern North America, many Iroquoian nations from the Contact period were known for practicing body transformations of this sort. Moreover, the archaeological literature abounds with cases of Iroquoian bone objects interpreted as tattooing implements. However, such functional interpretations are often proposed without any clear and thorough demonstration, and thus may be misleading. This paper presents the conclusive results of an experimental microwear analysis of replicated bone tattooing needles. They allow to access and investigate the social dimensions of tattooing practices in the past, as is illustrated with an example from St. Lawrence Iroquoians.

Climatic change that occurred during the Holocene is often recognized as the main factor for explaining fire dynamics, while the influence of human societies is less apparent. In eastern North America, human influence on fire regime before European settlement has been debated, mainly because of a paucity of sites and paleoecological techniques that can distinguish human influences unequivocally from climate. We applied a multiproxy analysis to a 12 000-year-old paleoecological sequence from a site in the vicinity of known settlement areas that were occupied over more than 7000 years. From this analysis, we were able detect the human influence on the fire regime before and after European colonization. Fire occurrence and fire return intervals (FRI) were based on analysis of sedimentary charcoals at a high temporal and spatial resolution. Fire occurrence was then compared to vegetation that was reconstructed from pollen analysis, from population densities deduced from archeological site dating, from demographic and technological models, and from climate reconstructed using general circulation models and ice-core isotopes. Holocene mean FRI was short (164 ± 134 years) and associated with small charcoal peaks that were likely indicative of surface fires affecting small areas. After 1500 BP, large vegetation changes and human demographic growth that was demonstrated through increased settlement evidence likely caused the observed FRI lengthening (301 ± 201 years), which occurred without significant changes in climate. Permanent settlement by Europeans in the area around 1800 AD was followed by a substantial demographic increase, leading to the establishment of Gatineau, Hull and Ottawa. This trend was accompanied by a shift in the charcoal record toward anthropogenic particles that were reflective of fossil fuel burning and an apparent absence of wood charcoal that would be indicative of complete fire suppression. An anthropogenic fire regime that was characterized by severe and large fires and long fire-return intervals occurred more than 1000 years ago, concomitant with the spread of native agriculture, which intensified with European colonization over the past two centuries.

Today, practical, functional and symbolic choices inform the selection of raw materials for worked objects. In cases where we can discern the origin of worked bone, tooth, ivory and antler objects in the past, we assume that similar choices are being made. However, morphological species identification of worked objects is often impossible due to the loss of identifying characteristics during manufacture. Here, we describe a novel non-destructive ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) method which was applied to bone points from Pre-Contact St. Lawrence Iroquoian village sites in southern Quebec, Canada. The traditional ZooMS technique requires destructive analysis of a sample, which can be problematic when dealing with artefacts. Here we instead extracted proteins from the plastic bags in which the points had been stored. ZooMS analysis revealed hitherto unexpected species, notably black bear (Ursus americanus) and human (Homo sapiens sapiens), used in point manufacture. These surprising results (confirmed through genomic sequencing) highlight the importance of advancing biomolecular research in artefact studies. Furthermore, they unexpectedly and exceptionally allow us to identify and explore the tangible, material traces of the symbolic relationship between bears and humans, central to past and present Iroquoian cosmology and mythology.

Shark teeth are common artefacts found in numerous archaeological contexts in several places in the world. This paper presents the results of the first experimental and microwear analyses realized on this material. Fourteen experiments were undertaken to create a variety of microwear types on shark teeth. The experiments included scraping, sawing and barking green wood, scraping and cutting fresh and dry bone, piercing and cutting fresh skin, hide and leather, as well as cutting and scaling fish, and, finally, the use of shark teeth as arrowheads. The methods for each experiment and the resulting microwear analyses are presented here, along with some first-hand observations on the experimental use of shark teeth as tools.

It has long been believed that maize ( Zea mays spp. mays ) was introduced in Quebec at around A.D. 1000, at the very beginning of the Late Woodland period. The identification and dating of maize phytoliths extracted from the carbonized encrustations on the interior surfaces of Native American ceramic vessels from three sites located in the St. Lawrence River valley, namely the Hector-Trudel, Station-4, and Place-Royale sites, indicate that this cultigen was rather introduced in that area during the Early Middle Woodland period, ca. 400 to 200 B.C. These sites provide the northernmost and possibly the oldest evidence of maize consumption in northeastern North America. More samples of maize phytoliths from the same two sites were dated to the late Middle Woodland period, between A.D. 600 and 800, suggesting an increase in the ubiquity and importance of this new crop in the subsistence strategies. Moreover, the identification of an unknown variety of maize points toward the possibility that a new local variety of maize appeared during the process. This process might have been accompanied by a more intensive and complementary collecting of wild rice. Finally, the results support the hypothesis of an in situ origin of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. L’introduction du mais ( Zea mays ) dans l’alimentation des populations amerindiennes du Quebec meridional est tradition nellement situee vers l’an 1000 de notre ere, au debut du Sylvicole superieur. L’identification et la datation de phytolithes de mais extraits des croutes carbonisees de vases en ceramique amerindiens provenant des sites de Pointe-du-Buisson et de PlaceRoyale, dans la vallee du Saint-Laurent, montrent que ce cultigene y fut plutot introduit au cours de la periode du Sylvicole moyen ancien, il y a 400 a 200 ans avant notre ere. Ces donnees representent les evidences de consommation de mais les plus septentrionales et potentiellement les plus anciennes dans le Nord-Est americain. Plusieurs autres echantillons de phytolithes de mais datent pour leur part de la periode du Sylvicole moyen tardif, entre 600 et 800 ans de notre ere. L’identification d’une variete de mais inconnue des banques de donnees utilisees laisse croire qu’il pourrait s’agir d’une variete locale s’etant deve loppee au cours du processus d’adoption du mais, un processus qui semble s’etre accompagne de la collecte plus intensive de riz sauvage (Zizania aquatica or Z. palustris). Finalement, ces donnees appuient l’hypothese d’un developpement sur place des Iroquoiens du Saint-Laurent au moins depuis le Sylvicole moyen ancien.

Social network analyses show St. Lawrence Iroquoians as brokers between nascent Iroquois and Huron confederacies before A.D. 1500., The dispersal of Iroquoian groups from St. Lawrence River valley during the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. has been a source of archaeological inquiry for decades. Social network analysis presented here indicates that sites from Jefferson County, New York at the head of the St. Lawrence River controlled interactions within regional social signaling networks during the 15th century A.D. Measures indicate that Jefferson County sites were in brokerage liaison positions between sites in New York and Ontario. In the network for the subsequent century, to which no Jefferson County sites are assigned, no single group took the place of Jefferson County in controlling network flow. The dispersal of Jefferson County populations effectively ended this brokerage function concomitant with the emergence of the nascent Huron-Wendat and Iroquois confederacies and may have contributed to the escalation of conflict between these entities. These results add to a growing literature on the use of network analyses with archaeological data and contribute new insights into processes of population relocation and geopolitical realignment, as well as the role of borderlands and frontiers in nonstate societies.

Bone tools are abundant on Iroquoian sites and are generally analyzed using a typo-functional perspective. This article will serve as a demonstration of a demonstration of the utility of bone tools to study the household and social organization of St. Lawrence Iroquoians through intra- and inter-household spatial analyses.

Les objets en os sont abondants sur les sites iroquoiens et sont généralement analysés dans une perspective typo-fonctionnelle. Cet article montre l'apport des objets en os à l’étude des maisonnées et de l’organisation sociale des Iroquoiens du Saint-Laurent par le biais d’analyses spatiales intra et intermaisonnées.