Hamilton Chapter - Demographic Disasters and Their Consequences: Revisiting Shell-Tempering Pottery at Neutral Iroquoian Sites

Speaker: Daniel Ionico, MA Candidate, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University

Topic: Demographic Disasters and Their Consequences: Revisiting Shell-Tempering Pottery at Neutral Iroquoian Sites

European contact with Northern Iroquoian communities brought about a series of direct and indirect consequences. These involved European-disease epidemics and a series of migrations that moved people across the landscape as refugees, captives, or conquerors. Taking a learning framework approach, I will revisit the peculiar emergence of shell-tempering practices at one site cluster in the late pre-contact and post-contact (A.D. 1580-1650) Neutral Iroquoian Confederacy. In particular, I focus on the extant Christianson and Hamilton Site pottery collections that represent before and after sequences for a series of demographic shifts in the region. This study explores the use of ceramic petrography and multi-attribute approaches as a way for Iroquoian archaeologists to understand the impacts these demographic upheavals can have on local technological systems.