The Kassel and Blue Dart Sites: Two Components of the Early Archaic, Bifurcate Base Projectile Point Tradition, Waterloo County, Ontario
Volume: OA56
Year: 1993
Author: LENNOX, PAUL A.
Page Range: 1 - 31
Abstract: Archaeological mitigation, undertaken by the Ministry of Transportation in advance of highway construction, resulted in the excavation of two Early Archaic sites. Both are components of the Bifurcate Base Tradition which is recognized over much of eastern North America because of the highly distinctive point style after which it is named. This article describes our investigations and our findings at the Kassel site, a base camp, and the nearby Blue Dart site, a short term, special purpose activity area, likely a kill site or butchering station. These single component sites furnish the first excavated assemblages of this Archaic manifestation from Ontario and, along with an acceptable radiocarbon date of 8320 ± 60 B.P., help to establish both the presence and form of the Bifurcate Base Tradition north of the Great Lakes. These sites may also be considered good examples of site types that have much broader implications. Kill sites and base camps represent universal settlement-subsistence adaptations among hunter-gatherers. Both sites, being small and yielding low artifact densities, furnish a new perspective on the elusiveness of such Archaic, and more specifically Early Archaic, components in the Great Lakes region. These examples raise questions about some basic assumptions concerning our evaluation of sites for further investigation based on their artifact densities alone.

The Norton Site (AfHh-86): The Rediscovery of a Late Iroquoian Village in London, Ontario
Volume: OA56
Year: 1993
Author: COOPER, MARTIN S. and DAVID A. ROBERTSON
Page Range: 33 - 62
Abstract: The Norton site (AfHh-86) is a large Late Ontario Iroquoian village site located in a public park, overlooking the Thames River in London, Ontario. Portions of nine closely spaced and regularly aligned longhouses were recorded in 1988, during excavations conducted by Archaeological Services Inc. within a 100m long utilities right-of-way that crossed the site. While artifactual finds were relatively few, they suggest that the site was occupied between A.D. 1400 and 1450. As the village had been unknown to researchers for half-a-century, the Norton site is of considerable importance for the reconstruction of the late prehistoric settlement sequence of southwestern Ontario.