As a volume on spatial archaeology, a topic becoming increasingly diverse and complex, it is important to situate our focus and define our goals at the outset. We use the termspatial archaeologyhere to broadly encompass any archaeological research into the geographic patterning of past human behavior at any scale and explanations for those patterns. Given this definition, the roots of spatial archaeology are as deep as the field itself. Some of the earliest modern archaeological research in the Americas, conducted by such notables as Cyrus Thomas, A. V. Kidder, and Gordon Willey, investigated settlement patterns and placement of...

The routines of daily life are at the core of all human experience, past and present. Society is shaped and culture formed through the minute-to-minute actions, activities, and experiences of individual people interacting with each other and their surroundings. However, too often archaeological analysis, hampered by the realities of the archaeological record that represents the accumulation of countless such moments, neglects the daily scale of past human life to reach broader, more abstract conclusions. Analysis of archaeological materials at the scale of daily life provides an opportunity to consider the variability in lived experience, which was the everyday reality of...

This chapter examines the changing nature of Ontario Iroquoian village spatial organization between the tenth and fifteenth centuries AD. My interest is to summarize broad trends in the development of village space—especially in settlement scale, density, and layout—using a large sample of extensively exposed settlements (twenty sites, forty-three occupation phases [table 2.1]). I also consider the implications of these trends for theories of Iroquoian sociopolitical change. Developments in village layouts could have mitigated scale-and density-dependent social interaction stress (Bandy and Fox 2010; Feinman 2011; Fletcher 1995) by encouraging sequential (Johnson 1982) or “bottom-up” decision-making heterarchies (Crumley 2005; Ehrenreich,...

Iroquoian settlement studies have shifted away from normative views of similar large villages moving across the landscape to pay greater attention to the diversity of site types present. Large villages, hamlets, camps, and a multitude of special purpose sites have been identified. Although large village sites are the most understood settlements, smaller sites have also been investigated (Bursey 2004; Cowan 1999, 2003; Jordan 2013; Perrelli 2009; Rieth 2008). Studies at large and small settlements have highlighted the range of economic activities carried out by Iroquoians and the ways Iroquoian populations responded to challenges in the political, social, and physical environment...

The research presented here is one aspect of a collaborative project aimed at understanding the historical development of ancestral Wendat (Huron) communities through reconstructions of site relocation sequences on the north shore of Lake Ontario (ASI 2014; Birch 2012a; Birch and Williamson 2013; Williamson 2012). An important part of this work has been the recognition that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries AD, Iroquoian settlements in south-central Ontario coalesced, coming together into a small number of large, widely spaced village aggregates (cf. Birch 2012a; Birch and Williamson 2013; Trigger 1985: 95; Warrick 2000: 447–49). This chapter is...

Previous Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) landscape research (Allen 1996; Hasenstab 1996a; Jones 2006, 2010a) has tested a series of factors that potentially influenced settlement location decisions for communities during the two centuries prior to contact with Europeans and the first century of colonial interactions. This diverse set of environmental and cultural factors is by no means exhaustive, however. In addition, no one has yet explored variability in settlement location choices among the Haudenosaunee Nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—or the impact of colonialism on settlement location choices.

These prior projects identified several important factors, such as highquality agricultural land...

In the past, studies of biological characteristics of Northern Iroquoians were geographically restricted: Ontario Iroquoian remains and New York Iroquoian remains were not studied together by the same researchers in the same projects. This approach appears rooted in observed cultural differences in the archaeological record and in the ethnohistory. Clearly, to ignore the archaeological evidence of these differences and the firsthand statements made by Iroquoian peoples in the historic period regarding their own understandings of these differences would be imprudent in most cases (Trigger 1985). This is especially true when examining the period shortly before the arrival of Europeans because...

Pottery is one of the most abundant artifact categories recovered from Northern Iroquoian archaeological village sites dating prior to the widespread adoption of European technologies. As a result, it receives a great deal of attention from archaeologists. Of particular note on sites dating after ca. AD 1300 is the presence of pots with collars and collarless pots with wedges (broad, flat lips). These platforms were used by Iroquoian potters for the creation of often very intricate designs generally composed of straight incised or stamped lines. While we do not know the meanings of these designs, we can deduce that they...

What began as an exploration of Iroquoian research undertaken by American and Canadian archaeologists at a 2011 Society for American Archaeology conference session, with the objective of encouraging communication across the border, has evolved into a volume focused on the contributions made by Northern Iroquoian studies in settlement and spatial studies in archaeology. This shift has not been merely fortuitous; Northern Iroquoia is almost uniquely well suited to this line of archaeological research.

The papers in both the session and this volume ranged from detailed contextual analyses of objects and their designs as experienced by Iroquoians interacting with their environment...