Excavations at the multi-component Gehl Site in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada resulted in the recovery of more than 50,000 lithic artifacts. During lithic analysis of the site’s assemblage at least one pattern began to emerge focused on one temporal period of Ontario’s past: the documentation of 71 Late Archaic Smallpoint Horizon Expanding Stem projectile points of which 30 are Bases that appear to have “snapped” in the same manner. Included in this Smallpoint Horizon assemblage are 26 impact-damaged Ace of Spades and Innes projectile points (3,500 BP). When combined with the Bases, this group of artifacts supports a retooling hypothesis, one of the largest of such scenarios recorded to date in the Province of Ontario. The recovery of a unique contemporaneous projectile point from Ohio, USA highlights an exciting period in Ontario’s history: a monumental shift was slowly unfolding that would eventually see hunter-gatherer groups transition to a southern-influenced sedentary lifestyle. The introduction of ceramics and cultivated crops from the south would usher in sweeping socio changes and impacts that would help shape and change people’s lives for more than a millenia.

L'Anse aux Meadows (LAM) is likely the first New World (Vinland) occupied by Christian Europeans.  But it is not clear from the various evidence if Norse settlers were Christian or pagan.  9th c AD Missionaries from Central & Western Europe would have us believe, through their written accounts, that converting Viking Age (Medieval) pagans to Christianity was inevitable.

The archaeological record of Birka, Sweden, an 8th-10th c. fortified trade centre and early Missionary station, contains many hundreds of grave goods recovered via funerary archaeology. 

My research into these virtual collections, now curated by the National Museum of Sweden, includes an upcoming period (June 2025) of in-person study. 

I will be studying evidence for pagan and/or Christian stylistic attributes in the Birka grave goods as part of my MUN Master's Program in History (Medieval Studies). Those material culture attributes, I contend, reflect an evolving degree of Christian and pagan ideologies.

Collections from LAM (Vinland) and from various 9th & 10th c Icelandic farm sites where the author has conducted field work, will be used as a comparative data base with the Birka funerary collections. That data will be compared with the primary documentary accounts compiled by various Missionaries