Contributed Papers

Session Hosting Format: 
in-person session
Date/Heure: 
Jeudi, mai 1, 2025 - 1:00pm
(NDT)
Room: 
Queen's College 4001
Organizer(s): 
  • Sarah Ingram
Contact Email: 
singram@crmgroup.ca
Session Description (300 word max): 

Contributed papers.

Présentations
01:00 PM: Modelling Artifact Surface Visibility in the Ploughzone
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Andrew Riddle - ASI (Archaeological Services, Inc.)

Most lands subjected to archaeological assessment in Ontario have been intensively cultivated for a century or more. The visibility of artifacts on the ploughzone surface is the primary factor influencing site identification in this context, but the relationship between surface artifact samples and the underlying ploughzone assemblage is poorly understood. This paper reviews relevant research on the surface-ploughzone relationship and outlines a framework for predicting artifact distributions in the ploughzone based on surface scatters. I argue that the stochastic nature of soil mixing in the ploughzone provides a reliable and predictable pattern of surface representation influenced primarily by artifact size and soil depth. These insights can usefully inform Cultural Resource Management project design and scoping exercises when planning site assessments in ploughed field contexts.
01:20 PM: A Late Archaic Smallpoint Horizon Conundrum
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Douglas Todd - Archaeological Services Inc.

 

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.
01:40 PM: An Analysis of Cross-Border Methods and Regulatory Frameworks in the Peace Region
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Alexandra Burchill - Archaeological Survey
  • Jennifer Gainer

CRM based assessment strategies and regulatory requirements vary from one Province to another. But what happens when an ecoregion spans two Provinces with different assessment strategies across both sides of the border? This paper examines the site returns in the Upper Peace region of northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia. This will be achieved through a deep dive into how the different CRM based assessment strategies and regulations have impacted what we currently know about the culture history of the Upper Peace. Through highlighting the differences in site returns as a result of the assessment strategies, we hope to show how an increase in collaboration between archaeologists working in different jurisdictions will have a positive impact on site returns and increase the knowledge of the cultural history on both sides of the border.

02:00 PM: Christianization of 9th c. Viking Age pagans in the Baltic regions - material culture correlates.
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Kevin McAleese - The Rooms Provincial Museum

 

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
02:20 PM: The many faces of the Matthew Elliott Site
Format de présentation : In-Person
Auteur-e(s) :
  • Sarah Ingram - CRM Group

Registered archaeological site AaHs-11, located in Amherstburg, Ontario has been the subject of numerous archaeological studies, dating back to 1969. Excavation has occurred through field schools, salvage archaeology, and most recently, cultural resource management for potential redevelopment of the property. Since then, the “Matthew Elliott Site” archaeological methods and interpretation have predominantly focused on the Euro-Canadian aspects of the property and the colonial activities associated with the landowner, Matthew Elliott. However, this has greatly underrepresented the complex nature of AaHs-11. The site not only has had a long history of Indigenous presence, dating as early as the Late Archaic, but also contains within its assemblage evidence of the population once enslaved on the property. We are working to refocus the Euro-Canadian-centric viewpoint of the interpretation and study and highlight the presence of underrepresented groups in the history and archaeology of the site and focus on the many faces that created the assemblage.