Abstract

In the summer of 1990, two overlapping villages at the Tara Site and a third village at the Ireland Site, were completely excavated by the Ministry of Transportation, central Region in the Burlington area just southeast of the well-known Crawford Lake area. Analysis of the ceramic assemblages from these three sites indicates an ethnic affiliation with the Glen Meyer late in the 13th century. In light of these results, the hypothesis of a distinction between Glen Meyer and Pickering in the Early Ontario Iroquoian Period appears supported at the expense of clinal variation. Further implications oft his ethnic affiliation, however, are that the Bennett and Gunby sites, previously assigned to the late Pickering, are instead Uren Substage sites evolved from a Glen Meyer base. This conclusion would seriously undermine the basis of the Conquest Hypothesis . Finally, it can be noted that the presumed boundary between the Neutral and the Southern division Huron, located between the Crawford Lake area and the Credit River in the late prehistoric period, appears to have an ancestry in the early Late Woodland, coincident with the boundary between the Glen Meyer and Pickering.