Abstract

Analyses of the soils, a pollen core, the geomorphology and the microstratigraphy of the Three Pines Site, were integrated to reconstruct some of the natural and cultural processes which have formed this shallow, multi-component site typical of the Canadian Shield. The Three Pines Site is a baymouth bar, created sometime after deglaciation (ca. 10,500 B.P.) and available for human occupation by at least 6400 B.P. Repeated seasonal occupations by Archaic, Initial Woodland, Terminal Woodland, Historical and Modern period groups have left a time series of minute cultural modifications to the landscape. The nature and the relative temporal sequence of these events were identified through the use of a Harris Matrix stratigraphic analysis. This provided a basis for phasing the settlement traces, artifacts and other archaeological sediments into a temporal sequence of occupations. This contextual/stratigraphic approach (cf. Butzer 1982; Harris 1979) involves conceptualizing the archaeological record as a time series of physical deposits, whose form and nature reflect the cumulative total of all events, activities and processes which have operated to create the archaeological site as it exists today. This viewpoint allows for artifacts to be considered within their stratigraphic context, sites in their palaeoenvironmental context and ultimately hunter-gatherer behaviour within the context of the human ecosystem.