Abstract

The Eastern St. Lawrence Iroquoians encountered by Jacques Cartier in the sixteenth century were living in a cluster of villages around present day Québec City on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. They have been regarded as a recent expansion from Iroquoian groups living to the south as late as the fifteenth century. This hypothesis has never been confirmed by a detailed analysis and the purpose of this paper is to clarify the time of arrival of this Iroquoian group in the Québec City area. We will therefore present the new data produced by the neutron activation analysis of more than 50 pottery samples dating to the Middle and Late Woodland Period. The results indicate the necessity to revise the current hypothesis and suggest an in situ development for a small Iroquoian-speaking group going back as far as the Middle Woodland period.