By Julian Smith |
When European explorers and missionaries began arriving in the Great Lakes region in the sixteenth century, they found groups including the Huron (also known as the Wendat) and Iroquois (also known as the Haudenosaunee) living across what is now southern Ontario and Quebec, Canada, and upper New York State. The encounters marked a time of great change for the native cultures of this region, known as Iroquoia.
For decades, archaeologists have tried to unravel this complex timeline of cultural interaction, which included the introduction of European trade goods to native villages that relocated frequently and often fought with each other. Recently, the Dating Iroquoia Project, led by Jennifer Birch of the University of Georgia and Sturt Manning of Cornell University, has revealed that the accepted chronology was off by as much as a century in places. This carries significant implications for the understanding of history in the region, Birch said. “We’re really digging into the centuries around contact in ways that help us better understand how indigenous people are responding to these profound changes.”
Cornell PhD student Annapaola Passerini using an increment corer to take a tree-ring sample on an eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) during a fieldtrip for the Cornell Introduction to Dendrochronology course led by Sturt Manning. Tree ring chronologies built up through such fieldwork by Cornell researchers and students provide some of basis to dendrochronological dating in the region. | Credit: Cornell University