Huronia's Past
Posted by Bill Molesworth
Jamie Hunter, as part of an ongoing effort to educate the membership about local history, invited Dean Knight as a guest speaker. An old friend and colleague, Dean graduated from U of T with a PhD in 1976. His primary work has been to excavate the Ball Site near Orillia.
Dean said he had spent 25 years working on this site. Fortunately, he has been able to use it as a field school so he has had some help and lots of potential archeologists have been able to get some practical experience.
He discovered the site that covers about 9 acres and was inhabited from 1590 to 1610, approx. There is some evidence that Champlain spent the winter of 1615 at a nearby village and he would llike to investigate that link more.
The owner of the land has it in corn, which is another link, as corn was the primary crop of the Hurons. He has been very co-operative, but certainly did not expect the dig would last as long as it did. He has, every year, stripped the topsoil from an area and stored it while the crew investigated and then he replaced it and replanted.
The site is on the crest of a ridge, near water and must have been successful as it expanded at least once.
The palisades and the longhouse supports were all made from trees, and of course they would need firewood, so the surrounding area would have been denuded, which would have been good for corn - sandy soil and no shade.
The dig has been mostly the discovery of a presence of absence; where the posts were is marked by different coloured soil - the rotted logs. There were 13,000 posts in the pallisade and hundreds more in the houses.
There are 47 structures, most are longhouses but some are almost square and might have been storehouses. Most were built close together and some even overlap, but there were empty spaces as well and it is not really known why.
Garbage pits and storage pits were both located inside the houses and there are even 14 graves. This, combined with no discernable outhouse facilities, indicates there may have been a tendency for villages to become unsavoury, which may explain why the residents moved every 15 - 20 years. Over 2,000 people lived there.
The graves had been studied, with the permission of first nations people and the remains have been reburied on the edge of the site.
The palisades were different than our image of log forts - a single wall of logs tied together. They were built in rows of overlapping logs that presented a tangle to man and beast and they didn't have a gate per se, but required more a wiggle through.
Between the in house pits and the garbage middens, the researchers have been able to find pieces of pottery, some metal tools that must have come from the French, some beads and trade materials, and some things they haven't explained yet, like the 400 round discs.
Dean explained that it was important to discover and record these sites before modern society disrupted them. He said there were many such sites in Simcoe, but that a new subdivision could easily be dumped on top of them and they'd be gone forever. We need to know more about, and appreciate, our predecessors.
Terry thanked Dean on behalf of the Club for sharing his expertise and enthusiasm.
He discovered the site that covers about 9 acres and was inhabited from 1590 to 1610, approx. There is some evidence that Champlain spent the winter of 1615 at a nearby village and he would llike to investigate that link more.
The owner of the land has it in corn, which is another link, as corn was the primary crop of the Hurons. He has been very co-operative, but certainly did not expect the dig would last as long as it did. He has, every year, stripped the topsoil from an area and stored it while the crew investigated and then he replaced it and replanted.
The site is on the crest of a ridge, near water and must have been successful as it expanded at least once.
The palisades and the longhouse supports were all made from trees, and of course they would need firewood, so the surrounding area would have been denuded, which would have been good for corn - sandy soil and no shade.
The dig has been mostly the discovery of a presence of absence; where the posts were is marked by different coloured soil - the rotted logs. There were 13,000 posts in the pallisade and hundreds more in the houses.
There are 47 structures, most are longhouses but some are almost square and might have been storehouses. Most were built close together and some even overlap, but there were empty spaces as well and it is not really known why.
Garbage pits and storage pits were both located inside the houses and there are even 14 graves. This, combined with no discernable outhouse facilities, indicates there may have been a tendency for villages to become unsavoury, which may explain why the residents moved every 15 - 20 years. Over 2,000 people lived there.
The graves had been studied, with the permission of first nations people and the remains have been reburied on the edge of the site.
The palisades were different than our image of log forts - a single wall of logs tied together. They were built in rows of overlapping logs that presented a tangle to man and beast and they didn't have a gate per se, but required more a wiggle through.
Between the in house pits and the garbage middens, the researchers have been able to find pieces of pottery, some metal tools that must have come from the French, some beads and trade materials, and some things they haven't explained yet, like the 400 round discs.
Dean explained that it was important to discover and record these sites before modern society disrupted them. He said there were many such sites in Simcoe, but that a new subdivision could easily be dumped on top of them and they'd be gone forever. We need to know more about, and appreciate, our predecessors.
Terry thanked Dean on behalf of the Club for sharing his expertise and enthusiasm.