Early Palisaded Villages in Southwestern Ontario

Abstract

Abstract We review the initiation of palisade enclosed village communities in central southwestern Ontario, using data from a series of related early Late Woodland sites that we interpret as showing an east to west settlement sequence. New AMS dates based on samples of carbonized maize provide a revised chronology for the origin of village life, which began in the twelfth century. We show how villages developed alongside community pattern and ceramic attribute trends into the fourteenth-century middle Late Woodland period. A suite of dates from the most westerly site in the sequence on the Norfolk sand plain document the timing of an abrupt change in community pattern during the late fourteenth century.