But We're Using
New Techniques To Get It Right
Columbus famously reached the Americas in 1492.
Other Europeans had made
the journey before, but the century from then until 1609 marks
the creation
of the modern globalized world.
This period brought extraordinary riches to Europe,
and genocide and disease to indigenous peoples across the Americas.
European expeditions to the Americas
During the century after Christopher Columbus' first landfall
in the Bahamas, many European expeditions followed him across
the Atlantic. Careful records document the dates of these journeys
and when colonies were founded.
Year |
Explorer/Leader |
Sponsoring
Country |
Landing/Colony |
1492 |
Christopher Columbus |
Spain |
Caribbean |
|
|
|
|
1498 |
John Cabot |
Britain |
Newfoundland, Canada |
|
|
|
|
1513 |
Ponce de León |
Spain |
Florida |
|
|
|
|
1519 |
Hernán Cortés
|
Spain |
Veracruz, Mexico |
|
|
|
|
1534-1535 |
Jacques Cartier |
France |
St. Lawrence River Valley,
Canada |
|
|
|
|
1565 |
Pedro Menendez de Aviles
|
Spain |
St. Augustine, Florida |
|
|
|
|
1585 |
Ralph Lane, John White |
Britain |
Roanoke Island, North Carolina |
|
|
|
|
1607 |
Virginia Company of London
|
Britain |
Virginia |
|
|
|
|
1608 |
Samuel de Champlain |
France |
Quebec City, Canada |
|
|
|
|
1614 |
Hendrick Christiaensen |
The Netherlands |
Fort Nassau, New York |
Table: The Conversation Source: Sturt
Manning |
The European settlement dates and personalities
are known from texts
and sometimes illustrations,
to use the failed colony on what was then Virginias Roanoke
Island as an example.
But one thing is missing. What about indigenous
history throughout this traumatic era? Until now, the standard
timeline has derived, inevitably, from the European conquerors,
even when scholars try
to present an indigenous perspective.
This all happened just 400 to 500 years ago
how wrong could the conventional chronology for indigenous settlements
be? Quite wrong, it turns out, based
on radiocarbon dating my collaborators and I have carried
out at a number of Iroquoian sites in Ontario and New York state.
Were challenging existing and rather colonialist
assumptions and mapping out the correct time frames for
when indigenous people were active in these places.
|
Dating Iroquoia project
member Samantha Sanft excavating at White Springs, New York.
Samantha Sanft and Kurt Jordan, CC BY-ND
|
Refining dates based on European
goods
|
16th-century European
copper alloy beads from two sites in the Mohawk Valley.
New York State Museum, CC BY-ND
|
Archaeologists estimate when a given indigenous
settlement was active based on the absence or presence of certain
types of European trade goods, such as metal and glass beads.
It was always approximate, but became the conventional history.
Since the first known commercial
fur trading missions were in the 1580s, archaeologists date
initial regular appearances of scattered European goods to 1580-1600.
They call these two decades Glass Bead Period 1. We know some
trade occurred before that, though, since indigenous people Cartier
met in the 1530s had previously
encountered Europeans, and were ready to trade with him.
Archaeologists set Glass Bead Period 2 from 1600-1630.
During this time, new types of glass beads and finished metal
goods were introduced, and trade was more frequent.
The logic of dating based on the absence or presence
of these goods would make sense if all communities had equal access
to, and desire to have, such items. But these key assumptions
have not been proven.
Thats why the Dating
Iroquoia Project exists. Made up of researchers here at Cornell
University, the University of Georgia and the New York State Museum,
weve used radiocarbon dating and statistical modeling to
date organic materials directly associated with Iroquoian sites
in New
Yorks Mohawk Valley and Ontario
in Canada.
First we looked at two sites in Ontario: Warminster
and Ball. Both are long argued to have had direct connections
with Europeans. For instance, Samuel
de Champlain likely stayed at the Warminster
site in 1615-1616. Archaeologists have found large numbers
of trade goods at both sites.
|
Centuries-old maize
sample, ready to be radiocarbon dated. Eva Wild, CC BY-ND
|
When my colleagues and I examined and radiocarbon
dated plant remains (maize, bean, plum) and a wooden post, the
calendar ages we came up with are entirely consistent with historical
estimates and the glass bead chronology. The three dating methods
agreed, placing Ball circa 1565-1590 and Warminster circa 1590-1620.
However, the picture was quite different at several
other major Iroquois sites that lack such close European connections.
Our radiocarbon tests came up with substantially different date
ranges compared with previous estimates that were based on the
presence or absence of various European goods.
For example, the Jean-Baptiste Lainé, or
Mantle,
site northeast of Toronto is currently the largest and most
complex Iroquoian village excavated in Ontario. Excavated
between 20032005, archaeologists dated the site to 15001530
because it lacks most trade goods and had just three European-source
metal objects. But our radiocarbon dating now places it between
about 1586 and 1623, most likely 1599-1614. That means previous
dates were off the mark by as much as 50 to 100 years.
Other sites belonging to this same ancestral Wendat
community are also more recent than previously assumed. For example,
a site called Draper was conventionally dated to the second half
of the 1400s, but radiocarbon dating places it at least 50 years
later, between 1521 and 1557. Several other Ontario Iroquoian
sites lacking large trade good assemblages vary by several
decades to around 50 years or so from conventional dates based
on our work.
|
Sturt Manning examining
a sample in the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory. Chris Kitchen/Cornell
University, CC BY-ND
|
My colleagues and I have also investigated a number
of sites in the Mohawk Valley, in New York state. During the 16th
and early 17th centuries, the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers formed
a key transport route from the Atlantic coast inland for Europeans
and their trade goods. Again, we found that radiocarbon dating
casts
doubt on the conventional time frame attributed to a number
of sites in the area.
Biases that led to misguided timelines
Why was some of the previous chronology wrong?
|
Dating Iroquoia Project
member Megan Conger excavating at White Springs, New York.
Some locations have been under-explored, so far, by archaeologists.
Megan Conger, Kurt Jordan, CC BY-ND
|
The answer seems to be that scholars viewed the
topic through a pervasive colonial lens. Researchers mistakenly
assumed that trade goods were equally available, and desired,
all over the region, and considered all indigenous groups as the
same.
To
the contrary, it was Wendat custom, for example, that the
lineage whose members first
discovered a trade route claimed rights to it. Such ownership
could
be a source of power and status. Thus it would make sense
to see uneven distributions of certain trade goods, as mediated
by the controlling groups. Some people were in, with
access, and others may have been out.
Ethnohistoric records indicate cases of indigenous
groups rejecting contact with Europeans and their goods. For example,
Jesuit missionaries described an entire
village no longer using French kettles because the foreigners
and their goods were blamed for disease.
There are other reasons European goods do or do
not show up in the archaeological record. How near or far a place
was from transport routes, and local politics, both within and
between groups, could play a role. Whether Europeans made direct
contact, or there were only indirect links, could affect availability.
Objects used and kept in settlements could also vary from those
intentionally buried in cemeteries.
Above all, the majority of sites are only partly
investigated at best, some are as yet unknown. And sadly the archaeological
record is affected by the looting and destruction of sites.
Only a direct dating approach removes the Eurocentric
and historical lens, allowing an independent time frame for sites
and past narratives.
Effects of re-dating indigenous history
Apart from changing the dates for textbooks and
museum displays, the re-dating of a number of Iroquoian sites
raises major questions about the social, political and economic
history of indigenous communities.
For example, conventionally, researchers place the
start of a shift to larger and fortified communities, and evidence
of increased conflict, in the mid-15th century.
However, our radiocarbon dates find that some of
the key sites are from a century later, dating from the mid-16th
to start of the 17th centuries. The timing raises questions of
whether and how early contacts with Europeans did or did not play
a role. This period was also during
the peak of whats called the Little Ice Age, perhaps
indicating the changes in indigenous settlements have some association
with climate challenge.
Our new radiocarbon dates indicate the correct time
frame; they pose, but do not answer, many other remaining questions.
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Sturt
Manning, Director of the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory and
Professor of Classical Archaeology, Cornell
University
This article is republished from The
Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original
article.