The Draper Site
William D. Finlayson
London Museum of Archaeology
The Draper archaeological
site is the site of a large Huron village that was occupied at approximately
A .D .1500 (click here to see an artist's reconstruction
of the Draper Site). Four hundred and seventy years later, the site was
threatened by the proposed construction of the new Toronto International
Airport at Pickering, Ontario. This prompted the Archaeological Survey
of Canada, National Museum of Man, to organize an archaeological excavation
to investigate the site, before it would be destroyed by the construction
of the proposed airport. The excavations were financed by Transport Canada
and the Archaeological Survey of Canada, National Museum of Man, National
Museums of Canada.
The Huron Indians were a confederacy of tribes who spoke an Iroquoian
language. They lived in south-central Ontario from approximately A.D. 1400
until A.D. 1649, at which date they were defeated by some of the Iroquoian
tribes who lived south of Lake Ontario. The history of their ancestors,
the Middleport and Pickering peoples, can be traced back to approximately
A.D. 700. Our knowledge of the Huron is based on archaeological excavations
and on reports written by missionaries and explorers who visited the Huron
in the seventeenth century.
The Huron lived in semipermanent villages that were composed of a number
of longhouses. The longhouses were made from a framework of poles covered
with elm or cedar bark and were generally 20 to 25 feet wide, ranging in
length from 40 to 250 feet, and probably 15 to 25 feet in height. Within
the houses there was a central corridor and, along each wall, platforms
about 5 feet wide. Along the corridor, at approximately 20-foot intervals,
were hearths, each of which was shared by two families. Each family occupied
the platform and the adjacent space on one side of the house. Thus, the
length of the house was determined by the number of families occupying
it.
The number of houses in a village varied, but would generally be from
ten to twenty. The villages, with populations estimated at 500 to 1,000
individuals, usually covered two to five acres, often surrounded by a stockade.
The stockade was constructed of one to three rows of poles, probably 20
to 30 feet high, placed in the ground at approximately one-foot intervals.
The space between the poles was interwoven with bark and branches and thus
formed an effective protection against attack by other Iroquoian peoples
with whom the Huron were at war.
The Huron were agriculturalists whose diet was based primarily on corn,
beans and squash. These crops were grown in fields surrounding the village.
The diet was supplemented by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of a variety
of wild plant foods.
One characteristic of the Huron was that they moved their villages every
ten to twenty-five years. The reason for these moves is uncertain, although
it may have involved the depletion of soil fertility or the firewood resources
in the vicinity of the village. Since each village is a time capsule providing
data about the way of life of the occupants over a relatively short period
of time, the sites are valuable for archaeological investigation.
The Draper village (it is named after the family who owned the farm
on which the site is located) is considered to be important because it
was a relatively large village, covering an estimated eight acres. It is
also unusual in that most of it had never been disturbed by ploughing.
As it was scheduled to be destroyed in the spring of 1976, the 1975
excavations at the Draper site were aimed at exploring the entire village.
For six months a crew of from ten to sixty students worked at the site.
The excavation had several purposes, such as: (1) to determine the nature
of the village, including the size and location of houses and palisades
and the number of people who lived there; and (2) to determine the diet
of the Huron people who occupied the site.
Since only a limited amount of time was available, a new series of techniques
of excavation was developed that involved the use of power equipment such
as bulldozers and road graders. This permitted us to excavate five acres
of the village before September 1975, when the proposed con-struction of
the airport was cancelled.
The excavations produced a high quantity of artifacts including more
than 200,000 pieces of clay pottery vessels, several thousand clay pipe
fragments (click here to see an effigy pipe bowl),
thousands of bone and stone artifacts, and a few rare items such as a masquette
and a small effigy of a bear made from clay (click
here to see clay effigies). In addition, eighteen middens, or garbage
dumps, were excavated and the remains of thirty-four longhouses recorded.
One of the most fascinating discoveries was that the Draper village
underwent at least six expansions during its short period of occupation.
It began as a small village of ten houses with an estimated population
of approximately 600 people in an area of two acres. At the time it was
abandoned, the village contained probably forty-five or fifty houses, occupied
by approximately 2,000 to 2,500 people. The village covered an estimated
fifteen acres, surrounded by three rows of palisade. The houses were placed
to form a number of central areas, or plazas, which were readily defensible
(click here to see a possible sequence of village
expansion of the Draper site).
An interesting discovery was the recovery of four copper beads and a
copper ring which are of European origin (click here
to see some examples). This suggests that the Huron gained access to trade
goods earlier than was previously thought and, in conjunction with the
evidence of amalgamation of villages, could mean that warfare was increasing,
due probably to competition over access to trade routes
Our studies of the Huron subsistence practices at the Draper site support
the historical evidence that corn, beans and squash were the mainstay of
the diet, which was supplemented by the hunting of mammals, particularly
deer, bear, woodchuck and racoon. In addition, a wide variety of wild plant
foods was collected, including rasp-berry, strawberry, blueberry, elderberry
and acorns.
Since 1975, a crew of from four to eight have been working in the laboratories
of the Museum of Indian Archaeology at the University of Western Ontario
describing and analyzing the artifacts recovered. After two years, we are
beginning to reconstruct the way of life of the people who lived on the
site and are preparing a series of reports that will present our findings.
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