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Aurora Site, Wendat (Huron) Ancestral Site
The Aurora Site, also known as the "Old Fort," "Old Indian Fort," "Murphy Farm" or "Hill Fort" site, is a sixteenth-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the East Holland River on the north side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 30 kilometres north of Toronto.[1] This Huron ancestral village was located on 3.4 hectares (8.4 acres) of land and the settlement was fortified with multiple rows of palisades.
 Aurora/Old Fort Site (16th century Wendat Huron ancestral village), Kennedy Road, south of Vandorf Side Road, Whitchurch–Stouffville, ON, looking e | |
Location within Ontario today | |
| Location | Whitchurch–Stouffville, Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada |
|---|---|
| Region | Regional Municipality of York, Ontario |
| Coordinates | 44°0′28″N 79°20′16″W |
| History | |
| Abandoned | before 1800s |
| Periods | Late Precontact Period, ca. 1550–1575 |
| Cultures | Huron (Wendat) |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1846/1888/1901; 1947, 1957 |
| Archaeologists | William Brodie, John Norman Emerson |
The community arrived ca. 1625, likely moving en masse from the so-called Mantle Site located nine kilometres to the south-east in what is today urban Stouffville.[2] The Aurora/Old Fort site is located at the south-east corner of Kennedy Road and Vandorf Side Road, east of the hamlet of Vandorf in the town of Whitchurch–Stouffville. The Aurora site was occupied at the same time as the nearby Ratcliff site.[3]
The Rouge River trail, used by the Huron and then later by the French to travel between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe / Georgian Bay, ran through the Aurora site.
Perhaps the busiest and best documented of these routes was that which followed the Humber River valley northward ... although another trail of equal importance and antiquity and used earlier than the former by the French, extended from the mouth of the Rouge River northward to the headwaters of the Little Rouge and over the drainage divide to the East Branch of the Holland River at Holland Landing.[4]
The Aurora/Old Fort site was indiscriminately looted by collectors throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. An 1885 report on Whitchurch Township notes that two thousand interments took place on the site, and that another smaller burial site was found two hundred yards from the site beside a large pond.[5]
The self-trained archaeologist William Brodie wrote two archaeological reports on his findings at the Old Fort site (1888; 1901) dating to his first visit in 1846.[6] In reference to the Old Fort site, Brodie wrote in 1901:
To say that a ton of archaeological material was collected from the County of York sites, is a moderate estimate. Some of it is in European museums, some in the States, and some of it in Laval University, some of it is still in the hands of amateur collectors, and a little of it has been secured for the Provincial Museum, but the greater part of it, once in the keeping of private collectors, is gone, being collected and lost, as private collections often are.[7]
A complete map of the site was produced in 1930 by the amateur archaeologist Peter Pringle.[8]
The Aurora/Old Fort site was completely excavated in 1947 and 1957 by the University of Toronto. The 1947 dig was the first student excavation by the university, and it was led by John Norman Emerson.[9] Emerson's doctoral work was largely based on the excavations of the Aurora/Old Fort site.
This excavation contributed to the conclusions of archeologists and anthropologists that the Wendat coalesced as a people in this area, rather than further east in the St. Lawrence River valley, as was thought at one time. Findings in the late twentieth century at the Ratcliff Site and in 2005 at the Mantle Site have provided more evidence of sixteenth-century settlements by ancestral Wendat in this region.[10] The use of technological and analytic advances, such as radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis, has resulted in new conclusions about the occupancy of these varied sites. The Mantle site is now believed to have been occupied 1587 to 1623.[2]
Ratcliff Site, Wendat (Huron) Ancestral Village
The Ratcliff or Baker Hill site is a 16th-century Huron-Wendat ancestral village located on one of the headwater tributaries of the Rouge River on the south side of the Oak Ridges Moraine in present-day Whitchurch–Stouffville, approximately 25 kilometers north of Toronto. The Ratcliff/Baker Hill site is located on the east side of Highway 48, south of Bloomington Road in Whitchurch–Stouffville.[1] The ravine on the village site was infilled during the early 1950s to allow for the expansion of a neighboring
Location within Ontario today | |
| Location | Whitchurch–Stouffville, Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada |
|---|---|
| Region | Regional Municipality of York, Ontario |
| Coordinates | 43°59′48″N 79°17′6″W |
| History | |
| Periods | Late Precontact Period, ca. 1550–1615 |
| Cultures | Huron (Wendat) |
The village occupied approximately 2.8 hectares[3] on the brow of a hill overlooking a steep ravine on the west side.
The artifacts found on the site in the mid-19th century included stone-axes, flint arrows and spear heads, broken crockery, many earthen and stone pipes, bears' teeth with holes bored through them, polished teeth of beaver, deer and moose for decorative use; bone needles, and fish-spears made of deer shoulder-blades, as well as millstones used by the women for crushing corn. A human skull was found "perforated with seven holes, and had evidently been held as a trophy, the holes being the score of enemies slaughtered in battle by the wearer."[4]
The ceramics found on the site indicate that the local community must have had some contact with other Iroquoian groups living in present-day upstate New York and in the St. Lawrence Valley. The large quantity of both ground and chipped stone indicates that the Wendat Village was involved with the production and distribution of stone artifacts.[2] The presence of some contact-period (European) artifacts, such as black glass and copper beads, suggest that the site was inhabited between the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
About 400 meters north of the Ratcliff site on lot 10 in concession 8, a mass grave with "many hundreds" of Huron skeletons was discovered and removed in the late 1840s.[4] In ancient Huron tradition, the dead would be initially buried in a temporary grave. Every ten years the accumulated bones would be moved to a mass grave in an elaborate ceremony.[5]
The inhabitants likely came here from the so-called Mantle Site, located five kilometers to the south-east in Stouffville, when the latter was abandoned in the early 17th century.[6] The Ratcliff site was occupied at the same time as the so-called Aurora or Old Fort site, four kilometres north-west of Ratcliff, also within the boundaries of what is today Whitchurch–Stouffville.[7]
Today the site is still occupied by a quarry. Farms surround the site itself.
Wendat people today
The Huron (Wendat) are considered part of the larger Iroquoian cultural and language family. The Huron-Wendat Nation is a First Nation whose community and reserve today is located at Wendake, Quebec.[32] The Huron, as well as other local First Nation peoples, have urged towns and developers in York Region to preserve indigenous sites so that they may "worship at the places where [their] ancestors are buried."[33] The discovery of a sixteenth-century European axe at Mantle is also of political importance for the Wendat First Nation, for its current negotiations with federal and provincial governments.[34
List of archaeological sites in Whitchurch–Stouffville
This is a list of archaeological sites in Whitchurch–Stouffville, Ontario, Canada:[1] Both the Trent University Site Designation number and the Borden System archaeological designations are given.[2]
Late Ontario Iroquois (1400 AD - 1650 AD)
- Aurora (or Old Fort) Site (7Yk27; BaGu-27); 3.4 ha
- Location: Lots 14 and 15, Concession 6, West half. 44°00'N 79°20'W
- Date: 1550-1600 AD
- Aurora Isolated Site (7Yk24; BaGu-11)
- Location: Lot 15, Concession 6, West half. 44°00'N 79°20'W
- Chalk Site (7Yk20; BaGu-8)
- Location: Lot 16, Concession 4, East half. 44°00'N 79°22'W
- Clark Lake Site (7Yk23; BaGu-10)
- Location: Lot 14, Concession 5, East half. Entrance: 44°00'N 79°20'W
- Foote Site (7Yk26; AlGt-158)
- Location: East side of McCowan Road, north of Stouffville Road. 43°57'N 79°18'W
- Horton-Devins Site (7Yk22; BaGu-9)
- Location: East of Warden Avenue, north of Vandorf Sideroad. 44°01'N 79°20'W
- Hoshel-Huntly Site (7Yk21; AlGu-15)[4]
- Location: West of Warden Avenue, on the south side of Vandorf Sideroad. 44°00'N 79°22'W
- Mantle Site (AlGt-334); 4.2 ha; 90% excavated
- Location: Immediately west of Byers Pond Way, and south-west of Lost Pond Crescent. 43°57'49.9"N 79°14'12"W
- Date: 1500-1550 AD
- Preston Site (7Yk18; AlGu-9)
- Location: Lot 13, Concession 4, West half. 43°59'N 79°22'W
- Ratcliff (or Radcliffe) Site (7Yk25; AlGt-157); 2.8 ha
- Location: Lot 9, Concession 8, West half. 43°59'N 79°W
- Date: 1550-1600 AD
- Van Nostrand-Wright (or Vandorf) Site (7Yk19; A1Gu-13); 4.3 ha; limited excavation
- Location: Lots 14 and 15, Concession 4, West half; overlooking Van Nostrand Lake to the north-east. 43°59'N 79°23'W
- Date: 1550-1600 AD
Excavation and evaluation of site and artifacts
With the discovery of the Mantle site by Lebovic Enterprises, Archaeological Services Inc. was contracted to complete an evaluation of the site's significance. A decision was made to preserve about 5% of the original Mantle site, primarily along the bank of the creek. The site was documented and over 150,000 artifacts were removed for study and interpretation at McMaster University and the University of Toronto. Because of their national significance,[16] the artifacts will be safeguarded by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.[17] The archaeological site-work took three years to complete (2003–2005).[18
The Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, is proud to assist the OAS in the celebration of its 50th year through the creation of this exhibit that highlights the early digs which involved the cooperation of both institutions. In his 1970 article, 'The Ontario Archaeological Society: Two Decades of Development', Dr. J. N. Emerson of the University of Toronto stated that: "In the first decade of the society, the university very much depended upon the trained members of the OAS to help them run, direct, and supervise their large student digs...I am very grateful for the help of the OAS during those years. It could not have been done without such help."
In the first decade of the society, members assisted Dr. Emerson in excavations at such sites as Ault Park, Aurora, Bennett, Benson, Black Creek, Bosomworth, Downsview, Graham Rogers, MacMurchy, Parsons, Seed-Barker, Thompson and Warminster. The artifacts and archival records from these excavations reside at the University of Toronto and form the basis for this exhibit. The sites exhibited range in time from Middle Archaic to Late Iroquoian and in geography from Hamilton to Cornwall (W-E) and Lake Ontario to Huronia (S-N).
"Partners in the Past: U of T and OAS Digs" will be open until the summer of 2001. Viewing is by appointment only and arrangements can be made by contacting Pat Reed at 416-978-6293 or by e-mail at preed@chass.utoronto.ca.
-Pat Reed, Curator of "Partners in the Past: U of T
