Notes on Ossuary Burial Among the Ontario Iroquois (1979)

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Notes on Ossuary Burial Among the Ontario IroquoisAuthor(s): Richard B. Johnston

Source: Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d'Archéologie , No. 3 (1979),pp. 91-104

Published by: Canadian Archaeological Association

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY No. 3 1979 91

Notes on Ossuary Burial Among the Ontario

Iroquois

Richard B . Johnston

Introduction

The Huron practice of ossuary burial has been a source of interest since it was first noted by

Europeans in the contact period in the early decades of the 17th century. Since that time, and

for more than a hundred years, many of the known ossuary pits themselves have been

subjected to excavation, including a few by archaeologists, to the point that it is unlikely that

any notable examples survive today in an undisturbed condition. Apart from the fact that the

Huron are by far the best known ethnographically, it would appear that they maintained the

most elaborately developed ossuary burial ceremonialism of all the Ontario Iroquois. The

lesser known Neutral also engaged in the practice, although apparently on a somewhat

different scale, and late in time the Feast of the Dead was even taken up by the Nipissing and

other culturally distinct northern Algonkians as an aspect of economic relations in the fur

trade period (Hickerson 1960). Large-scale ossuary burial along the lines of the Huron model

appears to be an Ontario phenomena, one of the few major traits the northern Iroquois did not

share with their Five Nations relatives of New York where single flexed primary interment

was the general rule.

In the osteological report of the Fairty burials, from the large Middleport period ossuary

thought to be associated with the Robb village site in the Toronto area, Anderson (1963: 28)

indicates that at least 216 ossuary sites are known in Ontario. Although several sources are

cited (e.g., Harris 1949 regarding the ossuary at the Huron village of Cahiague; Knowles

1937 description of the crania from the single graves at Roebuck and comparative material;

and Ridley 1961 concerning Neutral ossuaries), the total of 216 is not specifically

documented. It is nonetheless easy to agree that a large number of burial pits stem from the

Iroquois tradition in Ontario and a systematic survey of the work of, for instance, Boyle,

Hunter, Wintemberg, and Laidlaw, sources such as the Annual Archaeological Report for

Ontario (A.A.R.O.) and unpublished records in museum archives, would undoubtedly reveal

impressive quantitative data as well as important distributional information. Moreover, any

figure derived from such a survey of extant records would be minimal since it is certain that a

much greater number of ossuaries (or sites, etc.) existed at one time in the past than have been

reported, including those discovered at some point but not recorded, those that have been

destroyed without record, and presumably a number that remain undiscovered. No matter

what the total number of ossuaries may have been, they were assuredly numerous, with the

majority of the known examples pertaining to the post-contact or late prehistoric period after

about A.D. 1400, the Late Ontario Iroquois horizon. While it appears that ossuary

ceremonialism reached its most elaborate form in the late period, particularly among the

Huron, the tradition is deeply rooted in Ontario Iroquois prehistory, and for some time

precedents have been recognized in earlier horizons (Wright 1966: 99; Noble 1969: 22-23).



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92 Ossuary Burial Among The Ontario Iroquois

Figure 1 : View approximately to the southwest of the area of the ossuary pits north of the

mound group at the Serpent Mounds site. The figure is standing in the depression over

ossuary pit 2, to the left of which in the foreground is the location of pit 1 . In the background

to the left of the figure is Mound H, and at the far left snowfence surrounds the 1959

excavation in the west end of the Serpent Mound (Mound E).

Ossuary Pits at the Serpent Mounds Site

At the Serpent Mounds site in south-central Ontario, principally an Initial (or Middle)

Woodland burial center, a separate and later component represented by three ossuary pits

assigned to the Early Ontario Iroquois horizon has been said to . . . foreshadow similar,

later, and more elaborately developed Iroquois practices (Johnston 1968a: 27). These three

ossuary pits, which were located about 50m north of the Serpent Mound itself (Figure 1),

were fully described in the site report (Johnston 1968b: 48-50, 66, Fig. 8, Pis. 56-60) and

an osteological analysis provided by Anderson (1968). The pits averaged 1.2- 1.5m in

diameter and had been dug to a depth of 0.6m below the surface. The interments placed in the

pits included parts of a total of 69 individuals and consisted entirely of a mass of secondary,

incomplete and fragmentary skeletal remains in which not a single instance of articulation was

noted. The very few artifacts found in the pits, notably rim sherds, indicated an Early Ontario

Iroquois origin, but more specific assessment of their age was not attempted until recently,

when radiocarbon analyses were obtained on a bone sample from each pit.



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Ossuary Pit 1 (Figure 2)

Contained primarily skulls and a few post-cranial parts for a total of 15 individuals according

to Anderson's count (1968: 13). Artifacts in the pit included a triangular side-notched point,

the talons and mandible of a golden eagle, one corded body sherd and an interior

punctated/exterior noded rim sherd with two horizontal bands of opposed oblique incised

lines forming a chevron pattern on the rim from the lip downward to a point just below the

nodes (Johnston 1968b: PI. 59). The radiocarbon date on bone from ossuary pit 1 was 905±60

B.P. (UGa-2488)or A.D. 1045.

Ossuary Pit 2 (Figure 3 and Johnston 1968b: PI. 56-58)

Twenty-four skulls and bone clusters representing bundle burials included the remains of 29

individuals. A greenstone axe, 23 exterior corded or smoothed-corded body sherds and 2 rims

were recovered from the pit. The rim sherds had interior punctates and were decorated with

oblique dentates over the exterior nodes; one had a double row of punctates and nodes

encircling the rim (Johnston 1968: PL 60). The radiocarbon analysis of the bone sample from

ossuary pit 2 produced a date of 5 10±60 B.P. (UGa-2487)or A.D. 1440.

Ossuary Pit 3 (Figure 4)

The bone mass included parts of 25 individuals, again with some clustering indicative of

bundle burials. Half of a dog's mandible and a single corded body sherd were the only

artifacts (Johnston 1968b: PL 60). The bone sample from ossuary pit 3 produced a date of

660±60B.P. (UGa-2489)orA.D. 1290.

For present purposes, and without broaching the question of the precise beginning or

ending dates of the Early Ontario Iroquois horizon, the 550-year period between A.D. 750

and 1300 is a reasonable and probably conservative estimate encompassing the development.

Although one would prefer a larger sample to evaluate, the rim sherds from the ossuary pits

are unquestionably typical of the rims from the Miller (Kenyon 1968) and Boys (Reid 1975)

villages of the Pickering variant, as well as comparable to certain rims from the Glen Meyer

Goessens site for example, and it was on this basis that the pits were assigned to the Early

Ontario Iroquois horizon. The high proportion of corded surface treatment of the body sherds

from the pits might be taken to indicate an early chronological position, but the small size of

the sample and the absence of other techniques of surface treatment common in both

Pickering and Glen Meyer collections (cf. Reid 1975: 47, Table 39) suggests that it is not a

reliable indicator. On the other hand, the C 14 dates tend to the latter half of the period, the pit

1 date of A.D. 1045 toward the middle and the pit 3 date of A.D. 1290 late in the sequence as

the chronology is presently defined. The A.D. 1440 date from pit 2 is clearly too late; even

reducing it by twice the standard statistical error to A.D. 1320 does not bring it within the

established range and for this reason it is thought to be incorrect. The original presumption

was that the three pits were essentially contemporaneous as they were located very close

together, were structually identical and had been furnished with virtually the same contents.

The radiocarbon dates, however, for pits 1 and 3, excluding the late date for pit 2, indicate

that the burials were made at different times in the period between A.D. 1000 and 1300 when

Pickering people returned to the then long-abandoned mound site, where other special burial

rites had taken place about a thousand years earlier, to conduct their own ceremonies

culminating in the deposit of the bundled secondary remains of a number of individuals in

ossuary pits.



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Figure 2: Profile through part of ossuary pit 1 showing the dark earth fill above the

disarticulated bone content in the bottom of the feature.

Figure 3 : View to the southwest of the bone mass representing the 29 individuals interred in

ossuary pit 2.



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Figure 4: Ossuary pit 3 excavated to a depth of 52 cm below the surface to show the

disarticulated bone content in the bottom of the oval pit.

Historic Period

The obvious question is not only of the later development of the practice of ossuary burial but

of the origin and precedents for the tradition in Ontario prehistory. The best and most

abundant evidence derives from the later period, after about A.D. 1300, while a few earlier

examples, largely from Pickering components in south-central Ontario, are suggestive of the

prior course of the development. The historic period Huron are the best documented of all the

Ontario Iroquois as well as the most committed to the practice of massive ossuary burial. A

late period Huron ossuary was not simply a grave containing the remains of several

individuals, a common type of burial in prehistory everywhere, but a large bone deposit

consisting of numerous incomplete and disarticulated interments. (Although the available

data are not sufficient to make a comprehensive or exact definition of what constitutes an

ossuary, we could say, in terms of this discussion of Iroquoin practice in southern Ontario,

that an ossuary consists of the common burial of the secondary remains of a minimum of 10 or

12 individuals). The Huron form of ossuary burial and its attendant ceremonialism, in contrast

to the interment of a few primary or secondary burials by a family or limited kin group, is

clearly the result of concerted action by a social group larger than an extended family, and

when the number of secondary burials in an ossuary is in the hundreds it is obviously

indicative of the mortuary practices of a society with a large population that may involve, as

we know from the Huron example, several neighboring villages. (Although ultimate removal

to a communal bone pit, after initial and interim burial on a scaffold or in a grave, was the

most common mode, and the prescribed disposition of the large majority of the Huron dead,

final interment in an ossuary was not the sole or exclusive means of burial. Kapches (1976)



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has reviewed certain other methods appropriate to special cases such as the burial of infants;

see also Williamson (1978). It may also be added that a few primary articulated individuals

may be found in Huron ossuaries). Huron beliefs and practices concerning death and the dead

were well-recorded in the early literature, especially in the Jesuit Relations (Thwaites

1896-1901), and have been summarized by Tooker (1964: 128-143), Trigger (1969:

102- 1 12) and most recently by Heidenreich (1978: 374-375). The culmination of the Huron

burial process, the so-called Feast of the Dead, centred on the inhumation of the remains of a

large number of individuals in a communal pit. This dramatic ritual took place periodically,

ordinarily at intervals of 10 or 12 years, probably in association with the movement of

villages, for the purpose of the final common burial of all of those deceased since the last

preceding ceremony. This event is especially well-known from the first-person account of the

Jesuit Brebeuf (Thwaites 1896-1901, Vol. 10: 279-305), who witnessed a Feast of the Dead

near the Huron town of Ossossane in 1636, and from the controlled excavation of the very

same ossuary by Kidd (1953) who estimated that it contained the remains of as many as 1000

individuals.

The neighboring Petun, although not nearly so well-known ethnohistorically or archaeolog-

ically, are nonetheless regarded as culturally very close to the Huron (Garrad and Heidenreich

1978: 395). Early surveys (Boyle 1889: 5) and more recent but unpublished investigations

confirm the presence of ossuaries in Petun territory south of Nottawasaga Bay, although the

absence of details precludes specific assessment or comparisons with Huron practices.

Neither are the related Neutral of the Hamilton/Niagara peninsula region, the other major

Iroquoian group of Ontario at contact, as well-known as the Huron. This large group, and the

Erie, are thought to be the end-point of one of the principal streams of Iroquoian

development, the cultural equivalent of the Huron/Petun who represent the terminus of a

parallel, and intermingled, sequence in Ontario (Wright 1966). Insofar as ossuary burial is

known for the Nçutral, the present evidence is that mortuary beliefs and practices were to

some degree different from those of the Huron. Such attention as has been devoted to the

question (e.g., Ridley 1961) indicates that treatment of the Neutral dead was not necessarily

an approximation of the Huron pattern (White 1978: 410). The recent examination of the

historic Neutral cemetery at Grimsby, Ontario, implies, for example, that some importance

was placed on maintaining the integrity of individuals after death, in single flexed burials or

in carefully arranged multiple burials (Kenyon 1977: 4,11-12), in contrast to the deliberate

mixing of large numbers of incomplete secondary remains in the large Huron ossuaries, and in

this case at least the mortuary customs of the two groups appear to be clearly distinctive.

In Erie territory in western New York the large majority of burials are in single graves in

cemeteries although a few instances of ossuaries have been recorded (e.g. , Parker 1922: 176,

177- 178) for the late prehistoric or post-contact period.

Late Prehistoric Period

When we move back into the prehistoric period, we find a number of ossuaries reported,

primarily the larger, later forms after about A.D. 1300, but also a few smaller, earlier

examples. These features document the persistence of the ossuary burial tradition among the

Ontario Iroquois and appear to show, although the evidence is incomplete, that communal

burial is an eastern or Pickering phase trait that was adopted to some degree later in time by



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other Ontario Iroquois and which, ultimately, reached a developmental climax among the

Huron.

Sizeable ossuaries were in use during the Middle Ontario Iroquois horizon, between A.D.

1300 and 1400, including the poorly known example from the Middleport site (Wintemberg

1948: 38-39) which has been attributed to the Middleport occupation (Wright 1966: 60).

The Fairty ossuary is thought to be associated with the nearby Robb site in the eastern

outskirts of Toronto and to date around A.D. 1400 according to Wright (Anderson 1963:28).

Anderson estimated that a minimum of 512 individuals were represented in the ossuary which

consisted of a mass of incomplete secondary interments familiar from the Huron pattern. In

fact, certain early Huron-Petun pottery types from the Robb site were interpreted as

evidence of the divergence of the Neutral/Erie and Huron/Petun, the Robb sample tending

toward the Huron/Petun (Anderson 1963: 28). Also in the Toronto area, the Tabor Hill

ossuaries are reported to be somewhat earlier, approximately A.D. 1250 (Emerson 1956;

Churcher and Kenyon 1960), and to be associated with the Thompson site. The disarticulated

remains of an estimated 523 individuals were recovered from two adjacent pits.

Pickering

Investigation of the late 13th century Bennett site, a Pickering village in Halton County north

of Hamilton, revealed 13 graves containing 15 individuals, chiefly single burials (primary

flexed and disarticulated) in the vicinity of one house structure and at seemingly random

locations around the village. Osteological analysis of the 15 individuals showed that their

closest biological affinity was with the ossuary burials at the Serpent Mounds site (Wright

and Anderson 1969: 131). The Early Ontario Iroquois graves at Serpent Mounds, bona fide

ossuaries, dating to the A.D. 1000-1300 period according to the interpretation above, are

presently unique as isolated funereal structures; all other Pickering burials discovered to date,

such as those at Bennett, have been in villages (this fact may of course be a function of

sampling). The pattern at the Miller site, a thoroughly excavated Pickering village, shows

multiple secondary burials in 6 of the 7 graves found throughout the village area. Most of the

graves contained the remains of 3 or 4 persons but one included parts of at least 13 different

individuals (Kenyon 1968: 21-23). A radiocarbon date of A.D. 1115 was obtained for Miller

but it has been suggested (Kenyon 1968: 5; Noble 1975: 50) on the basis of ceramic trends that

A.D. 800 may be more appropriate. Both estimates fall in the Early Iroquois period, the

seriational date of A.D. 800 early in the horizon. In either case, the pattern of interment at

Miller establishes the probably familial burial of a few secondary individuals in the area of the

village in proto-ossuaries and one example of a common burial pit including at least 13

individuals. Similar evidence was uncovered by Pearce (1977) at the Richardson site, an

eastern Pickering community in Northumberland County about 8 km southeast of Rice Lake

(and about 25 km from the Pickering component ossuary pits at the Serpent Mounds site).

Here, in the midst of the settlement, one grave contained a single bundle burial, and a small

disturbed pit the disarticulated and incomplete remains of at least 5 individuals. As Pearce

found the Richardson ceramics to be stylistically intermediate to the Miller (assuming the

early date of A.D. 800) and Boys material, for which there is a radiocarbon date of A.D. 975

(Reid 1975: 38), he has estimated Richardson at A.D. 900 (Pearce 1977: 59), regarding a C14

date of A.D. 1315 as too late. Reid's (1975) report on the Boys site, another village near the

Miller site in Pickering Township, makes no reference to human bones or burials.



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One may note parenthetically a growing list of Pickering radiocarbon dates that have been

judged too late. It has been said that the C14date of A.D. 1115 for Miller, A.D. 1235 for

Boys, A.D. 1315 for Richardson and A.D. 1440 for ossuary pit 2 at Serpent Mounds are

anywhere from 250 to 400 years too recent. While dates after about A.D. 1300 would appear

to warrant some skepticism in terms of our understanding of the pace and chronology of later

Iroquoian development, an awareness of the relative unreliability of single dates, the latitude

provided by the standard statistical error, and the possibility of unrecognized ceramic

conservatism indicate the need for caution in evaluating radiocarbon results.

len Meyer

In the Glen Meyer area of southwestern Ontario the evidence of early Iroquoian burial

practices has been found elusive (Noble 1975: 47) and sadly lacking (Wright 1978: 28).

The 2 bundle burials in one grave and parts of 7 incomplete individuals in a small ossuary at

the Reid site, which may date around A.D. 1300 or somewhat later (Wright 1978: 31), is

virtually all that has been reported to date. No burials were encountered during the excavation

of the Van Besien village in Oxford County, radiocarbon dated at A.D. 940 and A.D. 945

(Noble 1975), or the Porteous site at Brantford dating around A.D. 700 according to Noble

and Kenyon (1972) although interments had been anticipated at both locations. Stothers

(1977: 76-77) believes it probable, although it cannot be established conclusively, that the

30 single flexed burials destroyed by gravel quarrying about 300m south of Porteous were part

of the village cemetery. There is obviously little basis for speculation as to the character of

Glen Meyer burial. The interments at the Reid site appear comparable to those described as

proto-ossuaries at the considerably earlier Pickering villages of Richardson and Miller. Since

Reid is assigned to terminal Glen Meyer during the period when Pickering influences are said

to have been extended westward, we cannot assume that a known Pickering style of burial has

any precedent in earlier Glen Meyer. The pattern of single and sometimes disarticulated

burials at the slightly earlier Bennett site on the eastern edge of Glen Meyer territory,

although defined as a Pickering component, does not encourage the presumption that multiple

secondary communal interment (ossuary burial) was endemic to the region while, at

approximately the same time, large developed ossuaries, such as at Tabor Hill, were being

consecrated by groups to the east in the Pickering area. This lack of evidence, at least, has

contributed to the opinion that the Glen Meyer people did not practice ossuary interment

(Noble 1975: 47), a mode of burial that was however typical of the more easterly

contemporary Pickering phase of the Early Ontario Iroquois horizon.

Historical Development and Origin

To the extent that these differences are real, rather than the result of uneven or incomplete

evidence, we may perceive, through the glass darkly, that the apparent dichotomy of burial

practices in the Pickering and Glen Meyer phases is a reflection, during an early horizon of

the Ontario Iroquois development, of the main cultural streams which are ultimately identified

with the Neutral/Erie and the Huron/Petun tribal groups of the historic period. In other words,

the apparent lack of ossuary burial in Glen Meyer prior to about A.D. 1300 and the concurrent



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practice of ossuary burial by the Pickering people may be another bit of evidence for the

primacy of Glen Meyer in the historical development of the Neutral/Erie while similarly

Pickering may be seen as the principal cultural tradition leading to the Huron/Petun. It is an

appealing idea that has been advanced earlier by Wright (1972: 74) and echoed more recently

by Tuck who has suggested with certain reservations that Glen Meyer/Pickering * 4 . . . may

represent an early expression of the Neutral-Erie versus Huron-Petun ethnic-linguistic

separation ... (1978: 323). According to this scenario, the socially and politically

elaborated mortuary practices of the historic Huron/Petun are the climax of a tradition

extending back approximately a thousand years to early Pickering times, whereas the

otherwise distinct burial customs of the Neutral/Erie and their Middleport level ancestors in

southwestern Ontario, to the extent that it may have included ossuary interment, may be

referred to influences emanating from Pickering in the east or, later in time, from the people

then identifiable as Huron. Regional cultural continuity, which is evident at various times and

places in Ontario prehistory, is also evident in this case and reflects in microcosm the

established in situ development of Iroquoian society in the Northeast.

The further question of the source of the practice of ossuary burial in the Early Ontario

Iroquois horizon is unanswerable at present, but there are certain possibilities. The idea of

regional continuity and the importance of the Pickering tradition in perpetuating ossuary

interment suggests immediately an origin in the preceding Woodland period of the region,

specifically the Point Peninsula peoples of eastern Ontario. Indeed there were mass graves

beneath several of the 2000-year-old mounds at the Serpent Mounds site (Johnston 1968b)

that unquestionably document a developed mortuary system including multiple primary and

secondary burials in common graves. However, in part because these early mass graves are

not structurally similar to the later Iroquoian ossuaries and especially because of obvious

differences in the economic and social integration of the earlier Point Peninsula hunter-

gatherers and the later Iroquoian agriculturalists, a presumption of a generic relationship is

not compelling or, at a minimum, too distant to grasp. The probability of the later Pickering

component ossuary pits at the Serpent Mounds site being ancestral to even later Iroquoian

practice (Johnston 1968a: 27) is entirely plausible from both a theoretic and historic

standpoint, but the same plausibility does not apply, given the known difference of

demography, settlement and so forth, to a Point Peninsula-Ontario Iroquois continuity of

burial beliefs and practices. One could generalize this concept by pointing out that a

discontinuity in burial patterns between the indigenous Initial Woodland of southern Ontario

and the recognizable Iroquoian development of the Terminal Woodland is consistent with the

hiatus between the earlier nomadic hunter-gatherers and the later settled agriculturalists in

virtually all the specific aspects of these societies that have been recognized archaeologically.

A major recent advance in Iroquoian studies, apparently confirming the remarkable

foresight of Griffin (1944), has been the preliminary understanding of the role of Princess

Point in the introduction into southwestern Ontario of corn agriculture sometime around A.D.

600 (Stothers 1977). If Iroquoian ossuary burial is a concomitant of village life, as suggested

above, that arose with the demographic and social structure associated with farming, then we

may ask if Princess Point may not have influenced burial forms as well as subsistence. With a

single exception, however, the data available to date on Princess Point burials is very

equivocal (Stothers 1977: 74-77), the exception being the graves at the Kreiger site near

Chatham. Krieger is known from a series of pits excavated and reported by Kidd (1954), that



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produced a distinctive pottery series which conforms to the definition of Princess Point ware

in having heavy cord-malleated bodies with decoration executed in cord-wrapped stick and

incised motifs. Stothers (1977: 150) believes the Krieger style of pottery to be late in Princess

Point (circa A.D. 800?) and similar to ceramics from the Porteous site. The pits at Krieger

also produced a quantity of corn (Kidd 1954: 170) and a radiocarbon date of A.D. 600

(1350± 140 B.P.; S-620) (Rutherford, Wittenberg and McCallum 1975: 340) which would be

initial Princess Point as it has been described by Stothers (1977: 113). Leaving aside the

unresolved question of the lack of synchronization between the supposedly late ceramics and

early radiocarbon date, the burials at Krieger were contained in two common graves, one with

the incomplete remains of 3 (or 4) individuals and the second a mass grave containing the

. . . more or less complete remains of 8 individuals ... in various degrees of

disarticulation (Kidd 1956: 15). Other burial data from the region at this time level is poorly

documented, such as the cemetery of single graves near Porteous referred to earlier. Several

of the single flexed burials from the Surma site at Fort Erie (Emerson and Noble 1966) may

pertain to an approximately contemporary Late Woodland component and would constitute

assurance that multiple burial was not the sole means of interment during this period.

Although the evidence from the Krieger site allows the possibility that ossuary burial could

have been adopted into the subsequent Ontario Iroquois tradition from the intrusive Princess

Point horticulturalists, a good deal more evidence will be required for positive assertions. One

can nonetheless foresee certain problems with the hypothesis that ossuary burial is later

associated with the eastern Pickering, rather than the western Glen Meyer, if we agree that it

was Princess Point innovations in the southwest that gave rise to the new pattern of village

agriculture. Part of the answer to this problem may relate to the matter of the origin of the

whole Pickering manifestation in eastern Ontario, a parallel or twin development to Glen

Meyer. That is, if Princess Point is to be credited with inspiring the Glen Meyer development

in the southwest, what equivalent cultural spark is responsible for Pickering in the east? In

light of the overriding similarity of Glen Meyer and Pickering, a single origin hypothesis is

most satisfactory, attributing such relatively minor differences (usually a matter of

percentiles) as existed to regional environmental differences and idiosyncratic cultural drift

(perhaps deriving in part from differences inherited from the preceding Initial Woodland in

the two regions). In other words, it is suggested that the innovations leading to village

agriculture in the Early Ontario Iroquois horizon are the result of the arrival of Princess Point

people in southwestern Ontario who introduced corn growing and certain ceramic innovations

and thereby set in motion the cultural changes that spawned Glen Meyer and rapidly spread

eastward where the same phenomena, showing some regional differences, are recognized as

Pickering. Whether or not ossuary burial will ultimately prove to have reached Pickering from

the west, the multiple burials in the Miller and Richardson villages show that this practice was

established in the Pickering phase at an early date. By about A.D. 1000 the ossuary tradition

had evolved to the point that communal burials of the type discovered at the Serpent Mounds

site were being made at special locations away from the villages, and by A.D. 1200 or shortly

thereafter larger ossuaries came into use that were essentially the same as those reported 400

years later by the early European observers of Huronia. The very large historic Huron

ossuaries probably reflect special conditions arising from economic and political forces,

disease and other disruptive factors of the contact period. While the Pickering people and their

descendants are recognized for their use of ossuary interment, the people of the Glen Meyer



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area appear to have favored single flexed burial but to have selectively taken up some form of

multiple burial under Pickering/Huron influences from about A.D. 1300 onward. Elsewhere

in Iroquoia the mode was single flexed burial, as is evident throughout the Five Nations of

New York, and among the St. Lawrence Iroquois in spite of their relationship with the

Pickering people late in the early Ontario Iroquois horizon (Pendergast 1975). One may find

reports (e.g., Parker 1922: 576-579) of St. Lawrence Iroquois ossuaries in Jefferson County,

New York, but these are believed (J.F. Pendergast, personal communication 1979) to be

minor, exceptional occurrences revealing late period Huron-St. Lawrence Iroquois interaction

rather than influences transmitted from the west earlier in the Ontario Iroquois tradition. In

fact, it seems probable that late period ossuaries throughout the Great Lakes region may be

traced directly or indirectly to the venerable Huron ideology.

Trent University

Peterborough, Canada

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Peter Storck of the Department of New World Archaeology, Royal Ontario

Museum, for allowing access to material in the Serpent Mounds collection for the purpose of

radiocarbon dating, and to Peta Daniels of the same office for supplying the photographs of

the ossuary pits at the Serpent Mounds site. I am grateful for the valuable advice of Bill Fox

and Jim Pendergast who were good enough to read and comment upon a draft version of this

paper.

References

Anderson, J.E. 1963. The people of Fairty: An osteological analysis of an Iroquois ossuary.

National Museum of Canada Bulletin No. 193, Contributions to Anthropology, 1961-2, Pt.

1:28-129.

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1 4 Ossuary Burial Among The Ontario Iroquois

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates for three early Iroquoian ossuary pits at the Serpent Mounds site indicate

that Pickering peoples had a developed ossuary tradition by the A.D. 1000-1300 period. An

informal review of the evidence for burial systems in the Terminal Woodland of southern

Ontario suggests that the elaborate late Huron mortuary practices were the final expression of

a long tradition that may be traced back about a thousand years to the early beginnings of

agricultural village life in Ontario.

Résumé

Des dates au radiocarbone de trois anciens ossuaires iroquoiens du site Serpent Mounds

indiquent que les groupes Pickering avaient déjà bien développé cette tradition entre les

années 1000-1300 de notre ère. Une revue informelle des évidences de comportements

funéraires systématisés au cours du Sylvicole terminal du sud de l'Ontario nous permet de

suggérer que les coutumes funéraires des Hurons tardifs étaient l'expression finale d'une

longue tradition qui peut être suivie sur environ un millénaire jusqu'aux premiers

commencements de la vie villageoise et agricole en Ontario.