submitted by coldrum ---
Archaeologists have discovered a 4,500 year old settlement, on the Ausable River, near the shore of Lake Huron in Canada.
The find rewrites the history of the Canadian province of Ontario, proving that people were living a sedentary lifestyle at that time, even though they lacked agriculture and pottery. Among the discoveries is a 4,500 year old house – the oldest ever found in the province. “It’s semi-subterranean – it’s dug partially down into the ground,” said Professor Chris Ellis of the University of Western Ontario. He led the team that made the find. “It’s as old as the pyramids really.”
After the house was abandoned it was hit by flood waters. Garbage was piled on top of it – something that helped the archaeologists reconstruct what the structure looked like.
“Also we have the stains left by the posts (that) supported the roof.” Those posts “are fairly large – you’ve got 18-20 centimetre across logs being used to do this,” said Professor Ellis.
What was the house like?
“The house was basically circular,” said Ellis. “It had an entrance on one side – there’s sort of a narrow sloping entrance that faced the river and went down into the actual house pit.” The house pit was a meter deep and five meters in diameter. This pit would have provided insulation, helping the inhabitants survive the Canadian winter.
“A wooden roof with wooden roof supports would be put over top,” he said. “It also had some posts at the very top that were diagonal – it formed sort of a cone shaped roof.”
In turn “that would be covered with logs - and probably covered with sods and things like this, although we don’t know that for sure.”
There’s more - “you had this circular bench all the way around,” said Ellis, extending half a meter off the ground. “We also found some remnants of what apparently are partitions and things like this that divided the house up into different sections.” Unfortunately “parts of the floor had been eroded away” by flooding, making it hard to determine where all the partitions were. There may have been hearths on the floor as well.
Ellis said that the house would have been used as a single family dwelling and took a considerable amount of time and resources to build. “This is a substantial house, it’s a winter house, people only go to the trouble – even in the winter – of digging big substantial houses like this if they’re not going to move at all in the winter.”
The settlement.
The settlement is about two hectares in size – but only a tiny portion of it has been excavated so far. The rest of the settlement is known only through magnetic surveys and artefacts found on the surface.
Archaeologists can tell that there would have been a small community there. From the magnetic survey “we know that the site is just covered with buried features of one kind or another,” said Professor Ellis. In one section of the site, a ploughed field, “there are literally millions of artefacts over the surface.”
Artefacts found at the site include spear-points, bifaces, fire cracked rock and even a net sinker. The team has also found abundant organic remains including deer and fish bones, black walnuts and raspberry seeds.
These finds suggest that the site may have been used year round. Fish are caught in the summer and walnuts are harvested in the fall. Semi-subterranean houses are, of course, used to provide insulation in the winter.
For more, including other structures found and why people would be sedentary at this time period, see heritage-key.com with more information and photographs of the finds.
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