Caracterización de la accidentalidad con base a las estadísticas de accidentalidad

Different materials are used in different proportions at different sites. The two eastern samples, the R&K site and the Hamilton Golf Course site, are made-up entirely of bifaces made from Onondaga chert (see Figure 5-1). Since the excavations conducted at the Peace Bridge site in Fort Erie, it is widely thought that quarries were established on Onondaga outcrops by at least 3400 B.P., if not earlier, for the purpose of intensively procuring this material to produce Genesee bifaces (Austin and Jenkins 2006; Clark 2003; Williamson and MacDonald 1998). Predictably, the majority of the Genesee bifaces recovered from the Peace Bridge site were made on Onondaga—although, four out of 121 finished biface fragments were made from other kinds of material, including Upper Mercer and Selkirk cherts (Austin and Jenkins 2006). The Surma site, also located near the Onondaga outcrop in Fort Erie (Emerson and Noble 1966), seems to have been part of the same occupation represented by Peace Bridge (see Williamson and Austin 2006). Surma also yielded an assemblage of Genesee bifaces entirely made from Onondaga (n=27) (Emerson and Noble 1961; Kenyon 1981). The results of this study continue to support the idea that even the eastern occupations that did not occur directly on the Onondaga outcrop itself used Onondaga to the exclusion of all other lithic raw materials.

Figure 5-1. The percentages of the bifaces made from Onondaga chert, Kettle Point chert, coarse-grained materials in each collection.

0 20 40 60 80 100 Davidson (n= 36) Sadler (n= 18) Desjardins (n= 11) Parkhill (n= 11) Brodie (n= 17) R&K (n= 65) Hamilton G.C. (n= 14) P er ce n tag e of b if ace s Archaeological collection

Materials Used

In the Ausable River Valley samples and Brodie, a much greater variety of materials were being used, as noted in previous studies. The materials used in these regions include Kettle Point chert, which outcrops on the shore of Lake Huron (Kenyon 1980a; see Figure 1-1); and grey-coloured, coarse-grained metasedimentary materials—thought to exist in cobbles in the Ausable and Thames river valleys (Fox 1978; see Figure 1-1). Previously, the coarse-grained material use in the Ausable River Valley was observed by Kenyon (1978, 1979, 1980a, b) and even earlier in the middle Thames River drainage, by Chillingworth (1965). Onondaga chert also seems to make-up a substantial proportion of these samples. The Parkhill site collection, a unique case in the region, is almost entirely made of Onondaga, with only one biface made from an unidentified material (see Figure 5-1). I ran a Monte Carlo simulation, at 10 000 iterations, to test whether the distribution of raw material use among the different samples was significant to the ≤0.05 level, then used the adjusted residuals (outside the values ± 1.96 indicate a ≤0.05 significance level) to identify the area(s) of significance. I used the same procedure throughout my analysis of the relationships between nominal attributes of the sample.

The three primary material types had a statistically significant distribution among the collections (Fisher’s Exact value=84.2; p=0.000, see Appendix D, where the justification for using Monte Carlo, and the results of all tests of nominal traits using the simulation can be found). As would be expected, Onondaga was more commonly used at the R&K and Hamilton Golf Course sites, while its use was markedly low at the Davidson, Desjardins, and Brodie sites. Kettle Point chert use was significantly higher at the Davidson site than anywhere else. This might in part have to do with Davidson’s close proximity to the Kettle Point outcrop. Conversely, coarse-grained materials made-up a significantly greater proportion of the sample at the Desjardins and Brodie sites than any others. The test did not find significantly higher or lower distribution of any particular material at the Sadler and Parkhill sites—though in the case of Parkhill the small sample is made almost entirely from Onondaga.

The use of different materials suggests different material collection practices, especially between the western and the eastern sites. In the latter part of August 2014, we

the Ausable River via canoe, as well as the Thames River in the Komoka region on foot. It was our hope that in trying to collect the material ourselves, we could better comment on the practices involved in gathering coarse-grained cobbles. While absent in the stretch of the lower Ausable River nearest to the Davidson and other sites, we found some cobbles of material exposed at many sets of rapids to the south beginning about 4 km away, seemingly where the river cuts through the Wyoming Moraine till deposits (Chris Ellis, personal communication 2015). We examined the cobbles at each of the rapids we encountered from the beginning of the Moraine edge, following the river south for

approximately 15 km. Next, the cobble exposures in the middle Thames River area rapids located near the Brodie site, just south of Komoka, Ontario, were investigated. These rapids were located about 5 km northeast of Kilworth, Ontario, where Fox (1978) had reported finding similar raw materials. Each time a suitable-looking cobble was selected, we broke it open to ensure it resembled the kind of coarse material used to make Genesee bifaces. While we did find cobbles which resembled the material used in Genesee

manufacture, they seemed to be rare amongst many examples of cobbles unsuitable for knapping. Other times, even if the cobble was of a suitable material, it was not of a size that could be easily be made into a Genesee-sized biface. Moreover, finding suitable cobbles was a laborious process that consisted of checking several shallows to find only a little appropriate material. Though much of our difficulty in finding a substantial quantity of material can be attributed to our inexperience, the difference between gathering bits of material over a relatively diffuse area and procuring material intensively from a

stationary outcrop is still a notable one.

Overall, it would seem that there were three major ways of procuring material on sites occurring in the southwesternmost part of the province—collection from the stationary Kettle Point outcrop, collection over a wide area of coarse-grained material present in the glacial till, and acquiring Onondaga materials from some distance away, likely through exchange networks. In the more eastern samples, it would seem that the intensive procurement and exchange of Onondaga material was the major practice involved in acquiring raw material—though according to Austin and Jenkins (2006), the exchange of other materials would also have played a minimal role.