Papers by Andrew M Stewart
Ethnoarchaeology, 2025
Caribou Inuit year-round settlement and land use along the Kazan River, ca. 1800–1960, in the Can... more Caribou Inuit year-round settlement and land use along the Kazan River, ca. 1800–1960, in the Canadian Arctic are examined in the archaeological record of cultural features. A river reach, where the Harvaqtuurmiut (a Caribou Inuit society) lived and hunted caribou at crossings, has features that are scattered on slopes as well as concentrated at crossings. This study considers the relationship between different kinds (classes) of features, independently of larger sites, and their elevation in a continency table using binomial probabilities. Analysis suggests that the placement of two feature classes, inuksuit (standing stones) and hearths – common on upper slopes and hilltops and scarce along lower slopes and river flats – is sensitive to elevation. Tent rings, caches, and hunting blinds are associated with lower slopes and areas adjacent to the river. Reasons for these findings are considered, and three sites where these findings are contradicted are examined.
Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 2023
We review the initiation of palisade enclosed village communities in central southwestern Ontario... more We review the initiation of palisade enclosed village communities in central southwestern Ontario, using data from a series of related early Late Woodland sites that we interpret as showing an east to west settlement sequence. New AMS dates based on samples of carbonized maize provide a revised chronology for the origin of village life, which began in the twelfth century. We show how villages developed alongside community pattern and ceramic attribute trends into the fourteenth-century middle Late Woodland period. A suite of dates from the most westerly site in the sequence on the Norfolk sand plain document the timing of an abrupt change in community pattern during the late fourteenth century.
Radiocarbon, 2023
Fluvial and colluvial deposits of Late Holocene age in South-Central Ontario catchments have prov... more Fluvial and colluvial deposits of Late Holocene age in South-Central Ontario catchments have provided few 14C dates, most by conventional methods registering century-old ages. Other young deposits, dated by conventional and accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C), have yielded bomb-affected post-1950 ages over variable time limits. Attempts to date the base of Ah and lower-in-section soil horizons, in Early to Late Holocene stream terrace deposits, have yielded atomic bomb effects. Comparing bomb contamination in Late Holocene fluvial deposits, using both conventional and AMS methods, identifies a mix of bomb-affected beds juxtaposed with dated beds, the latter yielding ages with narrow standard deviations. Colluvial deposits overlying key glacial sections in the Rouge Catchment, while rare, yield bracketed AMS ages for an Ahbk horizon that refines weathering times relative to previously obtained conventional 14C dates. Bomb-affected sediment appears variably distributed within floodplain soils and in the ground soil of a colluvial section. Mass wasted deposits, with AMS 14C ages spread over the last few centuries, appear related to Little Ice Age (LIA) changes in climate, corroborated by pollen records. Further, these AMS-14C dated beds calibrate weathering of secondary Fe-Al oxihydroxides over the first half a millennium of weathering time.
Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, 2023
This paper presents the results of protein residue and use-wear analyses on stone tools recovered... more This paper presents the results of protein residue and use-wear analyses on stone tools recovered during complete salvage excavations of the Mt. Albion West archaeological site, located in the Niagara Peninsula of Southern Ontario, Canada. Mt. Albion West is an Early Paleoindian (Gainey) locality that yielded evidence of four activity foci and dozens of Early Paleoindian stone tools including one complete and several partial fluted bifaces. Organic residue analyses and use-wear data obtained from several tools indicate Early Paleo-Indian associations with proboscideans and canids.
Etudes Inuit Studies, 2017
Complex relationships between people and animals define life in the northern past. For Inuit thes... more Complex relationships between people and animals define life in the northern past. For Inuit these relationships are manifested in many ways, particularly in practices that are often described as showing respect for animals, thus promoting stable relations between animal and human societies. Frustratingly, many of these activities, which are so prominent in the ethnographic record, have few archaeological correlates. Here, we examine one important practice with a relatively high level of archaeological visibility: the concealment of caribou bones under stones and in other inaccessible areas, which thereby protect them from dogs and other disturbances that could offend the caribou's inua (spirit, soul). We examine this phenomenon at several important caribou crossings and elsewhere at inland Inuit archaeological sites on the Kazan River, southern Nunavut, where we have conducted extensive surveys. This research was performed in collaboration with Baker Lake community members who have direct knowledge of these localities, including aspects of bone disposal. Together, these studies reveal a cultural landscape in which the human-caribou relationship is omnipresent, not just in terms of features relating to hunting and storage, but also with regard to the spiritual connection between these two interdependent categories of being.
Quaternary International, 2014
Results of ground-penetrating radar and grain size analysis of sediments from three, 5e7 m-long c... more Results of ground-penetrating radar and grain size analysis of sediments from three, 5e7 m-long cores generally support a classic, fining-up point bar model of floodplain development on a reach of the lower Thames River, a single-thread, meandering channel that flows southwest into Lake St Clair (bankfull discharge ¼ 411 m 3 s À1). Four radiocarbon dates on organic material recovered from cores indicate that floodplain development in this reach occurred over at least the past 9000 years. These results are not typical for southern Ontario channels. Previous studies have shown that some other large rivers in southern Ontario have low-energy, cohesive-bank channels with floodplains strongly dominated by vertical accretion. The distribution of culturally diagnostic archaeological artifacts on the floodplain surface dating back to the Middle Archaic period, but mostly confined to the Early Woodland period or later, suggests that human settlement of the floodplain was restricted to the later Holocene. The observation that a Middle Archaic site component is located in what should be a younger part of the floodplain challenges the notion that a simple lateral channel migration occurred with orderly (chan-nelward) emplacement of sediment by the river. There is a possibility that the channel was anabranching in this reach of the river.
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Papers by Andrew M Stewart