A Population History of the Huron-Petun, A.D. 500–1650

This is the first population history to trace a Native American group from their origins to their first European contact.

Gary Warrick (Author)

9780521440301, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 February 2008

312 pages, 22 tables
23.6 x 16.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.56 kg

"Warrick previously studied under the late Bruce Trigger while a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University; this definitive study now makes him Trigger's heir apparent as principal scholar in the realm of Huron-Petun studies." -Timothy D. Willig, The Historian

A Population History of the Huron-Petun, A.D. 500–1650, reconstructs the population history of the Wendat-Tionontaté (Huron-Petun) people using archaeological, paleodemographic, historical, and epidemiological research. This book argues that the Wendat-Tionontaté occupied southern Ontario for thousands of years and that maize agriculture was gradually adopted by groups who were not experiencing population pressure, but who were simply interested in supplementing their hunting, gathering, and fishing diet with a reliable food that could also be stored to avert winter famine deaths. The book demonstrates that gradual population growth followed the adoption of maize agriculture, but that rapid population growth did not occur until the fourteenth century, encouraged by the colonization of new lands. The book also documents and explains why epidemic diseases of European origin did not occur among the Wendat-Tionontaté and other Native peoples of eastern North America until the 1630s.

Part I. Native American Population History: Part II. The Wendat-Tionontaté: 1. Names
2. The people
3. The land - Wendake
4. Study area
5. Settlement pattern
6. Subsistence
7. Life and death
8. Sociopolitics, trade, and warfare
9. Wendat-Tionontaté history
Part III. Pre-Industrial Demography: 1. Theories of population change
2. Culture history and population change
3. Pre-industrial demography
Part IV. Archaeological Methods for Estimating Population Aize: 1. Middle-range theory in archaeology
2. Carrying capacity
3. Population density
4. Historical census
5. Artifacts and food remains
6. Burials
7. Settlement remains
Part V. Estimating Wendat-Tionontaté Population: 1. Seventeenth-century observations
2. Iroquoian population research
3. Estimating Wendat-Tionontaté population change from archaeological data
4. Site data
5. Identification of village sites
6. Representativeness of site sample
7. Site dating
8. Ontario Iroquoian chronology
9. Site periodization
10. Site duration
11. Village size data
12. Hearth counts
13. Site growth and contemporaneity
14. Relative Wendat-Tionontaté population estimates
15. Absolute Wendat-Tionontaté population estimates
Part VI. Pre-Contact Population of the Wendat-Tionontaté: 1. Wendat origins
2. Middle woodland baseline
3. Adoption of maize agriculture
4. Early Iroquoian population growth
5. Uren colonization
6. Middleport population explosion
7. Late pre-contact population nucleation and sociopolitical change
Part VII. Wendat-Tionontaté Depopulation: 1. Sixteenth-century Wendat-Tionontaté population
2. Seventeenth-century Wendat-Tionontaté population
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Archaeology [HD], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], History of the Americas [HBJK]