SUNKEN VESSELS

5 SUNKEN VESSELS By William Fox, Jean-Luc Pilon and Carley Crann savoy and a volunteer dive team including Art Amos, to document an underwater deposit of ceramics during the 1976 to 1978 field seasons (Wright 1980: 53). The recoveries deteriorated rapeveral years ago, Jean-Luc received a series of relatively idly upon removal from the lake and so, the Canadian Conservacomplete ceramic vessels recovered from the St. tion Institute was requested to stabilize the collection (Segal Lawrence River in the vicinity of Kingston by a sports 1977). Wright (1980: 61-68) identified ceramic wares related to diver. Curious about their exact antiquity, he removed some of the middle to late Point Peninsula, Pickering, Owasco, and midthe carbonized food residue from the vessel interiors and submitted it for AMS dating to the Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dat- dle stage St. Lawrence Iroquois; or roughly the period from 300 ing Laboratory in 2014. Jean-Luc also submitted samples to the to 1450 A.D., which is comparable to the age range of vessels received by Jean-Luc. Similar to the Kingston area vessels, subCanadian Conservation Institute which used gas chromatograstantial portions were recovered, permitting an unprecedented phy-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify deer fat and most opportunity to study complete decorative motifs for ceramics surprisingly, caffeine (Poulin 2014 – see also Canadian Mupredating 1000 A.D. Advances in radiocarbon dating since seum of History Blog – Archaeology Month: Vessels Which Speak Volumes On The History Of First Nations). One vessel, Phill’s 1980 analysis and report provided the potential for individual vessel dates, based on AMS analysis of carbonized dating to nearly 1800 radiocarbon years ago (Figure 1), also residues from these vessels by the A.E. Lalonde AMS Laboracontained traces of heated marine oil. tory (AEL-AMS) at the University of Ottawa. With the termination of the Provincial archaeological field program, regional collections were consolidated, and the Charleston Lake collection was moved to London. Shari Prowse of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport kindly provided access to the ceramics and residue samples were obtained from three vessels (Nos. 4, 5 and 7) which stylistically appeared to span the Middle Woodland period. The initial dates were shocking; ranging from 1731 to 6418 radiocarbon years before present – something was definitely wrong! Discussions between Carley Crann of the AELAMS laboratory and Tara Grant of the Canadian Conservation Institution revolved around the consolidants and adhesives used to stabilize the ceramics, and how these could be extracted from the samples. Subsequently, they radiocarbon dated 20 consolidants and glues commonly used in archaeological conservation and produced a Figure 1: Vessel 4 – Middle Woodland vessel dated to 240 poster for the recent Canadian Archaeological Ascalibrated AD. sociation meeting in Whitehorse. The PVAC AYAA which had been used to consolidate the Considering the exciting range of dates and subsistence inforCharleston Lake vessels by vacuum impregnatation was revealed mation derived from these vessels, the senior writer was reto have a radiocarbon signature of its petrochemical source, minded of a collection of ceramics from Charleston Lake which is well beyond the age limit of radiocarbon (~50,000 reported by Phillip Wright in 1980. As the Provincial Regional years). With a solvent wash, the PVA was then removed from the Archaeologist for Eastern Ontario, Phill worked with Ken Cassamples, with the following results: S The authors of the following article wish to assure readers that a much more substantial and detailed peer reviewed paper concerning this project will be forthcoming. The title refers not only to the underwater origin of the ceramic vessels in question, but also to one of the potential mechanisms for their deposition, especially in deep waters offshore – capsized watercraft. These ‘canoe wrecks’ as referred to by the senior author, were an inevitable result of millennia of canoe travel on the Great Lakes, larger interior lakes, and riverine highways. While most readers will know the affiliation of Bill and Jean-Luc, we note that Carley is an employee of the Lalonde AMS laboratory at the University of Ottawa. May/Junel 2016 Arch Notes 21 (3) 6 Figure 4: Vessel 7 - Cord-wrapped stick impressed vessel dated to 531 calibrated AD. Figure 2: Vessel 4 – Pseudo-scallop shell impressed vessel dated to 395 calibrated BC. Figure 3: Vessel 5 – Pseudo-scallop shell rocker stamped vessel dated to 639 calibrated BC. May/June 2016 The Vessel 5 date overlaps the ‘Hallstatt Plateau’ which ranges from 1110 to 500 calibrated BC (similar to many Vinette 1 dates – see Spence and Fox 1986: 15, Table 1.1), and is surprisingly early. However, unlike Vessel 4 (Figure 2) which displays an everted rim lip and more sophisticated decorative motif, Vessel 5 (Figure 3) is a simple straight rimmed conical pot with a less complex decorative pattern, similar in form to Vinette 1 vessels (Mitchell 1963). Taché and Hart have recently refined the dating of Vinette 1 ceramics and documented the contemporaneity of this earliest vessel form with steatite bowls across the Northeast (Taché and Hart 2013). Their results suggest that Vinette 1 ceramic production dates to between roughly 1400 calibrated BC and 300 calibrated BC, clearly overlapping our early Point Peninsula dates, as they do the period of steatite vessel production (Ibid.: 367, Table 4). This is not a unique situation, given numerous other early Middle Woodland dates from both Saugeen and Point Peninsula sites in Ontario (Spence and Fox 1986: 35, Table 1.3); although, the association between the old wood carbon dates and ceramics remain suspect. To the east, a “decorated ‘Vinette 1’ vessel” was recovered from feature 167 of the Early Woodland Boucher cemetery in Vermont (Heckenberger et al. 1990: 122-123, Figure 13). The feature was radiocarbon dated to 600 uncalibrated BC, and the vessel is very similar in form to Charleston Lake Vessel 5, but displays an incised triangular motif over a corded surface. Further AMS dating of Middle to Late Woodland transitional ceramic vessels from Charleston and South Lakes is in process, thanks to a Symons Trust Fund for Canadian Studies grant to the Arch Notes 21 (3) 7 senior author. We hope that this information will assist in clarifying the cultural traditions and relations of Indigenous populations occupying southeastern and southwestern Ontario during the latter half of the first millennium A.D. Additional AMS dating of Point Peninsula vessels is also planned, in an effort to clarify the temporal range of this ceramic tradition and perhaps, the relation of its producers to the Early Woodland Meadowood peoples of Ontario. REFERENCES Heckenberger, M. and J. Petersen, E. Cowie, A. Spiess, L. Basa, R. Stuckenrath 1990 Early Woodland Period Mortuary Ceremonialism in the Far Northeast: A View from the Boucher Cemetery. Archaeology of Eastern North America. Vol. 18: 109-144. Mitchell, B. 1963 The occurrence of overall corded pottery in the Upper Ottawa Valley, Canada. American Antiquity 29:114-115. Poulin, J. 2014 Analysis of Archaeological Residues in Four Ceramic Vessels for Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec. Conservation Science Division, Report No. CSD 5207, CCI 127406. Canadian Conservation Institute. (7 pages) Ottawa. Segal, M. 1977 The Conservation Treatment of the Charleston Lake Ceramics. The Ottawa Archaeologist, Newsletter of the Ottawa Chapter, Ontario Archaeological Society. Vol. 7 No. 4: 8-15. Ottawa. Spence, M. and W. Fox 1986 The Early Woodland Occupations of Southern Ontario. Early Woodland Archeology Ed. K. Farnsworth and T. Emerson Center for American Archeology, Kampsville Seminars in Archeology Vol. 2: 4-46. Kampsville. Taché, K. and J. P. Hart 2013 Chronometric Hygiene of Radiocarbon Databases for Early Durable Cooking Vessel Technologies in Northeastern North America. American Antiquity Vol. 78 No. 2: 359-372. Wright, P.J. 1980 Prehistoric Ceramics from the Red Horse Lake Portage Site (BdGa-12) Eastern Ontario. Archaeology of Eastern North America Vol. 8: 53-70. SAVE THE DATE The Call for Papers will be released shortly. Those wishing to indicate interest in presenting a paper or perhaps participating in specific sessions, should contact Dr. Chris Watts at <c3watts@uwaterloo.ca>. Further information will be emailed to members and will also be announced on Facebook and the OAS website in the near future. May/Junel 2016 Arch Notes 21 (3)