4 Letters to the Editor ...Patrick Horne 27 ...Geoff
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A NEWLY DATED MIDDLE WOODLAND POINT, RICE LAKE, ONTARIO ..•L.J. Jackson 5 ARCHAEOLOGICAL LICENCES, 1987, 3rd List Archaeological Wood Symposium Grand River/Waterloo Chapter, O.A.S. - Canoe Trip ...Lois McCulloch 16 Ontario Heritage Policy Review: 1) Comments by the Ontario Council of Professional Osteologists 17 2) Submission by the Windsor Chapter, O.A.S. 20 Press Cuttings: 1) Fort York Dig 22 2) Age Old Clocks 24 Letters To The Editor ...Patrick Horne 27 ...Geoff. Sutherland 28 ...Michael Gramly 29 O.A.S. 14th Annual Symposium - Rivers Through Time: Archaeology Along Our Eastern Waterways 31 !look Review: "Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History" ...M. T. Kelly 32 From The O.A.S. Office 34 newsletter publ ished by The Ontario Archaeological Soci~1.Y P.o. Box 241, Postal Station P, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2S8 The Ontario Archaeological Society Inc. P.O. Box 241, Postal Station P, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2S8 Second Class mail registration number 7009 Return Postage Guaranteed MORE THAN $58,000 AWARDED TO HERITAGE PROGRAMS BY MINISTRY OF CITIZENSHIP AND CULTLRE The O.A.s. was one recipient of part of the $58,533 in grants given to heritage groups and organizations for promoting local history, hiring interns and a var- iety of other programs aimed at increasing the quality of heritage conservation in Onta rio. "All of these grants will help to ensure the preservation of Ontario's rich her- itage," Minister of Citizenship and Culture, Dr. Lily Munro said. AMOUNT ORGANI ZATION PURPOs E $200 Township of Finch, Berwick To promote local history $200 Rota ry C1ub of Bowmanvi 11e, To promote local Bowmanville chari ties $2,300 Commanda General Store, To defray operational Commanda costs $200 St. John's Lutheran Church, To promote local history Elmwood $286 Architectural Conservancy To improve standa rds of Ontario, Hamilton-Niagara home renovations $7,846 Century Village, Lang Keene To hire an intern $34,301 Peterborough Heritage Infor- To purchase computer soft- mati on Network, Lang ware and furnishings $3,200 Mattawa & District Museum, To operate museum Mattawa $10,000 Ottawa Valley Historical Society, Pembroke Queenston United Church, Queens ton $200 St. Catharines Historical Museum, St. Catharines $200 Osgoode Township Historical To _promote interest in Society, Vernon local history $24,000 Peel Heritage Complex, Brampton To hire two interns $521 /10ntgomery's Inn, Etobicoke To host an Irish musi- cal event $9,521 Association of Canadian To conduct a series of Archi vists, Toronto skills training workshops $7,074 Ontario Archaeological Society, To purchase computer Toronto equi pmen t 516,862 Ontario Genealogical Society, To undertake a manage- Toronto ment and marketing study The dog days of summer are upon us and as many of you out there are in the field getting dirty and insect-bitten while pushing back the veil of history, your Executive and Administrator have been doing the same as well as plodding along with O.A.S. business. The Passport to the Past program was officially inaugurated on Canada Day. The Executive were among the first to sign up for what I hope will be a very long list of proud passport holders. The Honourable Lily Munro, Minister of Citizen- ship and Culture, has been awarded a passport in recognition of her abiding in- terest in archaeology and her work, albeit brief, on the Thornton Blackburn site. The chapters have been very active these past months. Ken aldridge, President, and the Grand River-Waterloo Chapter are having a successful season of excava- tions in the Guelph area with Dr. Peter Ramsden overseeing the chapter's efforts on a couple of Archaic sites. I was pleased to learn that several chapters made presentations at their local Ontario Heritage Policy Review meetings. Rosemarie Denunzio, President of Win- dsor Chapter, was among those chapter representatives who spoke and her words appear elsewhere in this issue. The Policy Review process is not yet over and we soon will be forwarding written remarks on the subject as it pertains to ar- chaeology in the province. As always, your co~ents and concerns will be glad- lyentertained. Please feel free to send them along to the Executive or write directly to Mr. Greg Baeker, Ontario Heritage Policy Review, Ministry of Citi- zenship and Culture,Toronto. Other news ...all of our accounting procedures are now fully computerized and we are working towards producing a computer-generated and assembled issue of ARCH NOTES in the very near future~ ...Monographs in Ontario Archaeology and Ontario Archaeology are proceeding apace. We are experiencing some understand- able difficulties in bringing these to fruition so expect a certain amount of delay and please do not adjust your mailbox ...You will please note that in- cluded with this mailing is a pre-registration form for the annual O.A.S. Sym- posium to be hosted this year by the .Ottawa Chapter. The Symposium Committees are working very hard to ensure that it will be a success so plan now on being in Ottawa October 23-25. Thinking of the Symposium reminds me that it is now time to strike a Nominat- ing Committee to seek candidates for Executive office for 19BB. We will def- initely have at least one vacant Director's position as Norma Knowlton has decided not to stand for re-election. If anyone would like to serve the O.A.S. by running for office, please do not hesitate to throw your hat into the ring. The D.A.S. needs you: The position of Director functions as a sort of Exetutive-member-without-portfolio and is an excellent opportunity to learn about how the C.A.S. functions and to help mould policy on archaeological matters in Ontario. However, do remember that all positions are open for election every year. As a last note I would like to mention that a very generous donation has been made to the a.A.S. in memory of the rate Dr. Walter Kenyon. On behalf of the members, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the donor. Why, 10,000 years or so ago, did people first settle down and go to the trouble of sowing, cultivating and reaping crops? The question has long tantalized an- thropologists and archeologists because, once its answer is clear, they will know what sparked the long transformation of humans from wandering hunters in- to literate city dwellers. Beer did it, argues an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The event that "primed the pump," according to this new hypothesis, was the accidental discovery by pre-historic humans that wild wheat and barley soaked in water to make gruel did not spoil if left out in the open air. Instead, natural yeast in the air converted it to a dark, bubbling brew that made whoever drank it feel good. In addition, the brew made people robust; at the time, it was second only to animal protein as a nutritional source. This combination of mood-altering and nutritional properties would have been incentive enough to cause neolithic hunter-gatherers in the Near East to begin cultivating the grains, Dr. Solomon Katz contends in an article in Expedition, the journal of the Museum of Archeology-Anthropology at the University of Pen- nsylvania. "My argument," Dr. Katz said in an interview, "is that the initial discovery of a stable way to produce alcohol provided enormous motivation for continuing to go out and collect these seeds and try to get them to do better." Dr. Katz wrote in his article that "almost invariably, individuals and societ- ies appear to invest enormous amounts of effort and even· risk" in the pursuit of mind-altering foods and beverages. Strong motivation would have been required to break away from the hunting-gath- ering way of life, according to one view among archeologists, because--contrary to myth--hunting and gathering provided a higher and more reliable standard of living, with less work, than the onerous and often chancy pursuit of agricul- ture. Over the past two decades, neolithic specialists have generally favored envir- onmental explanations for the birth of agriculture. For instance, it has been commonly held that population increases forced neolithic peoples to search for ways to expand the food supply. Now, however, some scholars are beginning to doubt this explanation and are giving more weight to cultural factors. Dr. Katz's specialty is the study of the development of cuisine, broadly defined, as one such cultural factor. While Dr. Katz's beer hypothesis is likely to attract interest, skepticism is already being expressed. The views expressed inthispublicatiodno not necessarilyrepresentthe views of the editor or ofThe OntarioArchaeologicalSocietyInc. In the course of 1985 test excu,'atioTls in t.he Plainville Valley Region south of Ric:e Lake (Fi.gure ]), a number' of small 'si tes "ere exalilined for evidence of Palaeo- Indiall oc<'upation. TesU ng at t.he ButtaI' site (BaGn-72) produced artifacts of Palaeo-Indian through i\rchaie age. One t.est excu\'ation in a low s"ale about 200 m. sout.h of a smaIl east -"est flowing stream, and si tuated behind an intprvening sandy knoJl, r'evp.aJ,>da sma.11activity area of unknown age. A corner-notched point base of uncietennined t.ype was excavated from the surface of a hearth feature beneat,h t.he plough zone \Figure 2). This feature occurred, together with other non-cultural subsoil anomalies, in a test excavation area of about 64 square metres which defined the maximumextent of prehistoric activity (Figure 3). All of the materials recovered from the plough zone were lithics and all but one item was on Onondaga chert.