---

Culture history

Ontario prehistory is divided into three large groups:

• Early pre-ceramic Paleoindian and Archaic foragers
  
• Late prehistoric ceramic-making Woodland and Iroquois horticulturalists.
  
• Protohistoric emergent First Nations.

These stages are divided into traditional early, middle and late varieties, sometimes amplified into early-middle, late-middle and so forth.

The Paleoindian period is presented in the greatest detail, reflecting the special research interests of the primary editor, Chris Ellis. Limited evidence related to initial human settlement in southern Ontario is balanced by a wealth of relevant maps and illustrations, describing the Pleistocene environment in which they lived. Because the subsequent Archaic Stage has attracted little attention in print compared with the drama of Paleoindian origins, this chapter is particularly useful. Arguably this is the best summary of lower Great Lakes Archaic traditions since Ritchie's (1969) Archaeology of New York State, forty years ago. It provides many illustrations of definitive material culture types.

---

© Internet Archaeology URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue10/reviews/latta/ml_history1.html
Last updated: Mon Aug 6 2001