The Porteous site in Brantford has stood as the earliest Iroquoian village in Ontario since David Stothers’ excavations in 1970 and his identification of the site as the “Terminal Phase” of the Princess Point Complex in his 1974 dissertation. A series of seven wood solid carbon samples provided occupation dates ranging from 900 to 1470 (uncal) years BP, with a pooled date of 1170 +/- 205 BP or 780 C.E. Some of these dates were deemed suspect due to the lab and the use of amalgamated wood charcoal samples; so, modern dating using AMS technology and carbonized annuals was attempted. The resultant series of “unacceptable” dates triggered an attempt to re-date a sequential movement of early Late Woodland villages on the Norfolk sand plain, which appeared to derive from Grand River valley populations to the east. Bayesian modeling of the resulting dates has provided a revised and refined chronology, consistent with ceramic decorative attribute trends from early through middle stage Ontario Iroquoian sites. 

Bill grew up in east end Hamilton where he began his archaeological career as a young teen. He invited the ROM/OAS to rescue excavate the King’s Forest Park site in 1962 and in 1965 he rescue excavated the Pergentile site using high school volunteers. He published his first article in Ontario Archaeology in 1967. He graduated from the University of Toronto with an M.A. in 1971 and directed his first professional excavation on the DeWaele village site. Bill worked for the Province in various archaeological roles from 1972 to 1991 and was President of the OAS in 1979. He helped to establish the London and Peterborough Chapters. He worked for Parks Canada between 1992 - 2013 as Chief of Archaeology and then in various National Park management roles in the Western Arctic Field Unit, Pacific Rim NPR, and the Trent-Severn Waterway. He joined Trent University as an Adjunct Professor in the Anthropology Graduate Program in 2011 and is currently Director of the Trent University Archaeological Research Centre. Bill has undertaken archaeology in Britain, France, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Mongolia, and the U.S. 

Paradise Park offered a unique opportunity to investigate two archaeological sites representing both Redware and White Marl occupations. The sites are separated by about 250 m in distance and 500 years in time. This research documented differences in cultural practices in the same environmental setting, and was among the first to identify large-scale environmental changes resulting from pre-Columbian land use practices. This presentation explores the data generated during five field seasons of research at the sites.

Dr. Bill Keegan is Curator of Caribbean Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. Over the past 40 years he has directed research on Jamaica, Cuba, Grand Cayman, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Turks & Caicos Islands, The Bahamas, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Trinidad. His publications include the Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology (Edited with C.L. Hofman and R. Rodriguez Ramos, 2013) and The Caribbean before Columbus (with C.L. Hofman, OUP 2017).

Dr. Chris Ellis is Professor Emeritus with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario and is a Research Associate with the Sustainable Archaeology Facility, Museum of Ontario Archaeology, London, Ontario

He is an archaeologist with major theoretical interests in explaining variation amongst peoples who subsisted by hunting and gathering and in improving means of extracting information about past societies from their stone tool assemblages. He has been involved in Ontario Archaeology, and more broadly, Great Lakes archaeology, for over 40 years and has focused temporally on the earliest evidence for human occupation dating in excess of 2500 years ago. He has published extensively on that work in several monographs and many papers. He is originally from Oshawa, Ontario and has an Honours BA from the University of Waterloo and an MA from McMaster, both in Anthropology, but his PhD is in archaeology from Simon Fraser University.