Mantle Site, Wendat (Huron) Ancestral Village

The Mantle site in southern Ontario, Canada, with an area of 4.2 hectares, the largest and most complex so far discovered settlement of the Wyandot, and the largest in the area north of the Great Lakes. The settlement of the early 16th century, is located northeast of Toronto in Whitchurch -Stouffville. The population is estimated to be at least 2,000.

The Mantle site was surrounded by three rows of palisades and possessed a large main square. At least 40,000 tree trunks were installed for the palisades and the houses. Another unusual feature is the fact that here the inhabitants of several villages came together to establish a common village. The new large village represented the only settlement in the so-called eastern Rouge trail that connected Lake Ontario in the south to the Lake Simcoe in the north.

Probably came in 1500, at least some of the residents from the designated later as Draper Site village, the Mantle site was about 5 km south-east. It is believed that leaching of the soil and back going wild stocks forced the relocation of the settlement, and that at least a part of the Wyandot moved to the Orillia Georgian Bay region. After about two to three decades, the United village was abandoned in any case. Probably the residents moved to the so-called Ratcliff site, possibly to the Aurora site, the site is also known as the Old Fort.

Of the more than 90 longhouses were permanently inhabited at least 50 simultaneously. They were 7 m long and 14 m wide on average, and almost 7 meters high. In every house lived one of the matrilineal groups, the men moved into the woman's family, as it was customary for all the Iroquois, which include the Wyandot in the broader sense and is.

Several hundred to a few thousand hectares of cultivated land were needed to feed the village; the corn fields that provided the nutritional requirements in half, so several kilometers extended into the countryside. In addition, the oldest known sewage system was discovered in eastern Canada in the village.

At least since 1906, was known in the area that, Concession 9 was an archaeological site on Lot 33. She was rescued in 2003 at the beginning of a housing development at Stouffville Creek as part of a rescue excavation. More than 100,000 artifacts could be secured. Some of the artifacts are very similar to finds from the state of New York.

After the discovery of the village, founded in 1980, the Archaeological Services Inc. was contracted to carry out an assessment of the archaeological site. On this basis it was decided to provide 5% of the archaeological site under protection, an area which skirted mainly by the stream. The resulting findings should be brought to the appropriate institutions of McMaster University and the University of Toronto.

The archaeological excavations from 2003 to 2005 under the direction of archaeologist Ron Williamson instead. 2004 were members of the First Nations umwohnenden who consider the place as a village of their ancestors, together ceremonies. To prevent vandalism and robbery, the archaeological site was kept secret in 2007.

After the excavation, construction work continued, only a small cemetery was preserved due to the protective provisions of the Funeral Act of Ontario. Usually, in the Wyandot the bones were dug up after ten years in a ceremony and reburied in a mass grave. This was, however, not found in the case of the Mantle site. 2010, additional construction planned the Town of Whitchurch -Stouffville nevertheless immediately south of the archaeological site.

2007 recognized the council of Whitchurch -Stouffville in the Mantle site as "one of the most significant Huron ancestral villages in Southern Ontario " and pledged to cooperate with the Wyandot, to give the watercourses, roads and paths of them selected name. By 2011, this promise was not honored, however.

The local museum in Vandorf built 2009, obtained from the excavation findings in a program called Discover First Nations.