An Early Hunter-Gatherer Cemetery in the Canadian Lower Great Lakes

Abstract

The timing and context of the first emergence of cemeteries is of broad interest to archaeologists who wish to understand and explain changes in social complexity in late hunter-gatherer societies. Eastern North America has a particularly informative archaeological record for generating insight into how and why relatively small scale communities transform into much larger and regionally integrated societies, especially as these major transformations occur prior to the emergence of maize-based polities about 800 years ago (Sassaman 2010). An important element of this record of cultural change is innovation, transmission and adoption of new ideas concerning mortuary practices, and variation in these rituals over time provides considerable insight into the organizational complexity of hunter-gatherer societies.