Using radiocarbon dating to study the trade interactions in North America by Dr. Megan Conger

Dr. Megan Conger of the University of Georgia’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies discusses “Radiocarbon Dating Early Trade and World System Expansion in Iroquoian Southern Ontario, Canada, AD 1550-1650,” at the BRAG March 2024 meeting.

The first sustained interactions between Indigenous people in North America and Europeans centered around trade. Ancestral Wendat people living around what is now southern Ontario, Canada, were some of the first Indigenous people to participate in transatlantic trade with Europeans during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This trade network, centered around the exchange of beaver pelts, would intertwine Indigenous and European worlds in complex ways for centuries to come. This project uses radiocarbon dating and the analysis of European-manufactured items to investigate when and how different Ancestral Wendat communities were participating in the earliest exchange networks that included European partners.

Radiocarbon chronologies are based on scientific measurements of isotope ratios in short-lived plant and animal remains. They indicate that most communities were participating in exchange networks by the mid-sixteenth century. European-manufactured item assemblages, consisting of glass beads and metal tools, highlight variation in the roles these communities played in the burgeoning North Atlantic fur trade. Communities at the western end of Lake Ontario played a supplier role, while groups on the North-eastern shore of Lake Ontario acted as intermediaries. These results indicate the active role that Ancestral Wendat people played in developing and shaping the early fur trade and highlight the fact that different communities drew upon the social and physical resources they had to participate in different ways.

Megan Anne Conger received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Georgia in 2022. She is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia, where she conducts research in the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory. Though her current research focuses on 16th- and 17th century Ancestral Huron-Wendat sites in Ontario, Canada, she has worked on archaeological field projects and in museums around the world, including in Georgia, New Mexico, Illinois, and New York in the US, in and around Toronto in Canada, and the Hövsgöl Province in Mongolia. She has ten years of experience working with museum collections and specializes in collections-based research.