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Excavation at Burley site
circa 1947-1950
Port Franks, Ontario, Canada


Credits:
Museum of Ontario Archaeology

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Those three stratified layers on the Burley site had been deposited during what archaeologists now know to be the Initial Woodland period (900 B.C. - 500 A.D.), the Middle Ontario Iroquoian period (1300-1350, contemporaneous with the Crawford site) and the Late Ontario Iroquoian period (prehistoric Neutral stage circa 1400-1500 A.D.). The lowest level yielded pottery totally unfamiliar to Wilf and his interpretation of it as characteristic of the Initial Woodland Period was based on the expert opinion of Dr. James B. Griffin, then Director of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Also at that time (1950) American anthropologists were developing a radical new method for dating sites, and samples of wood charcoal from Burley yielded the first radiocarbon date for a Canadian site.