Taber Hill
Taber Hill or Tabor Hill is a 20 m high Iroquois burial mound or mound in the Canadian city of Toronto . It is located north of Lawrence Avenue East at Bellamy Road North in Scarborough and towers 53 m over Lake Ontario .
The site is attributed to the Wyandot or Hurons.
excavation
On August 17, 1956, when the hill was prepared for clearing by removing the trees and bushes, work was stopped. The ground was to be used for the construction of Highway 401 , and a new district was to be built on the leveled area.
After about 30 m, workers came across a large collection of human bones. They were located on an area more than 17 m long and over 2 m deep. The burials of around 472 individuals had taken place around 1250. The bones were reburied by traditional chiefs.
Recognition as a historic site
The tomb was declared a cemetery and taken over by the province. In 1961, Scarborough recognized the hill as a Historic Site. Two information boards have been explaining their former function and the course of the discovery since 1966, or offer an Iroquois prayer; In 1974 the hill was declared a Historic Site under the Ontario Heritage Act . In 1998 the city council banned recreational activities out of respect for the site.
classification
The site belongs to the phase known as the Early Iroquian , i.e. the early Iroquois period, which is dated to around 1000 to 1300. This phase was followed by Middle Iroquian (1300 to 1330), then the Middleport phase (1330 to 1420) and finally Late Precontact (1420 to 1534), with "Precontact" being the phase before the first encounter with Europeans, in this case with Champlain is meant. The earliest Iroquois phase, which is dated from 500 to 1000, is called Princess Point and probably belonged to a nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life, which was already growing maize.
In southern Ontario , around 50 Iroquois villages from before 1534, the year of the first encounter with Champlain, have been partially or fully excavated. In central southern Ontario alone, the number of villages is estimated at 750; if you include the southwest, you get twice that number - despite the fact that the expansion of Toronto alone between 1951 and 1991 in the metropolitan region around 2500 archaeological sites more or less unknowingly destroyed. Of these, perhaps 650 would have justified digging.
The high number of villages is due to the fact that the Wyandot only lived in their villages for a few decades and rarely repopulated the abandoned sites. It is assumed that the Iroquois came to the region around 500, which can be proven by the continuity of the guide finds into the 17th century. They did not advance further north, as their agricultural, corn and bean-based way of life was incompatible with the colder, more northerly areas marked by less frost-free days.
The large number of corpses that were discovered in the hill is explained by the fact that the deceased were buried together in large, cultic funerals.
literature
- CS Churcher, Walter Andrew Kenyon: The Tabor Hill Ossuaries: A Study in Iroquois Demography , in: Human Biology 32 (1960) 249-273.
Remarks
- ^ Recognition of Native Cemetery Ward 15 - Scarborough City Center City of Toronto.
- ↑ Jordan E. Kerber: Archeology of the Iroquois. Selected Readings and Research Sources , Syracuse University Press, 2007, p. 128.
- ↑ Jordan E. Kerber: Archeology of the Iroquois. Selected Readings and Research Sources , Syracuse University Press, 2007, p. 124.