Located on the eastern bank of the Fairchild Creek tributary, near Brantford, Ontario, the Fonger Site (AhHb-8) was identified as a protohistoric Neutral Iroquois village, ca. AD 1590-1630. The site was excavated under the supervision of Gary Warrick in 1978 and 1979 with the intent of better understanding Iroquois village layouts and organisation.

The goals of the project were to excavate as much of the village as possible in order to represent all middens and as many houses as possible of this relatively small site (0.8 ham, at least 18 longhouses).The complexity of house patterns, particularly in the west half of the site, however limited the extent of investigations and many of the middens were found to have been substantially destroyed by ploughing and erosion. Nevertheless, Warrick presented a number of interpretations including the village’s development, house sequences (including a major fire event), and community organisation (Warrick 1983).

At SA McMaster:

Sustainable Archaeology McMaster houses 15 boxes of artifacts from the Fonger site, including lithics, ceramics, faunal, botanical samples and metals. Some of the original fieldnotes and records are also available.

Resources about this site:

Warrick, G.A. (1983). Reconstruction Ontario Iroquoian Village Organisation. Unpublished thesis submitted for MA at Simon Fraser University, April 1983.

Warrick, G.A. (1984). Reconstructing Ontario Iroquoian Villages. Mercury Series, paper no. 124. Archaeological Survey of Canada. National Museum of Man. Canada.