Ferris Telling Tales 1 Telling Tales: Interpretive Trends in Southern Ontario Late Woodland Archaeology Neal Ferris The publication in 1966 of Jim Wright’s The Ontario Iroquois Tradition and his construction of the Late Woodland culture history for southern Ontario has had a tremendous impact on how this part of the archaeological record has been thought about since. Yet a critical component of this construct, often referred to as the Conquest Hypothesis or Theory, has always proven problematic and contentious, and generally has been rejected by Wright’s colleagues. This seeming paradox in rejecting a critical interpretative construct while embracing the model serves as the starting point here for examining the ways in which archaeologists have come to think about and interpret, and re-interpret the Late Woodland history of southern Ontario. In moving away from the normative assumptions inherent in the Ontario Iroquois Tradition model, and actively engaging broader theoretical discussion, Ontario archaeologists are beginning to ask different questions of – and apply new perspectives to – the archaeological record. What I offer here is an example of the kind of story that can be told based on such changing interpretive approaches to the Late Woodland period. Through application of a long-term, historical perspective to the archaeological record, and recognition of the role of agency, the period of the supposed Pickering Conquest is seen as representing both a range of variable local responses to on-going change, and strategies of response based on over a millennium of cultural development, rather than a sudden, militaristic “hiccup” in between long periods of cultural equilibrium. I also intentionally offer here fictive vignettes, an informal voice, and play, all of which are intended to underscore the point that archaeology, ultimately, is about telling stories about the past. In the end, it is up to you, the audience, to decide whether this story “works,” and if so, where it will go next. Introduction Across the world over the last thirty years and more archaeologists have increasingly been involved in self-reflective debates and dis- cussions. Focussed on archaeological theory, concepts, assumptions, and ultimately on methodological, interpretive and personal limitations, these debates have radically challenged how we, as archaeologists, think about what it is we do, conceive of the material remains we work with, and construct our understanding of the past (see Johnson 1999; Trigger 1989 for reviews of these trends; see as examples Binford 1989; Hodder 2001 ed.; Knapp 1996; Preucel 1991 ed. and Schiffer 2000 ed. for a sampling of this cacophony). To varying degrees (Kelley and Williamson 1996; Wright 1985), these issues slowly have found their way into Canadian and Ontario arch- aeological studies, and have affected how archaeologists perceive the record they are working with and re-constructing. My interest here is to review the manifestation of these broader conceptual trends in the study of the Late Woodland in the southern Ontario region north of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie over the last 35 years, and the potential for these trends to enrich future investigations of this period. Commonly thought of as the ancient or pre-contact history of particular Iroquoian- speaking peoples, this part of the archaeological record has dominated the attention of archaeological research in the south of the province (e.g., Ellis and Ferris 1990 eds.). This is not surprising, given that the record for this period is massive, rich and covers significant cultural developments, comparable in research potential to many other regions of the globe (Ramsden 1996). Archaeologists here have also worked with a