Social network analysis of Iroquoian sites in the St. Lawrence River Valley : AD 1400– 1600
Article [Version of Record]
Is part of
Journal of historical network research ; vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 98-144.Publisher(s)
Centre for contemporary and digital historyHistorical network research community
Abstract(s)
Relatively little is known from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century AD ethnohistorical record about Iroquoian societies in the St Lawrence River
Valley compared to the Huron-Wendat in southern Ontario and Haudenosaunee
in New York. This is because Iroquoian villagers dispersed from the valley over
the course of the sixteenth century. Here we use formal social network analysis to
build on understandings of St. Lawrence Iroquoians’ socio-political interactions
within and outside of the valley from AD 1400 to 1600. This analysis is based on
pottery vessel decorations as signals of female membership in socio-political networks. Results indicate valley-long coalitional networks that became looser at the
end of the sixteenth century as St. Lawrence Iroquoians dispersed from the valley