Drs. Sempowski and Saunders will analyze and publish the large collection of Seneca Indian material held by the Rochester Museum of Science Center. In total this consists of ca. one million artifacts and 800 skeletal samples from nearly 50 Seneca sites which represent an unbroken sequence of villages occupied from 1550 to 1820 A.D. Most of the material was derived from the excavation of over 3000 burials and is supported by maps, field notes and other written and photographic evidence. While Charles Wray, the primary excavator, worked out a chronology based on these materials that has been widely used, the basic data have never been published. Drs. Sempowski and Saunders will re-analyze the artifactual material using a revised typology. They will also study the skeletal materials, aging and sexing individual skeletons and noting signs of pathology. They will examine the associated mortuary materials as well and the results of all these analyses will be published. In their own analyses they plan to investigate the dimensions of social and cultural change which took place over this span of time. These include: demographic trends and their possible relation to disease, famine and absorption of outsiders: biological relationships within the Seneca population; interrelationships with other native groups; and the impact of European goods and the fur trade economy on Seneca culture, technology and internal status hierarchies. This research is important for several reasons. First, it will show how both indirect and direct European presence affected a native American group and how this population responded to the stresses thus imposed. Second, it will make a large and anthropologically significant body of data available to the research community.
