| Summary: | "This volume on sixteenth-century contact, from Labrador to Lake Ontario, focuses on European goods found in Native contexts. It began as a conference session where speakers reported their finds showing sixteenth-century contact relations. In this volume, the authors analyse early contact networks from various geographic standpoints. Each chapter focuses on a particular region within greater networks, to form a conceptual interplay of place and mobility. The four initial chapters are set around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence where Euro-Native was direct and the historical record is strongest. Contact networks radiated northward into Inuit settings where European iron nails, roofing tile fragments and ceramics are found (Rankin and Crompton). Glass beads are scarce on Inuit sites as well as on Basque sites on the Gulf's north shore, but they are numerous in French Acadia to the south from where they spread into the Saint Lawrence estuary (Delmas). Ceramics on northern Basque sites are mostly from Spain, underscoring the Gulf's division between a Spanish Basque north and a French south (Barreiro Argüelles and Escribano Ruiz). An historical review discusses the partnership between Spanish Basques and Saint Lawrence Iroquoians c.1540-1580 (Loewen). The four chapters set in the Saint Lawrence valley show Tadoussac as a fork in inland networks. Saint Lawrence Iroquoians obtained glass beads around Tadoussac before 1580, and archaeology also clarifies their trade role and their disappearance some time before 1580. Algonquin from Lac Saint-Jean began trading at Tadoussac after 1580 (Plourde; Chapdelaine). They plied a northern route that linked to Huronia-Wendaki via the Ottawa Valley and the Frontenac Uplands (Moreau et al.; Fox and Pilon). Two distinct networks, the Saint Lawrence valley and the northern route, thus led inland from Tadoussac. Finally, four chapters set around Lake Ontario focus on contact between this region and the Saint Lawrence valley. Huron-Wendat sites around the Kawartha Lakes show an influx of Saint Lawrence trade in the sixteenth century, followed by an immigration wave about 1580 (Ramsden). Huron-Wendat sites near Toronto show an unabated inflow of Native materials from the Saint Lawrence valley throughout the sixteenth century (Williamson et al.). However, Neutral sites west of Lake Ontario show Native and European materials arriving from the south, rather than along the Saint Lawrence (Cooper). Finally, a review of glass bead evidence presented by various authors shows trends that cut across chapters and bring new impetus to the study of beads to discover sixteenth-century networks among French and Basque fishers, Inuit and Algonquian foragers and Iroquoian farmers (Loewen)."--
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