Axing Assumptions: Reconsidering Uses and Users of Fourteenth- to Fifteenth-Century Wendat Ground Stone Celts.

Throughout the world, archaeologists traditionally attribute ground stone celts to woodworking and, by extension, to the masculine realm. This paper challenges the application of this universalizing, functionally narrow, and androcentric narrative by engaging with ancestral Wendat (Huron) ground stone celts through the writings of Wendat authors, early contact ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, and experimental archaeology. Use-wear analyses conducted on celts sampled from three Wendat villages occupied between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reveal traces of different gestures and contact materials. Beyond field clearing and construction, ground stone celts were an integral part of various aspects of ancestral Wendat village life, including the transformation of trees, plants, soils, and animals. By exposing the traces that testify to these various encounters, this article expands ancestral Wendat ground stone celts' functional and gendered attributions, bringing to light the complex diversity contained within this understudied yet normalized object category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]