Village Growth

By AD 800 small palisaded villages up to one hectare in size were being constructed. A Pickering village, built about AD 800, probably had eight to nine longhouses and some 250 people. The floor plan of a longhouse from a Glen Meyer site over 80 km to the southwest shows two central hearths, suggesting occupation by four families. Later, villages and houses of the Glen Meyer and Pickering peoples increased in size and complexity; one l0th-century Glen Meyer village expanded from 0.5 to 1.2 hectare in three different stages of construction.

Villages continued to increase in size and complexity until the largest were more than 4 hectare in size. Some houses were more than 90 m long. Calculations based on totally excavated villages suggest that some 600 people occupied each village hectare. When Champlain reached Huronia in 1615, there may have been as many as 25 Huron villages averaging some 2 hectare in size; his estimate that there were 30,000 Hurons is archaeologically feasible.