The Princess Point marked a transition to early
maize-based agriculture and an increasingly sedentary way of life. Stothers describes Princess Point maize cultivation as "developmental-experimental", and notes the appearance of
palisaded agricultural villages containing proto-
longhouses. Maize cultivation as a supplement to foraged foods began at least as early as 500 CE. James V. Wright linked the Princess Point culture with the introduction of maize agriculture into Ontario. There was a general westward geographic shift in focus during this period, with the appearance of sites such as the Glass site (
AgHb-5) on the western bank of the
Grand River. By the end phase of this Grand River focus, however, occupation had shifted away from river-adjacent
floodplains to well-drained sandy hills and plains in modern-day
Norfolk County, which were more suitable for maize agriculture.
Early maize cultivation in Ontario The Princess Point culture is linked to the introduction of maize to Ontario. This was initially believed in the 1970s to have occurred around AD 650. Later
accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) testing done in the mid-1990s on samples from the Grand Banks site (AfGx-3) returned a
calibrated radiocarbon date of AD 540. ==Archaeological framework==