Harpoon gets its lashings

I was putting the sealskin lashings on the harpoon shaft today.  The shaft is a spruce Christmas tree, because the archaeologist that ordered it is also a huge fan of Christmas.  Its based on the Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon shaft from the bog at L'Anse aux Meadows.  The bindings are all hooded sealskin.  When the lashings shrink and dry, the whole thing will be covered in red ochre.

It has a two part socket, with a lashed brace piece scarfed into place.

A slight narrowing on the original wood shaft is interpreted as a place to secure the harpoon line to the main shaft.

A whalebone ice-pick is lashed to the end where a long sloping scarf joint was preserved on the L'Anse aux Meadows harpoon shaft.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Middle Dorset Harpoon Reproduction (mostly..)

Dorset Harpoon

Its been kind of a hectic week.  I shipped this harpoon and the atlatl from last Friday's post off to Mount Royal University in Calgary today and I'm still plugging away on the Cape Krusenstern reproductions.  Mild panic is starting to set in from the rapidly approaching field season and somehow I got sucked into the middle of the controversy surrounding the Parks Canada Archaeology cuts.

Krusenstern, still working

Since I first posted my concerns about what is happening to archaeology at Parks Canada 10 days ago, I've had a couple thousand extra people visit the blog to read the posts on the topic and that interest turned into two local radio interviews, one national radio interview and a print interview with the Toronto Star.   I'll continue to make updates to the blog post called Updated: Summary of Archaeology Cuts to Parks Canada Agency, but that's enough of that for now - I don't want being an amateur curmudgeon to take over this blog.

chert tip-fluted endblade on harpoon

The harpoon that I sent to Calgary is a Middle Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon based on artifacts from Newfoundland and Labrador.  The harpoon head and foreshaft are based on artifacts collected over the past several decades by Memorial University researchers working at the National Historic Site at Port au Choix.  I've mentioned Port au Choix pretty much weekly every since I started this blog - here's a link to a big order that I prepared for the site last spring for interpreters to use in hands-on programming.  Port au Choix is one of the National Historic Sites that is losing its interpretive staff as part of the Parks Canada cuts coming out of the current federal budget, so who knows if you'll actually see a person holding these things if you visit the site after Bill C-38 passes.  Sorry, I promised I would try to avoid that topic, but its all connected.

Middle Dorset Harpoon Reproduction; spruce main shaft, sealskin lashings and line, braided sinew lanyard, antler foreshaft and harpoon head, chert endblade.

Foreshaft & Harpoon Head

Ok.  The harpoon head is made from antler and I used antler for the short foreshaft as well.  This is a Dorset style harpoon and there are fragments of  harpoon shafts from Dorset sites in the Arctic, but based on the geographic, if not temporal proximity, I used the tamarack Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon shaft from L'Anse Aux Meadows as my primary reference for the main shaft.  The original artifact and the reproduction that I made of it are on display in the new exhibits dedicated to the aboriginal story of L'Anse aux Meadows - a National Historic Site excavated by independent researchers, Memorial University archaeologists, and Parks Canada archaeologists over the past 50 years.  The particular artifact that I based this main shaft on came out of the Parks Canada excavations at the site in the 1970s.  Up until this exhibit, it was stored in an archaeological laboratory in Dartmouth along with the other artifacts from the site not on display in the interpretation centre in Newfoundland.  Parks Canada is 3 years into a 20 year lease on this building and it is one of the service centres being shut down because of the budget cuts.  Everything that was stored in it is being relocated to Ottawa along with millions of other artifacts and historic objects from similar labs located in Calgary, Winnipeg, Cornwall, and Quebec.  Dammit, I did it again. Forget it. I need a beer.

Adam, I promise I'm still working on these.  These are Cape Krusenstern reproductions in progress - a knife handle, a nephrite adze fragment and a barbed point found in two pieces.  For scale, the barbed point is about the size of a ballpoint pen.  Its pretty much ready to break in half to match the original artifacts.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

L'Anse aux Meadows Reproductions Installed

I was reading Laura Eliza Silverado: Adventures in Labrador a few days ago and was pleased to see Eliza's photos of a of set of reproductions that I made for L'Anse aux Meadows back in 2009.  The last time I saw these reproductions was when they were packed up and shipped back to Parks Canada along with the artifacts that inspired them.  

I haven't seen the completed display in person, but luckily when Eliza and Laura were blown off course on their way to Labrador by a small hurricane they had time to visit the newly renovated interpretation centre at L'Anse aux Meadows.  Eliza helped me get a hold of the sealskin and also shave it down with stone tools, so she recognized the pieces on display.  She sent me these pictures.  I love that they are displayed along side the original artifacts and that the sign says "Please Touch".

Photo Credits: Eliza Brandy

Packing, Shipping, Travelling

Chert knives and knapping tools

I'm sitting at the St. John's airport with my fingers crossed.  If there happens to be a break in the blowing snow at 7AM then I'll be on my way to Rocky Harbour in Gros Morne National Park in an hour or so.  Its just a quick two-day trip to film a flintknapping session for use in the Interpretation Centre at L'Anse aux Meadows.  The Parks Canada offices and the film-maker are on the west coast of Newfoundland and I'm in the east.  We've been trying to work out a time to film since I finished the harpoon and other reproductions for the site last spring and were finally able to sneak this trip in before the end of the current budget year.   I'll be knapping a Dorset Palaeoeskimo knife from chert.

Packing up the set

Yesterday, Lori packaged up the last 10 pieces in the Central Arctic set and we shipped them off to the client in Burnaby.  Its a big relief to have that order done and off my plate - although I won't be able to completely relax until I know that it all arrived safe and sound.  As soon as I get a moment to sit down at the computer again, I'll post a few more shots of the last piece in the set and do a wrap-up post on the project.

Unfortunately I had to ship the whip before leaving for the filming.  How will anyone know I'm an archaeologist now?

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Wander Back in Time: L'Anse aux Meadows

In September 2009, Lori was part of an archaeology crew at L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site testing areas that were going to be impacted by expanding the Parks Canada buildings and infrastructure.  Here are some photos from her tour through the reconstructed sod buildings.

 

Photo Credits:
1-8: Lori White
9: Derrick LeGrow

L'Anse Aux Meadows Groswater Palaeoeskimo Harpoon

The harpoon; reproduction and artifact

Here's a look at the completed Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon reproduction based on that amazingly preserved wood shaft found in a bog on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula.  The tamarack harpoon shaft was recovered during archaeological excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows in the 1970s.  The original artifact was radiocarbon dated to 2970+/-110BP and this reproduction illustrates how it would have looked when it was first made and used almost 30 centuries ago.

The artifact was a remarkably complete and well preserved harpoon mainshaft

wrapping the icepick onto the mainshaft

The harpoon has a square cross-section with slightly rounded edges.  Its remarkably consistent in width and thickness along its 121 cm length, varying only a millimetre or two between 23 and 24 mm from end to end.  It only deviated from that constant diameter where the wood worker removed wood to allow another piece of the harpoon to be strapped into place. There is a long taper at the base where something would have been scarfed onto the mainshaft.  Sometimes Palaeoeskimo harpoons were scarfed together out of several short sections of wood, especially at sites above the treeline where the only available wood would be driftwood. 

Most of the ice pick is under the lashing

The L'Anse aux Meadows harpoon is long enough as it is, so I don't believe that an extra wood section would have been lashed to the scarf.  I think its more likely that it was an icepick of some kind, made from bone, antler or ivory.  We decided to use whalebone on the reproduction.  Ice picks were handy tools when hunting seals on the ice, to test for dangerously thin ice while walking,  to chip away and enlarge a seal's breathing hole, or to pin into the ice to create added leverage while hauling the harpooned prey out of the water.

The narrowings on the artifact told me wear to add the lashings on the reproduction

The harpoon line passes through the strap

A narrowing was added to the shaft close to the foreshaft socket that I believe was designed to lash the harpoon line in place.  Having some place on the mainshaft to secure the harpoon line would allow some tension to be put in the line to help secure the harpoon head and it would also keep all of the harpoon pieces together when the the seal was stabbed.  I can't be certain exactly how this lashing would have worked, but I think the narrowing in the wood indicates where the line was attached.

A clever slipknot to create line tension

Here's an interesting trick that I just learned from Eskimos and Explorers by Wendell Oswalt to attach the harpoon line to this type of lashing.  Rather than thread the entire line through the lashing, a single small loop could be threaded through.  This creates a kind of slip knot that lets the harpooner place tension in the line to help secure the harpoon head, but the moment that the prey tugs on the harpoon head it would let go and allow the harpoon head to detach and toggle.   If you search out Oswalt's book, he also has an excellent description of how ice picks were used to create leverage while hauling a harpooned walrus out of the water.

The socket still works

I think when you see the socketed end of the main shaft next to the reproduction you can see how carefully shaped and well-preserved the artifact is.  It might look like a random fracture at first, but you can see how carefully prepared the the scarfed surface is, how the binding area for the scarf lashing is carved out, and even the depth and shape of the socket for the foreshaft.  The lashing is there to secure a small wedge of wood that forms the other half of the open socket.  I explained that in a previous post.

There is some damage to the socket, but you can still see the well defined lashing area and the start of the scarf join at the tip of the harpoon.

The harpoon head would toggle inside the seal

I made two copies of the harpoon, one for L'Anse Aux Meadows and one for myself.  Both are identical, with a Tamarack shaft with sealskin bindings, a whalebone ice pick, antler foreshaft, antler harpoon head, chert endblade with sinew lashings and a sealskin line with a braided sinew lanyard.  The chert endblades are based on artifacts that were found in the Groswater component at L'Anse aux Meadows and tied on to open socket, Groswater style toggling harpoon heads.

You can read the previous posts documenting the reconstruction of this artifact by following these links:


L'Anse aux Meadows Harpoon - First Impressions

The Hunt for Tamarack

Return to the L'Anse aux Meadows Harpoon

Area Man Makes Scraper, Looks at Harpoon

Adze and Harpoon Build Photos

 

The complete set of Palaeoeskimo artifacts and reproductions for L'Anse aux Meadows

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

L'Anse aux Meadows Adze

Completed adze, scraper, and knife

The L'Anse aux Meadows reproductions are finished now and I'm just waiting for the sealskin binding on the adze to dry before sending it all off.  The original adze head that the reproduction is based on is being driven to L'Anse aux Meadows at the moment so I darted in yesterday morning for one last side-by-side comparison before it was packed up and escorted away.

Adze reproduction and artifact

Palaeoeskimo Adze:  An adze is a wood working tool with its head mounted at right angles to the handle, looking kind of like a hoe instead of an axe.  None of the organic components of the artifact were preserved, I just had the ground stone bit to start from.  An axe will be symmetrical, with the blade aligned in the middle of the head, while an adze will usually be sharpened so that the bit is closer to one face or the other.  This one was made on a large flake of tough (perhaps silicified) slate.  Most of the dorsal surface of the adze head was completely ground and polished, so the only remnant of the original flake is on the ventral surface.  The most distinctive feature of the adze head is the isolated stem opposite the bit end.  That provides an important clue for how it would have been hafted.

Note the stem on the artifact

The Maritime Archaic adzes that we find tend to be relatively long and narrow, without a contracting stem.  At Palaeoeskimo sites (especially Groswater Palaeoeskimo sites) in the province, we find shorter, wider adzes with a contracting stem designed to fit into an antler socket.  The L'Anse aux Meadows adze is the largest adze of this kind that I've seen, so its tempting to associate it with the Maritime Archaic culture, because they were known for their large ground stone tools.  However, every feature of its construction - especially the stem, suggest a Palaeoeskimo and probably Groswater Palaeoeskimo origin.  I think its the biggest Groswater Palaeoeskimo adze in the world.

Giant Palaeoeskimo adze, small Maritime Archaic Adze

I'm not aware of any antler sockets from Groswater sites, but caribou antler adze sockets are a common artifact in Palaeoeskimo sites across the North, including Dorset sites in Newfoundland.  I think they are pretty clever.  The antler acts as a shock absorber that probably helps extend the life of the tool and I'd guess it might help with hand shock on the user, but I couldn't say for sure.  It also allows smaller bits of stone to be used.  In the earlier, one-piece Maritime Archaic Adzes half of the adze head is used for cutting and the other half of the adze head is used for hafting.  The antler socket divides that job up so that the stone adze bit can focus on cutting and the antler takes care of the hafting.  Using the socketed design, you can do the same job but with a stone half the size.

The antler socket will be lashed to the handle

I didn't have a piece of antler that fit the adze without bending, so I had to soak the antler in vinegar for a couple of days and slowly wedge it open wide enough to accept the adze head.  This created a very secure fit.  Its important that the adze is firmly mounted in the spongy antler in the middle of the antler, you don't want to cut through the dense antler around the edges or the antler will crack in use.  The natural flare of the antler is used to create the V-shaped socket.  The narrow end of the adze sockets are modified for hafting and the artifacts from Port au Choix that I used as references for this reproduction tend to have flat blunt ends, so I think they were designed to butt up against a wood shelf in the handle.

Tamarack handle, caribou antler socket, slate adze

The handle is tamarack and I did a lot of research trying to find Palaeoeskimo adze handles for references, but they are pretty scarce.  I based this one on an artifact from a Baffin Island Dorset Site.  The biggest difference between this reproduction and the artifact was that the artifact adze handle was a simple "L" shape, without the raised back at the top for the butt of the antler socket to rest against.  I'm not done thinking about adzes - if anyone knows of any other Palaeoeskimo adze handles, I'd love to hear from you.

Comparing the bit edge

The handle is made from a fork in a tree branch, which is trick used by adze makers around the world to create a strong "L" shaped bend in their handles.  The wood shelf that the antler is tied to is just a mirror image of the hafting area of the socket.  I'm satisfied that it looks like a Palaeoeskimo haft.  The binding is the sealskin from the hooded seal that we prepared this spring.  I'm very happy with how it turned out.  That black air-dried look is exactly what I wanted on my reproductions.  I'll talk more about working with the sealskin in a future post, but so far all of the lashing that I've used have come from cutting the shaved sealskin in half down the middle.  Which means that the 335 feet of skin could yield 670 feet of useable lashing.

On Friday, I'll show you the finished Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Adze and Harpoon Build Photos

The L'Anse aux Meadows Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon reproductions are almost ready to lash together.  I'll use sinew and hide glue to tie the endblades onto the harpoon head and to wrap through the groove around the open socket.

I used tamarack scraps for the wedge shaped piece that forms the other half of the open scarfed and grooved socket on the harpoon.  I'll use the hooded sealskin for the lashing to hold it in place.

The harpoon heads are antler and the endblades are chert.  The open sockets are cut into the base of the harpoon head through their ventral face.  The harpoon head on the left is shown dorsal side up and the one on the right is ventral side up.

These little wedges of wood weren't found with the artifact at L'Anse aux Meadows, but they would have been necessary to mount the foreshaft solidly.  There's no rule that they had to be made out of wood.  Priscilla Renouf and her crew at Port au Choix have found little bone or antler artifacts in Groswater contexts that appear similar to these pieces, at least in photographs.  When everyone gets back from the field at the end of the summer, I'd like to take a peak at those artifacts in person.

Tracing the adze in the lab.

Finished reproduction adze head.  I might keep sanding it to a higher polish, but the shaping is all done.

The adze head is designed to fit into an antler socket.  A section of caribou antler would have been used where it begins to flare out.  The artifact is sitting on the antler in a good spot to cut the socket.

This is the reproduction in the antler socket that I cut from the antler in the above photo.  Unfortunately, I cut this socket a little short and tried to work it while it was too dry.  The adze cracked the socket while I was wedging it in place.

I had to start over with a new piece of antler.  I'm soaking this one in vinegar before trying to wedge to adze head in place.  Hopefully it will be soft enough that it will mould itself around the adze head.  I did this on an adze socket last summer and it work well and when it dried it held its new shape.

The antler adze socket will then be lashed onto a wood handle.  I'm hoping that this forked piece of tamarack will do the trick.

Photo Credits:
1-4,6-10: Tim Rast
5: Lori White