Maritime Archaic Reproductions for Port au Choix

Bird headed pins made from caribou long bones
and needles made from bird bones and caribou ribs.

This is a set of reproductions that I recently completed for Port au Choix National Historic Site on Newfoundland's northern peninsula.  The set includes a hafted ground stone axe, slate lance, barbed harpoon, bird headed pins and bone needles.  Some of these are newly made and others are pieces that I've had in stock and that I've shown on this blog before.

The pins and needles have been slightly antiqued to take off the fresh white bone sheen.

 

Some of the needles have flat cross-sections and are made from bird bones and others have round cross-sections and are made from caribou ribs.  All of them have gouged eyes and they range in length from 5-11 cm.

Often when I make these pins, they are intended to be used as hair pins with sealskin barrettes.  However, the ones in this photo are intended to be used in display and public programming, so I was able to show more of the variety in the actual pins and pendants and not just the long pointy pin versions.  Many of the bird headed bone carvings at Port au Choix adorned shorter pendants, with gouged holes in the shaft opposite the bird head.  Presumably these were used as pendants or hung from clothing.

 

The larger, hafted pieces in this set include a ground slate (or argillite) axe hafted into a wooden handle. The axe head is secured with pitch in the hole in the wood which was burned out with hot coals.  The rawhide lashing is there to reinforce the handle and prevent it from splitting in use.  The harpoon in the middle has a barbed antler harpoon head with a whalebone foreshaft and spruce main shaft.  The slate lance is hafted to a wood shaft with spruce pitch glue and gut lashing.

Ground slate lance head.  The lancehead is about 22 cm long, which is on the large end of the spectrum for Port au Choix.

The harpoon is covered in red ochre. The Maritime Archaic certainly covered their bodies and tools with red ochre as part of their burial ceremony, but it is unclear if they used ochre as frequently in day-to-day life as the later (and unrelated) Beothuk.

This style of harpoon head is not designed to toggle, although the Maritime Archaic did also make toggling harpoon heads.  The barbs would have secured the harpoon head and line to the prey animal - most likely seals.

The harpoon line is braided sealskin.  The harpoon is about 72" fully assembled and the lance is about 92".  I don't know how long the main shafts of the Maritime Archaic versions of these tools would have been.  Generally the tool components are larger than the later Dorset and Groswater Pre-Inuit who lived in Newfoundland, so I tend to make the overall reproductions larger and longer as well.

 

The lance is fixed to the wood shaft.  I envision these long straight sided lances as close range piercing tools, especially for penetrating the thick blubber layers of marine mammals.  A fixed lance head could be stabbed and pulled out repeatedly.  The harpoon head, on the other hand, is designed to detach and stay in the animal with a line attached.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Reproductions for NLAS Edukit

Stone, bone, ivory, wood, antler,
red ochre, and sinew
artifact reproductions

Here's an overdue look at the reproductions that I recently completed for a new exhibit in a suitcase that is being designed and assembled by Robyn Lacy for the Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society.  The pieces that I made primarily represent the Indigenous and Pre-Contact cultures of the Province.  The diverse array of materials used in the reproductions include wood, antler, ivory, whalebone, sealskin, sinew, slate, chert, steel, caribou bone, red ochre, and cotton cordage.  In addition to the pieces that I made, Robyn gathered and made several more pieces that represent the Norse and European presence in the province.  Using reproductions allows the edukit to be used in a much more interactive way than if it was stocked with real artifacts.

Roughing out the composite pieces, including a slate ulu, wood snow goggles, and a steel crooked knife.  The small object in the middle is a reproduction of a Dorset polar bear head carving made from walrus tusk ivory.

Snow googles (Inuit), Maritime Archaic slate lance, Dorset knife, Beothuk arrowhead, Palaeoeskimo hafted side-scraper, Maritime Archaic whalebone barbed fish spear prong, ground slate ulu (Inuit), roof slate (Historic European), polar bear head carving (Dorset), Beothuk pendant, and crooked knife (Mi'kmaq/Innu)

The wood snow goggles are reproductions of Inuit goggles used to prevent snow blindness on bright spring days seal hunting.  The leather straps are sealskin and they are lashed in place with sinew.

Ground slate ulu, with a wood handle and sinew lashing.  This reproduction is based on a slate ulu blade from Labrador that is on display in The Rooms. The arrowhead in the upper right hand corner is a Little Passage or Beothuk style point.

I made two different styles of Dorset polar bear head carvings. The more natural carving on the left is the one in the kit.  The one on the right is a highly stylized 2D carving of a bear head.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Newfoundland Harpoon and Arrow Reproductions

The pointy ends of harpoon and arrow reproductions

I completed a set of artifact reproductions based on artifacts found in Newfoundland and Labrador this week.  The set included a complete Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon, a Dorset harpoon head with a tip-fluted endblade, a barbed Maritime Archaic harpoon head, and a Beothuk or Little Passage style arrow.  These pieces are on their way to Nova Scotia right now and will be used by an archaeologist friend of mine in school talks.  

 

The set is intended to represent four different cultures and illustrate some of the different technologies used in the pursuit of food over time.  The complete Groswater harpoon can be used to demonstrate how a toggling harpoon works.  The small Dorset harpoon head fits onto the whalebone foreshaft on the Groswater harpoon, although it lacks an harpoon line.  The barbed Maritime Archaic harpoon head belongs to a completely different time period and cultural group so it isn't compatible with the Palaeoeskimo harpoon.  It shows a contrasting technology that would have been used for the same purpose; hunting seals.

I modeled the main shaft of the harpoon on the wooden harpoon shaft found at L'Anse aux Meadows.   

The Groswater harpoon, with it's distinctive harpoon head and endblade in place.

Ochre staining the Maritime Archaic barbed harpoon.  Unlike the Palaeoeskimo harpoon heads with a line hole centered in the middle of the harpoon head, this style of harpoon head has a single line hole positioned close to the base.  It relies on the barbs for gripping the seal and won't toggle in the wound the same as the Dorset and Groswater harpoon heads.

Another view of the Groswater harpoon head with a shelf cut on one side and lashing holes gouged through the nose to tie the plano-convex, box-based endblade in place.  The endblade is knapped from local Newfoundland chert, the harpoon head is antler, the foreshaft is whalebone, and the mainshaft is wood.  Sinew and sealskin are used to tie the various pieces together and to create the harpoon line.

 

Side views of the reproductions.  From left to right, Maritime Archaic harpoon head, Little Passage Arrow, Dorset harpoon head, and Groswater harpoon.

 

Dorset harpoon head made from antler with a tip-fluted chert endblade.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Ground Stone Tools

Ground Slate

 I just need one more day to finish up this order and get it shipped.  Unfortunately, I have two days of CPR/First Aid training starting tomorrow morning, so that one day of work probably won't get done until the weekend.  The order is already late, but I was really hoping that I could get it all together and shipped before the start of th First Aid course.  It sucks, but I tried.  I hate missing deadlines, but even worse is there are some cool pieces in the order and I'm not able to take the time to really enjoy them.  Here's a look at the finished Maritime Archaic ground slate lances and a few slate and spruce ulus that are almost ready to be lashed and glued together.

The red slate lances have been oiled.  The grey slate ulus are still dry, but they'll take a nice gloss too once I add a bit of oil to them.  I'd really like to get the lashing and glue on them tonight so that they can dry overnight.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Muddy Slate Lances

I'm wet grinding slate right now.  I need some slate lances and ulus for an order heading to Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula.  The two pieces above are half-formed Maritime Archaic reproductions.  One is a flat slat lance (left) and the other is a bayonet (right).  The original tools would have been hafted onto long wood shafts and probably served similar functions to pierce thick layers of marine mammal blubber.  The bayonet is distinguished by it's triangular cross-section.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

... and microblades complete the set

I have good luck making
microblades from this jasper.

Microblades are one of the hardest types of reproductions that I make, so the are usually the last thing that I work on when I'm filling orders.  I started working on some jasper microblades yesterday and was able to produce a few individual blades that I can use in hafting projects, but no nice blade and core sets.  When I'm making a core and blade set, I really like to have a run of successful blades that can be refit onto the core.  I finally got those blades made today.  When it is working, the blades should get straighter and more regular as the blade removal process goes on.  The photo on the right shows the last three blades in the series.  Even without any trimming they have nice parallel sides and one or two long straight ridges or arrises running down their length.

Here is the sequence of blades as they came off the core from left to right.  You can see how they gradually become flatter and more regular with straighter edges as the core is reduced.

Looking down on the refit microblades from the top of the core.  The gaps that you can see between each blade is a result of all the platform preparation necessary to isolate each microblade platform before they are struck off the core using an antler soft hammer.

The complete set, signed, and ready to pack up.  On the left is a Maritime Archaic adze and the rest of the tools are Palaeoeskimo reproductions. The reddish orange pieces are the microblades and core.  The middle columns are side scrapers on the left and end scrapers on the right.  The flat slate tool with the two holes in it on the right is a lance head.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

New Adze Blade Reproduction

Reproduction adze: the bit is on the right end in the photo

Fresh from the workshop - a new ground slate adze head reproduction.  This is a five inch chipped, pecked, ground, and polished piece destined for a university teaching collection.  I've been working on this set for a while - hopefully I can get the rest of the pieces finished up and sent off next week.  The style of this adze is based on Maritime Archaic artifacts from Newfoundland and Labrador.  It's generally rectangular in cross section, with a slight taper towards the end opposite the cutting bit, so that it would be wedged more tightly into the adze handle and lashings as it it used.

I used a local reddish purple slate for the adze.  I like to find a piece of stone that is already close to the dimensions of the desired end product, so that I have a minimal amount of trimming to do with the hammerstone as I rough out the blank.  Although, I do like having a few big flake scars visible on the finished tool, so that you can see the processes involved in manufacturing these tools.  Those chips help make it look more like the original artifacts as well.  After chipping the rough blank,  I'll start pecking the blank with a hammerstone as early as possible to get rid of rough edges and start smoothing the freshly fractured stone.  If the piece isn't solid, I want to know that early in the process.  Usually if something like this is going to break, it happens when you are hitting it with another rock. during the early chipping and pecking stages. 

As the adze blade starts to take shape there is less chipping and pecking done, and more grinding and polishing.  Most of the effort goes into shaping the polished bit.  On an adze, you want a beveled edge close to one face, rather than having the edge lined up symmetrically down the middle, like an axe head.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

How Tall Were The Maritime Archaic Indians?

Maritime Archaic Indian artifact reproductions used in
 the sand box dig at The Rooms.

I got stumped by a question during a flintknapping demonstration today.  I was talking about archaeology and the Maritime Archaic artifact reproductions used in public programming at The Rooms with volunteers and Front of House staff.  One of the volunteers asked an excellent question that has a good Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeology answer, but I didn't know the correct answer off the top of my head, so I looked it up as soon as I got home:

Q: How tall were the Maritime Archaic Indians?

A: The average Maritime Archaic man was 5' 6" tall, and men ranged in height from 5' 3" to 5' 8 1/2" (mean = 167.2 cm, range = 159.4 cm to 174.0 cm).  Women averaged 5' 3" and ranged from 4' 11" to 5' 5" (mean = 160.6 cm, range = 150.7 cm to 165.5 cm). 

Maritime Archaic skeleton drawing from Tuck 1976.
This man was buried with the beaks from 200 great auks.
In life, he would have stood about 5' 7".

Or at least those are the figures based on the adult skeletons from the 100 Maritime Archaic burials at Port au Choix (4400 to 3300 BP) that were complete enough for the detailed skeletal measurements recorded by J.E. Anderson in the mid-1970s.  Its rare to know so much about the physical appearance of a population from so long ago, but the Maritime Archaic Indians in Newfoundland and Labrador are often the exception to the rule when it comes to Archaeology.

Reference:

Anderson, J.E.
1976 Appendix A: The Human Skeleton. in Ancient People of Port au Choix by James A. Tuck. Newfoundland Social and Economic Studies No. 17, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial Univesrit of Newfoundland, St. John's. pp. 124-131

Photo Credits:
1: Tim Rast
2: from Tuck 1976, reference above.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered

Its a colourful collection 

Here is one last look at the completed artifact reproductions that are on their way to Laval.  It includes a set of Dorset Palaeoeskimo reproductions, a set of Maritime Archaic Indian reproductions and a PalaeoIndian fluted point.  I've posted all of these pieces in various stages of completion over the past few weeks, so this is just a final record of the work in its entirety.  

Dorset Palaeoeskimo Reproductions

The photo on the left shows the Dorset Palaeoeskimo pieces in the collection.  These have a Newfoundland and Labrador flavour to them, although the selfbladed harpoon head is more of an Early Dorset style with a sliced base that I don't think show up in collections from this province very often.  Most of the materials and stone is local, although I did use some exotic jasper for the microblades.  Jasper certainly shows up in Dorset collections, but this particular jasper comes from Australia and is called Mook Jasper or Mookaite.  Its a nice, fine grained material that gives a bit of colour to the collection.

A) Dorset harpoon (complete): chert endblade, antler harpoon head, whalebone foreshaft, softwood mainshaft, sealskin lashings and line, sinew lanyard, hide glue, B) Dorset tip-fluted endblade: chert, C) Dorset side-notched triangular knife: chert, D) Dorset unifacial side-scraper: chert, E) Dorset self-bladed harpoon head: antler, F) Dorset lance: slate, G) Dorset microblade Core: Jasper, H) Dorset microblades: Jasper, I) PalaeoIndian fluted point: chert, J) Maritime Archaic fish spear: whalebone, red ochre, K) Maritime Archaic lance: slate, red ochre L) Maritime Archaic projectile point: chert, red ochre, M) Maritime Archaic barbed harpoon head, antler, red ochre

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Maritime Archaic and PalaeoIndian Reproductions

Slate lance and a barbed harpoon head

I think the last time I showed photos of these reproductions they were being stained with red ochre.  These Archaic and PalaeoIndian reproductions are done and ready to ship now.  They are part of a larger order for an archaeologist at the University of Laval in Quebec City.  He works in the Arctic and Northern Labrador, so the remainder of the collection is made up of Palaeoeskimo reproductions.

The fluted point in the foreground
represents a time period several
thousand years earlier than the other
reproductions in these photos.

Everything is done now, except for a few microblades.  I worked on the microblades today, but I didn't get many made that I was happy with.  I'll try again tomorrow.  Fluting points and making microblades never seem to work out for me on the first day after a long hiatus.  I always need to wreck a few before I remember to be patient and really prepare my platforms.  Systematically producing a series of microblades on a core is one of the trickiest maneuvers that I can manage in flintknapping.  I'm sure there are even harder things that I can't do, but of the things that I work at time and again, microblades are one of the toughest.  Most of the time I'm very fond of Palaeoeskimo culture and their peculiar artifacts, but not on the days when I'm trying to make microblades. On those days, they make me feel ham-fisted and cranky, which I'm sure is just the jealousy kicking in.

The ochre helps age the pieces and also distinguish the Maritime Archaic reproductions from the other artifact reproductions in the order.

The fish spear, knapped point, and harpoon head are covered with ochre that has been sealed in with an oil based coating.    The slate lance has a dry dusting of ochre on it.  One of the challenges of making artifact reproductions is trying to come up with ways to make the pieces unique.  I don't want them to all look like they were made by a single person in one sitting.   By staining all of the Maritime Archaic Indian reproductions with ochre, they start to look like a coherent set, even though they are each made from different materials using different techniques.    I'll put up photos of the Palaeoeskimo reproductions once I get the microblades done.  They are made using the same basic chert, slate, antler and whalebone as these reproductions, but by using different manufacturing and finishing techniques, they should look like a different collection, made by  someone else from a different culture and time period.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Knapping and Ochre Staining

I finished out the week with a couple more pieces for the Dorset and Maritime Archaic order.  The knife blade on the right is a Dorset style and would have been the kind of blade hafted into the short antler handle that you can see lying on the table behind it.  Other than that, I finished a knapped stone Maritime Archaic stemmed projectile point based on one found at Port au Choix.  While I finish up the other pieces in the order, I've started layering on the red ochre for the Maritime Archaic pieces.  More layers gives the pieces extra depth and the illusion of age.

The point, barbed fish spear and barbed harpoon head are getting a dry ochre bath here.   A dry dusting of ochre can help age a knapped point, but its not usually enough to cover a polished bone or antler surface.

Here are the same pieces with an oil based coat added to lock in the pigment and bring out the colour in the ochre.  I'll do a few alternating layers of ochre and oil, removing the thicker buildup and particles of ochre between applications until I arrive at the final look that I'm going for.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

A few Palaeoeskimo and Maritime Archaic reproductions in progress

Dorset Palaeoeskimo artifact
reproductions in progress 

 I'm still working on a selection of Dorset Palaeoeskimo (left) and Maritime Archaic Indian artifact reproductions for a university teaching collection.  The Dorset pieces are primarily based on artifacts from Newfoundland and Labrador, although the self-bladed harpoon head is a Tyara sliced form that is an earlier style that would be a little more at home in Early Dorset collections from farther north in Nunavut.  Chronologically, the Tyara sliced harpoon heads overlap with the Groswater time period in Newfoundland and Labrador, before the Dorset moved down to these parts.

The assembled endblade, harpoon head and foreshaft will be hafted onto a complete harpoon, while the other endblade, side-blade, slate lance and a knife blade and microblades that I have yet to complete will be left unhafted.

Slate, antler and whalebone Maritime
Archaic Indian Reproductions

The Maritime Archaic pieces include a ground slate lance, barbed harpoon head and whalebone fish spear.  These reproductions are all based on artifacts from Port au Choix and date from 4400 - 3300 BP.  The antler harpoon head and fish spear have yet to be red ochre stained, but they are otherwise complete. There is also a knapped point to include in this set which I need to finish.

There is an extra lance head and pressure flaker in this photo, but otherwise everything shown here is intended for the same order.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast