Rhyolite Knapping for Burnside

My production knapping kit

I'm finishing up my last order of the spring before heading to Nunavut next week for field work. I'm working on a few pieces made from Bloody Bay Cove Rhyolite for the gift shop run by the Burnside Heritage Foundation on Newfoundland's Eastport Peninsula.   The Beaches Site is a stones throw from the rhyolite quarry, so I'm filling half the order with side-notched Beaches style points and the other half with triangular Dorset Palaeoeskimo endblades.  It seems like all of the different aboriginal groups who lived in Newfoundland made use of rhyolite that they collected from Bloody Bay Cove.

Rhyolite has a bit more of a gritty texture to it than chert, but in Newfoundland, where most of our fine grain chert has a lot of small internal fractures, its possible to find very large, solid pieces of rhyolite.

Future necklaces and earrings

Laurie McLean, the archaeologist who found the quarry and has worked in the Burnside area for decades, hand picks the cores that I use for these reproductions.  He ensures that the rhyolite collected are not artifacts, which is no small task considering knappers have been visiting the area, testing and collecting rock for 5000 years, but its critical that we do not damage the site or collect worked cores or flakes for these reproductions.  I make the rhyolite jewellery exclusively for sale through the gift shop in the Burnside Museum, so if you'd like to own a Bloody Bay Cove Rhyolite necklace or earrings, you'll need to plan a trip to the Burnside Museum on the Eastport Peninsula.  While you are in the area, take the time to do the boat tour to visit the actual quarry site and the Beaches site, its well worth your time.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Change Islands Cache

Change Islands Cache Bifaces

Late last summer, a Newfoundland and Labrador couple stretching their legs at the Change Islands ferry terminal unexpectedly made a spectacular archaeological find.  In September 2010, Neil White and Marion Adams discovered a tighly packed cache of 32 large rhyolite bifaces.  The stone artifacts were buried standing on edge stacked together "like a deck of cards".  A few biface fragments were on the surface and caught Neil's eye.  He recognized that the stones were flinknapped from watching survival TV programs.  The tip of one of the points had been exposed on the surface long enough that it was spattered with paint from nearby construction. A backhoe used in the construction had stripped several inches of debris and soil over the cache and when the White's found them they were very near the surface.  Not realizing the size of the cache, the White's pulled the bifaces out of the ground one after the other.   As they slid each one out of the ground they could hear it rasping against another one still in situ.

Beautifully worked rhyolite

Neil and Marion immediately recognized the significance of what they had found and they didn't want to disturb the whole cache, but they were worried about its security if it was left partially exposed.  Neil said that the entire cache came from an area in the ground no bigger than an apple crate.  Originally, the bifaces may have been wrapped together in a leather or bark bundle, or buried in a small hole.  They decided to gather up the bifaces and contact an archaeologist.  They took the bifaces to the nearest museum - the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd's Cove.  Karen Ledrew-Day knew that this was something very special and contacted the Provincial Archaeology Office (PAO).  Ken Reynolds drove out to the Change Island's to meet the Whites, further excavate the findspot, and collect the bifaces.  Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the whole story is the selflessness of Neil White and Marion Adams, whose first thought was to report their find and donate the artifacts to the people of the Province.  They deserve a lot of credit for how they reported the find.

An awe inspiring visit

Lori and I had the opportunity to see and photograph the bifaces when Ken brought them back to the PAO for cataloguing and analysis.  We've been waiting for the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation to publicly acknowledge the White's find before we mentioned the cache here.  Disappointingly, that never happened, but the cache was reported in the Provincial Archaeology Office's annual archaeology review earlier this week (Volume 9 for 2010 Field Season), so Lori and I can now share our photos of the bifaces.

For their size, they are very thin

Although they vary in size and 4 of them are wide flat platters, the 32 bifaces are remarkably uniform in style.  They are all made from the same material and are equally thin and well finished.  Everyone who sees them feels that they were all made by one person.  There are some breaks, but between the White's initial collection and Ken's subsequent excavation of the findspot, many of the missing tips and corners were found.  It appears that the bifaces were perfect, whole, and unused when they were originally cached.  These are not preforms in the midst of transport, or blanks prepared for heat treatment, but completed tools, that were never used.  If the larger bifaces were bifacial cores, then they were used up and the edges carefully finished.

The cache at the PAO

The exact age of the cache is uncertain and will be the subject of future research, however, there are a couple likely candidates.  The Maritime Archaic Indians and Recent Indians both made large bifaces from Rhyolite and could have left the cache.  Given the location of the find very close to the modern shoreline, I feel that the Recent Indians are the more likely candidates.  The shoreline in this part of Newfoundland has undergone several metres of submergence since Maritime Archaic Indian times, which means that an Archaic cache at this spot would likely be underwater, unless it was placed at an unusually high elevation.  If it is a Recent Indian cache, then the earlier Cow Head or perhaps Beaches complexes (ca. 2000-1000 BP) seem more likely than the Little Passage or Beothuk, because such large stone tools are rare in the more recent periods.

Some were very large

The source of the stone will also be more fully researched as there are several rhyolite outcrops and quarries on the Island that might have provided the stone.  When Ken was in the area, he revisited the Rhyolite outcrops and workshops at Brimstone Head, near Fogo and collected samples that are a very good visual match for the artifacts in the cache.  Its the closest known rhyolite source to the cache and seems like the most likely candidate for the rock.  Researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland are doing non-destructive testing on the bifaces to attempt to determine the source of the raw material.

The Change Islands Cache (click to enlarge)

For more information on the Change Island's Cache - check out the Provincial Archaeology Office's Archaeology Review, Volume 9 for 2010 Field Season, pg 137-140.

Here are the photos of the 32 bifaces that Lori and I took last fall.  You can click any of the images to see a larger version.  Thanks to the PAO for letting us see these unique pieces and especially to Neil White and Marion Adams for sharing this amazing find with the all the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast
Edited April 6, 2011 to correct Marion's name.

Beaches Point Jewelry

Beaches rhyolite jewelry

The flintknapped rhyolite jewelry is heading out to the gift shop in the Burnside Archaeology Centre.  Given the Centre's proximity to both the Bloody Bay Cove rhyolite quarry and the Beaches site, the lead archaeologist, Laurie McLean, asked that I include some Beaches complex reproductions in the set.  The rhyolite that I use comes from Bloody Bay Cove and the cores are carefully selected by Laurie to ensure that they are not archaeological artifacts.  Each year, I'll be producing a small quantity of rhyolite jewelry exclusively for sale through the Burnside Archaeology Centre, located in the town of Burnside in beautiful Bonavista Bay.

The Beaches Site

The Beaches complex, which was named for The Beaches site, is the earliest link in the Recent Indian continuum on the Island of Newfoundland that leads to the Little Passage complex and ultimately the historic Beothuk.  The most diagnostic artifact of the Beaches complex are their side-notched projectile points.  These side-notched points tend to be larger than the later corner-notched Little Passage points and seem likely to have been used on atlatls, while the corner-notched Little Passage points represent the introduction of the bow and arrow to the Island.  In this case, the change in material culture seems to represent the introduction of a new technology, rather than the migration of a new people.
 

Bloody Bay cove rhyolite flakes at the quarry

Rhyolite is a tough stone to work.  That probably means that its durable, but I think that the biggest advantage that the Bloody Bay cove quarry had going for it was the size of the cores that could be found there.  There is lots of high quality, fine grained chert around the province, but it tends to have a lot of internal fractures and for the folks who wanted to make large stone tools the massive, solid pieces of rhyolite that can be found at Bloody Bay cove would have been one of the few options available.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

A Day of Seal Needs Your Help!

Dress like these people - they're professionals.

We are looking for volunteers, large boiling pots, and propane tanks for a fun day of Hooded Seal processing on Saturday (or Sunday, if Saturday's weather is bad) at the university campus.  Eliza Brandy, an archaeology graduate student at Memorial University of Newfoundland is boiling down the seal skeleton so that it can be used in the archaeology department's comparative faunal collection.  Lori and I will be taking our sealskin thong along (its stretched to over 335 feet now) to shave with stone tools while we are waiting for the bones to boil clean.

Please?

If you are interested in helping out, we could use your hands and the loan of large boil up pots and propane tanks for the day.  We'll get started at 10 AM on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 on the lawn behind Queen's College (next to Bitters) on the MUN Campus (map here).  There is more information and a chance to RSVP on the event's Facebook Page.

I'm excited to see the skeleton being cleaned and I'm curious about shaving the hair off the sealskin.   I tested a small area and the skin is stiff enough that the hair can be scraped off fairly easily.  It reminds me of a muskrat tail when its shaved.  I'll bring along flakes of obsidian, various Newfoundland cherts, Bloody Bay Cove Rhyolite, and Ramah Chert to test.  Which material will be your favourite?

Only 334 and a half feet to go!

You'll want to wear old clothes, and perhaps even rain gear.  The skin has dried considerably, but its still going to be greasy. I didn't get a photo of the shaved section of skin until it was raining (again), so it looks a little messier in the picture that it actually is.  The skin itself is fairly dry, but still greasy to handle, like a piece of beef jerky and the hair is still holding a fair bit of grease.

Photo Credits:
1: John Erwin
2-4: Tim Rast

Salty Guts and Books

Demo for the Historic Sites Association

On Wednesday evening, I did a flintknapping demonstration for the shop managers from the Heritage Shops across the island.  It was a good chance to talk to the front line staff selling my products and get feedback from them on what they like and don't like about the product.  I think the demo also helped them understand exactly how a flintknapped arrowhead is made and will help them explain the product to customers.

Today, I'm getting ready for the ground stone Family Fun Program at The Rooms, which takes place this Sunday from 2-4 pm.  Yesterday, I spent a bit of time knapping, received a couple buckets of rhyolite to use for some exclusive products for the Burnside Heritage Foundation, and hung the hooded seal guts out to dry in the sun.

Salt crystals forming on the bladder

On Wednesday, I noticed some white patches had started to form on the bladder and intestines and my first concern was mold, but they were just salt patches that formed from soaking them in salt water before inflating them.  I wiped them off with a damp rag.  While they were strung up I peeled off some of the dried connector tissue.  It was flaking off like paper at first, but in one spot it tore the intestine.

Tear in the drying intestine

The gut is more fragile than I had thought.  It looks a little like flypaper, but it seems about as strong as heavy tissue paper.  I thought it might be fragile because of something I read about drying the intestines in the warm summer sun, but I didn't expect them to tear quite this easily.  I'll have to keep that in mind for whatever project I wind up using them on.

 There's a passage in Arctic Clothing of North America - Alaska, Canada, Greenland that explains what's going on:

stretched gut

85 feet of seal intestine out to dry

Women prepared the intestine by washing and soaking it for several days, scraping the inner and outer surfaces, then stretching and inflating the intestine and letting it dry....  The drying process was accomplished in one of two ways.  In the northern regions, especially on St. Lawrence Island, the intestine was allowed to dry in cold, dark, windy weather for a considerable amount of time. This would cause the intestine to turn white. Intestine prepared in this manner was often referred to as 'bleached gut' or 'winter gut', and was very flexible and durable.  The intestine tubing was then cut lengthwise and opened out to form long narrow bands. These bands of intestine were then stitched together horizontally or vertically to create a parka....  In Southwestern Alaska... Preparation of the intestine was the same as in the northern region, but because of the less harsh weather with more daylight and warmer temperatures the intestine turned yellow in colour, and was thus referred to as 'summer gut'.  When dry the summer gut parka was less flexible and would tear easily.  But when wet, the gut would become soft and flexible and conform to the wearer's body.

Seal gut parka in Homer, Alaska

It sounds like I'm making 'summer gut'.  There are a few interesting images around the web of gut parka's.  Heather Pringle wrote about our work with the intestines last week and has a few nice images on her blog: What to Wear on an Ice-Age Sea Voyage.   And Travis Shinabarger has an amazing flickr photostream of seal gut parkas in museums in Alaska.

Disclosure:  I try to reference the books that I quote on this blog by linking to a site with more information on that particular book.  Often that ends up being a bookseller like Chapters or Amazon.  This week I enrolled in the Amazon Associates program, so in future blog posts, if you follow a link to a book that I reference and wind up purchasing it, then I get a percentage (6%, I think) of the purchase price for the referral.

When I'm writing a new post there is a little window next to the editor that lets me search Amazon and make easy links in the blog.  They can be normal looking text links like this to the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 5: Arctic, individual photos, or text boxes with an image (below).  I'll probably use all three from time to time, so I just wanted readers to be aware of this change.

Photo Credits:
1: Andrea MacDonald
2-5: Tim Rast
6: Travis Shinabarger
7,8: images from Amazon.com