PalaeoIndian Points Fitted with Foreshafts

Lashing the points in place with gut

I've been back in the workshop finishing up a set of PalaeoIndian spears for shipment to Alaska.  I've been returning sporadically to this order for several months and I'm finally wrapping things up this week.  Since the last time I updated this project, I've cleaned up the knapped points with pressure flaking and gave them the characteristic rounded bases of the reference pieces.  I've fitted them to hardwood foreshafts with a combination of pitch, hide glue, sinew, and gut lashing.  

  

The knapped reproductions with reference drawings

 

Softening the spruce gum and
red ochre pitch on the stove

 I wanted to create a bit of variety in the set so that they didn't all look identical.  I used pitch on some and hide glue on others.  I used caribou sinew on some and gut on others.  The points and foreshafts are all different lengths and sizes, although I did try to keep the proximal ends of the foreshafts the same so that all of the foreshafts would be interchangeable with all of the main shafts.

The points hafted in their foreshafts

Forming the rawhide sockets

 For the joint between the foreshafts and the main shafts, I used a simple tapered scarf join.  Scarf joints are a characteristic of the few surviving PalaeoIndian foreshafts found in North America.  I tend to think of scarfed joints as permanently fixed joins, but they can also work as detachable joints.  In this case I cut long tapers on the ends of the foreshafts and made a matching taper on the spruce main shafts.  I wrapped the end of the foreshafts in saran wrap, fit them in place against the matching scarf joint on the main shaft, and then wrapped around the overlapping joint with rawhide.

A dried rawhide socket (left) and the matching scarf joint on a foreshaft (right)

The foreshafts in place while the sockets dry

As the rawhide dries it hardens and bonds to the wooden main shaft while the saran wrap prevents the foreshafts from being glued in place.  The rawhide holds it's shape and creates a tough socket with an inside mold of the matching foreshaft.  I coat the outside of the rawhide with hide glue to add to it's stength.  The end product is a little like a fibre glass socket on the end of the main shaft. I'll update again with some final shots of the assembled spears when everything is dry and ready to ship.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Alberta Spear Points

Reproduction Alberta
Projectile Point

I've returned to knapping a bit more in the workshop this week.  This afternoon I took a stab at a couple Alberta spear points for a set of plains projectile points. I'm satisfied with both of them although I only need one.  One looks better in person and one looks better in photos.  I'll see how the rest of the set turns out before I decide which (if either) will be included in the box.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Intermediate Period Quartzite Biface - Spear or Adze?

Identical quartzite bifaces are hafted
in each of these tools - one as an
adze and one as a spear.

This was a fun reproduction, or pair of reproductions to make.  It shows two alternative interpretations of a red quartzite biface from the 3000 year old archaeological site in Sheshatshiu, Labrador. In one version the tool is hafted as a spear point and in the other it's hafted as an adze.  I love that the exhibit designers for the Labrador Interpretation Centre opted to show both concepts.  Often when I'm commissioned to work on a set of reproductions there are artifacts in the set that could be interpreted in a number of different ways.  Is it a knife or a harpoon endblade?  A dart point or an arrowhead?  I usually prepare a quote for the client based on each of the interpretations and then they pick the one option that fits their storyline or budget the best.  In this case, the designers came to me with two competing interpretations and rather than lock the exhibit into one of the options, they elected to show both ideas.

For a bit of context, you can see the original artifact in this video clip. What do you see?

The two reproductions in their
hafts flanking a photo reference
of the original artifact.

I don't want to prejudice either option by saying which version I prefer, but I will say that after making both of them, I think they are both plausible interpretations.  As I assembled them there were pros and cons to each design, but I didn't encounter any issues or technical reasons why one version would be impossible.  There are analogs in the archaeological record for both chipped stone adzes and wide stemmed spear points. At the same time, one is probably wrong and one is probably right, but I don't really know which is which.  Its kind of a Schrodinger's reproduction - simultaneously correct and incorrect at the same time.

Radically different tools and interpretations stemming from the same artifact.

Adzes are wood working tools, kind of like
a chisel hafted onto a small axe handle.

In support of the interpretation of the tool as a spear point, it does appear to be thinned at the base, ground along the wide parallel sided stem but left sharp and serrated along the leaf shaped edges toward the tip, which also appears to have impact damage.   On the other hand, the projectile points found at the site are much smaller and side-notched rather than stemmed.  Ground stone woodworking tools are curiously missing from the assemblage, but the people living there 3000 years ago must have worked wood somehow.  The slight grinding around the base may also be a bit of usewear or it may have been intentionally ground to smooth and even out the edge, which is important in a chipped stone woodworking tool to remove unintentional platforms that could accidentally detach flakes during use.   After all, hard wood can be used as a billet to knock flakes off of knapped tools, so using a chipped stone blade as an woodworking tool would be risky business if you weren't careful with the angles and platforms that you leave exposed on the working edge.

The antler socket is a shock
absorber and creates a larger
hafting area to lash the stone
blade to the handle.

Originally I thought that I would tie the biface directly to the wood adze handle, but as I started to assemble it I decided that a caribou antler socket lashed to the handle with rawhide would be a much more practical solution.  Perhaps the pointed end of the quartzite biface is actually there to help wedge the tool more tightly into the socket and the impact damage is really from contact with the inside of the socket.  I have seen comparable chips happen in handles when retooling things like projectile points and drills. The socket needed to be quite deep to fit the profile of the tool and I used a bit of hide glue to lock it in, although I could have done the same with pitch.  I think I elected for hide glue so that the join between the blade and the antler socket would be more visible.   I only made one version of this tool and it needs to survive to deliver to the client so I'm not going to be able to use it to determine whether it could actually function as a adze, but from what I've seen it is certainly sharp and I think it's a reasonable interpretation.

Hafted as a spear, the quartzite biface creates a much more
robust lance than the small side notched projectile points
recovered from the site.

Hafting the biface as a spear point was fairly straightforward.  I used pitch made from spruce gum, red ochre, and charcoal for the glue with gut for the lashing.  I scaled up the dimensions of the foreshaft to match the scale of the biface, but the foreshaft is still designed to fit the same five foot long mainshaft as the side-notched point and knife mentioned in previous posts.  Its a different scale than the other points and so it would probably have been used in a different way; perhaps on different game or as a stabbing lance as opposed to a thrown or launched projectile. Like the adze, I'm sure this would be a perfectly serviceable spear or lance.

What do you think?  Is one of the interpretations more or less likely?  Is there a third (or fourth) option that we didn't consider?  Leave a comment - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

An adze?

A spear?

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Maritime Archaic Spear and Harpoon Head

Quartzite Spear

This red ochre stained spear and harpoon head are based on artifacts from Port au Choix, Newfoundland and Labrador.  Along with the fish spear I mentioned in an earlier post, they round out the Maritime Archaic Indian reproductions heading to the Port au Choix National Historic Site.  They are all based on artifacts from the 4400-3300BP Maritime Archaic cemetery.

The reference artifact

Maritime Archaic Quartzite Spear: For all the richness of the burials at Port au Choix, there are hardly any knapped stone artifacts.  The majority of stone tools represented in the site are ground stone artifacts like lances, bayonets, axes, adzes, and gouges.  The spear point (left) that this reproduction is based on was one of only two chipped stone spear points found in the burials.  Its stemmed base is consistent with the style of points found at other Maritime Archaic sites dating to the same time period.  Its made on a relatively tough blue-grey quartzite. Its a rough durable looking point so I gave the reproduction a relatively robust pine shaft to match.  I used rawhide for the lashing and covered the whole thing in red ochre.

Maritime Archaic Indian Spear Reproduction, 188.5cm long, quartzite spear point, rawhide and hide glue binding, pine shaft, red ochre stain

Reproduction

Maritime Archaic Toggling Harpoon Head: This red ochre stained toggling harpoon head is interesting because of how different it is from later harpoon heads belonging to other cultures in the province.  All of the Maritime Archaic harpoon heads were self-bladed.  Self-bladed harpoon heads were used by other cultures, but they were used alongside harpoon heads fitted with composite stone or metal endblades.  To date, I'm not aware of any Maritime Archaic endbades or harpoon heads designed to accept endblades.

Reference Artifacts in The Rooms

The harpoon heads made by the Palaeoeskimo, Thule, Inuit and Beothuk all have some degree of symmetry to them, either left/right symmetry or dorsal/ventral symmetry.  If you find part of one of their harpoon heads, you can often envision the missing pieces as mirror images of the parts that were preserved.  There might be asymmetry in the placement of spurs, barbs, or the open socket, but that asymmetry is usually confined to a single plane.  It seems like some degree of asymmetry was allowed or expected in harpoon head designs, as long as a certain degree of left/right or dorsal/ventral symmetry was maintained.  But the Maritime Archaic toggling harpoon heads, like this one, don't have any of the symmetry seen in later points.  The open socket and slightly D-shaped cross-section do away with any dorsal/ventral symmetry that might have existed in the blank.  Likewise, the off-centre line hole and single basal spur make them asymmetrical along the left/right axis.

Maritime Archaic Toggling Harpoon  Head

If there is one thing that makes the Maritime Archaic harpoon heads diagnostic it is the off-centre line hole.  Everyone else in Newfoundland and Labrador placed their line holes in the centre of the harpoon head.   On their toggling harpoon heads, the Maritime Archaic Indians placed the line hole on the short edge, opposite the single basal spur.  This would probably help with the toggling action, but it also seems to give the line hole one relatively weak edge.  The line holes on their barbed harpoon heads are also placed off centre along one edge.  The other features of the harpoon head -- the single basal spur, open socket, and self-bladed tip -- all show up in harpoon heads made by other cultures, but if you find something that looks like a harpoon head in this Province with an off-centre line hole you could probably make the argument that its Maritime Archaic.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast