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Is the trip half finished or half started?

March 19, 2014, 9:54 am
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Knapping with the BAS in Provost
I'm at the midway point of this flintknapping tour of Alberta and Saskatchewan and things are going great. Yesterday afternoon I was talking with students at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton and the night before that I was knapping with members of the Bodo Archaeological Society at the museum in Provost.

Some last minute fletching
Right now I'm going through some final preparation for this evening's slideshow-and-tell with the Red Deer branch of the Archaeological Society of Alberta.  The talk will focus on three of my favourite Palaeoeskimo artifact reproductions; the Independence I driftwood arrow, the Groswater harpoon from L'Anse aux Meadows, and the Late Dorset drums from Bylot Island.  I finally got around to tying a couple feathers on to the driftwood arrow in my hotel room a few minutes ago.  I just need to pop a few more slides into the powerpoint and then I should be ready to hit the road for Red Deer (I'm in Edmonton at the moment).

I am making out like a bandit in the swag department.
Highlights include a Bodo sweatshirt, mug, and
 calendars.  I'm especially grateful for the timely gift
of the Grant MacEwan University laser-flashlight-pen.
I feel like James Bond heading into my talk tonight.
I must thank everyone again for organizing all of this.  I've been able to show up at the locations and have everything ready and waiting for me.  Volunteers, staff, and students with the Bodo Archaeological Society(Christie, Courtney, Peter), Grant MacEwan University (Franca), the University of Alberta, and especially Kurtis Blaikie with the Strathcona Archaeological Society have taken care of all the logistics of gathering the flintknapping supplies and rock as well as organizing and advertising the events and handling all of the registration details.  I really appreciate all that effort.


The highway sign at Provost, Alberta.


The museum had a great ambiance for a flintknapping workshop and we had a very good turn out, with about a dozen new knappers joining us from the surrounding area.

A local collection donated to the museum and put on display.  Its nice when folks keep track of where they find stuff, and let local museums, archaeologists, and the public know about it.  It also serves as good inspiration for a flintknapping workshop.

A couple of the first time points made on Monday night.  Some real talent there.
Photo Credits: Tim Rast



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Busy day in Saskatoon

March 21, 2014, 10:44 pm
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Today was a fantastic day in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan.  I spent some time in the morning wandering around the beautiful campus.  In the afternoon I did a flintknapping demo for the archaeology department and in the evening I had the priveledge of giving the Jesse Caldwell Memorial Lecture to the Saskatoon Archaeological Society.  Wonderful people.

I'm having some difficulties with connecting to the internet from my laptop, which is where my photos are stored.  I'm posting this from my iPad, which I've never tried before.  The best I can do for a photo for this blogpost is a snapshot of my laptop screen showing one of the cool dinosaur skeletons at the UofS.  


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Saskatoon, I hardly knew ye

March 24, 2014, 5:12 pm
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Awesome example of a knapped
projectile point mounted in a foreshaft
The trip to Saskatoon was over way too soon. Between Friday and Sunday I facilitated a two day flintknapping workshop, presented a talk, and gave a knapping demo.  I hope that I don't leave anyone out, but this leg of the trip was sponsored by the University of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society, the Saskatoon Archaeological Society and the Saskatchewan Association of Professional Archaeologists.  It was a big workshop, with close to thirty participants on the first day and more than twenty on the second day, but everyone was fantastic and patient with me.

We worked in a long narrow room that easily accommodated 30 knappers.


Matt, Liz, and Tomasin.  Bottle melting
shenanigans
During the workshop, Jack, Phil, Alan, and Matt all helped mentor new knappers and keep the risk of serious injury and blood-stained tools to an absolute minimum.  Tomasin and Karin were critical in organizing the materials, advertising the events and handling the registration.  It would have been impossible to pull of this event, and the rest of this tour if it hadn't been for all the volunteer time put into planning and organizing all the various parts by Liz Robertson.  Liz and I worked together in the Arctic Lab back in our undergrad days at the University of Calgary and she pulled this whole thing together and made sure that I had a place to stay, food to eat, and a ride to get everywhere that I needed to be.

The industrious second day was full of scraping, cutting, knapping, whittling, shaving, gluing, and lashing

This great old building is home to the
University of Saskatchewan's
Archaeologists
The talk, demo, and workshop were all held in the same room in the Archaeology Building on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan, which meant I only had to set up once and clean up once, which was very nice.  I've been to the UofS campus once or twice to attend conferences, but this was my first visit where I got to spend much time in the Archaeology and Anthropology Department.  The whole campus is quite beautiful, with it stone buildings in the Collegiate-Gothic style.  The Archaeology building is the most archaeology-looking archaeology building I've every been in.  When you walk down the hallways you expect to see Indiana Jones climbing out of one of the classroom or office windows and sprinting away across the campus.

A display in the department

A familiar name in Newfoundland and Labrador archaeology as well


On Friday afternoon, I did a flintknapping demo for the Archaeology Department.  Over the week, I stumbled upon a new format for knapping demos that I think I'll probably continue to use.  Rather than make a single large-notched biface, I made a rough portable bifacial core to show the basics of hard and soft hammer percussion and then use one of the flakes from that core to pressure flake a small arrow or dart point.  The advantage of this is that I can pause the percussion work relatively early and jump to pressure flaking and make a pretty, notched projectile point for everyone to see.  Both the portable core and the pressure flaked projectile point are better matches for actual artifacts than the big lumpy "spear points" that I usually force out in demo.  I'm happier with the end results, the narrative is more interesting (I think), and I can produce two end products, rather than one in the same or even less amount of time.

On Friday evening, it was my very great pleasure to give the Jesse Caldwell Memorial Lecture to the Saskatoon Archaeological Society.  I can get nervous giving talks, there were some archaeologists in the audience who I have a lot of respect for, and despite Liz embarrassing me with phrases like "visiting scholar" in her introduction, the folks in Saskatoon are all so nice that I think it went off without a hitch.  The title of the talk was "Recreating the Arctic: The Story of an arrow, harpoon and drum".  I talked about the Independence I driftwood arrow, the L'Anse aux Meadows Harpoon, and the Button Point drums in a show-and-tell format.  Its a small sample size (n=1), but in my experience playing a Dorset drum will mesmerize a baby at 50 feet 100% of the time.

That's a lot of tarp space
On Saturday and Sunday we held the two day flintknapping workshop.  Saturday was a day to cover the basics and review percussion and pressure flaking for people with some knapping experience.  Its was an introduction for some and a refresher for other. With nearly 30 people in the room, it could have been an exhausting day, but there were a lot of experienced knappers willing to share what they knew with others and everyone was just so darned patient and nice that I didn't feel run off my feet making the circuits and helping people with their problems.  On Sunday we had a project day.  This was my first time knapping in Saskatoon, so we focused on hafting.  We made Hoko knives in the morning and people used them to whittle more complex hafts and foreshafts for their scrapers, knives and projectile points throughout the day.  We used sinew, gut, and rawhide for the lashing and spruce gum and local Saskatchewan red ochre for the glue.

Jack (standing) dedicated a lot of his workshop time to help a the knappers on Sunday morning who couldn't attend on Saturday.

Mahogany Obsidian
and chert points
The four days that I spent in Saskatoon flew by and I really hope we can do it all again some day.  It was great reconnecting with old friends, and despite the short amount of time I spent there, I think I made some knew friends that I'd like to see again.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

lashed and glued in place

foreshafts with points and a projectile point read to haft

Knife, scraper, arrowhead, and assorted flake tools

nice!

The gluing and binding station

Matt knapping a big glass slab from a wine bottle melted in the kiln

Novaculite point

Points and debitage
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An Intermediate Period Scraper Reproduction from Labrador

March 26, 2014, 10:31 am
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The finished scraper
This is an Intermediate Period scraper reproduction based on an approximately 3000 year old artifact found in Sheshatshiu, Labrador.  The stone artifact will be on display in the Labrador Interpretation Centre and this reproduction will assist in interpreting the small pinkish tan colour scraper, which I mentioned in an earlier post.  The scraper is a relatively innocuous little flake scraper that on its own is not particularly diagnostic.  Most precontact cultures in Newfoundland and Labrador made versions of these small triangular or rectangular end scrapers.  The unique handle tells a different story.

Tools like this would be used to finish cleaning and
scraping a hide.
The handle is based on ethnographic and historic Innu scrapers.  It will be a familiar form to people in Sheshatshiu, especially older members of the community.  The historic scrapers were fit with a metal or sometimes bone scraper blade, but the reproduction of the small chipped stone endscraper from the archaeological site is a good fit.  Choosing to use an historic Innu style handle on the 3000 year old artifact definitely implies a continuity between the people who live in Sheshatshiu today and the people who lived there 30 centuries ago.  There aren't any scraper handles preserved from this remote time period, so we don't know exactly what Intermediate period handles looked like.  Often when I don't know what the missing organic pieces look like, I'll choose a design that is as simple as possible and fades into the background.  In this case, the handle is front and centre and so is the message of continuity that it conveys.

The small scraper was made unifacially on a flake.  The reproduction is shown hafted onto the wooden handle using spruce gum and red ochre as a glue and gut as a lashing.

The ventral surface of the scraper is a flat, unmodified ventral surface of a flake


Approx. 23 cm long
Red ochre was found within the site, so at the request Scott Neilsen, the archaeologist directing the project, I went with a spruce gum and ochre glue for the scraper.  I used gut lashing to reinforce the bond.  The ethnographic examples tended to use a leather lashing around the bit, but given the smaller hafting area on the archaeological scraper I went with something a little finer, less stretchy and more durable.  The handle is cut from a short fir or spruce log with a diameter of approximately 2 or 2 1/2 inches.  You can see where the bark was removed around the fattest part of the handle.  The small knob on the end opposite the scraper is there to secure a leather loop.  I used caribou skin for this loop on the reproduction.

Intermediate Period Scraper Reproduction: Chert scraper, spruce gum and ochre glue, gut lashing, softwood handle, caribou leather cord
Photo Credits: Tim Rast


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Intermediate Period Scraper and Beothuk Collection Update

March 28, 2014, 8:15 am
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The correct way to hold and
use this style of scraper.
After posting the photos of the Intermediate Period scraper reproduction on Wednesday, I've got some important feedback from folks in Labrador explaining the proper way to use the Innu style handle that I used to mount the stone endscraper.  I included a photo in that post showing two different ways to hold the scraper and they were both incorrect.  The scraper should be held vertically, with your hand holding the stem and the heavy bulb at the top to add weight to the downward scraping action.  Scott Neilsen sent me a link to a fantastic video clip showing this style of scraper in use: you can view it here, Skimming the Fat and Removing the Hair.

I carved a bit more of the bulb to
create a longer stem for holding the
scraper.
As I mentioned previously, all that was preserved at the 3000 year old archaeological site in Sheshatshiu were small end scrapers made on flakes.  The handle is an historic Innu design.  Until an Intermediate Period site with organic preservation is found, we don't know for sure what kind of handles were in use 3000 years ago.  However, if we are going to use the analogy of an historic Innu style handle for the reproduction, then I should at least show the correct way to use it.  There were several ethnographic examples that I used as inspiration for the handle.  This one on the Tipatshimuna website was my primary source for the overall shape and construction and I used the measurements for several pieces in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History to guide the handle's size, like this one and this one.  The examples in the CMH online collection range in length from 21 to 29 cm long.  The handle that I made is meant to fit a relatively small stone scraper, so I went with a 23 cm long handle which places it in the smaller range of the ethnographic examples.  My hands are a little big for this particular handle, but I carved it to fit Lori's hand.

Beothuk harpoon head, scraper, and knife lying on a
caribou skin harpoon line.  Everything is there, except for
the ochre.
In other news, I'm wrapping up a large order of Beothuk reproductions this weekend and have several other pieces in the Sheshatshiu Intermediate period collection to complete.  Its going to be a busy few days.  The Beothuk set includes a bow and arrow, harpoon, knife, scraper, and flintknapping kit.  I can draw on existing inventory for a couple of those pieces, like the bow and arrow, but the rest needed to be built from scratch.  Everything is done now except for staining them with red ochre, which is a very important step.  Hopefully on Monday I'll have some photos of the fully assembled and ochre stained Beothuk harpoon.  At 12 feet long, its one of the larger reproductions I've ever done.  Its drying on the floor downstairs, where it starts in the living room and ends in the dining room.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Ā-ā-duth, or Spear for Killing Seals

March 31, 2014, 8:43 am
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Beothuk Harpoon
The twelve foot long Beothuk harpoon reproduction is complete now.  The reproduction is based on Beothuk harpoon heads in museum collections, historic descriptions, and a drawing by Shawnadithit illustrating a complete "Ā-ā-duth, or Spear for Killing Seals." The toggling harpoon head is certainly more reminiscent of Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon heads than Inuit designs, but beyond that similarity, this harpoon is completely unlike anything known from any other culture in Newfoundland and Labrador.  It lacks a foreshaft, is at least twice as long as Inuit sealing harpoons, and based on the Groswater harpoon shaft from L'Anse aux Meadows, it is three times the length of Palaeoeskimo harpoons.

Harpooning a compost bin in the back yard.  The caribou skin line runs the length of the harpoon, hooks into a notch cut in the end of the shaft and doubles back to where I'm holding the loop of the line with my left hand.  You can see the details in the drawing by Shawnadithit below.


In Shawnadithit's drawing she gives the Beothuk name for the harpoon (A-a-duth) and illustrates how the line was attached.  The type of wood isn't identified in the sources, but I used pine, primarily for its ease of working and light weight.  I made the shaft a little more than an inch square, based partly on the shape and diameter of the L'Anse aux Meadows harpoon and Cormack's mention that Beothuk harpoons were "slighter" than Inuit designs.  Besides, it's unwieldy enough at 12 feet long, without having a lot of added girth and weight to it.

Harpooning a backyard snowbank from two stories up.

The mainshaft tapers
into a foot long wedge
shape, which serves to
mount the harpoon head
and also creates a scarf
join to connect the two
sections together.
At twelve feet long, this is definitely an outdoor harpoon.  However, the plan is to us it in interpretive programming at the Mary March Provincial Museum in Grand Falls-Windsor.  For ease of transport and use, I made the main shaft in two 6 1/2 foot lengths.  The tail section of the harpoon is actually a complete, half sized harpoon that could be used to illustrate how the tool was used.  Apparently Beothuk harpoons did not have a separate foreshaft, so the long tapered end of the wood shaft in this reproduction can double as a scarf joint that fits into a rawhide socket permanently attached to the second 6 1/2 foot long section.  Basically, I made a complete 6 1/2 foot long harpoon for interpretive purposes that fits into an optional extension that will create a full 12 foot long Beothuk harpoon for a wall display or outdoor use.

In order to make the harpoon easier to transport, store, and use, I made it in two parts.  This rawhide lashing connect them together.  Here I've wrapped the end of back half of the harpoon in a plastic bag and wrapped rawhide tightly around the joint.  The rawhide and hide glue join glues itself to the wood of the front half of the harpoon and the plastic bag prevented this from happening on the back half.  When the rawhide dried, it created a hard socket permanently attached to the front half of the harpoon.

In the lower right corner, you can see the rawhide lashing that joins the two halves of the harpoon together to create the full 12 foot long harpoon shown in the photos here.  The entire harpoon is stained with red ochre.


The Beothuk bow reproduction is the
 height of a man and the arrow is
three feet long, but they are dwarfed
by the harpoon.  If you enlarge the
photo, you can see the "V" shaped
notch in the end of the harpoon to
fit the line into.
Given the length of the harpoon, I think its safe to surmise that it was used as a thrusting tool, rather than a thrown projectile.  James Howley suggested that it was unlikely that the Beothuk hunted seals from their canoes, because he felt the canoes were relatively frail, especially when compared to Inuit kayaks.  However, we know that the Beothuk hunted caribou from their canoes in open water, so I'm not so certain that we should rule out the possibility.  When you look at other cultures that used very long harpoon shafts, they are often used from boats in open water.  The length seems excessive for breathing hole sealing, so perhaps they were used along the ice edge in leads, or even from the shore, in the right setting.  I think it would be ironic if the Beothuk hunted land animals in the water and marine mammals from the land.

You can see previous posts documenting the construction of this harpoon here:




I will miss having this around the house, but it needs room to roam.  It wouldn't be fair to keep it cooped up in someplace with 8 foot ceilings.


Photo Credits: Lori White and Tim Rast

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Archaeology Talks at The Rooms: Archaeology in Sheshatshiu and The Beothuk along the Exploits River

April 2, 2014, 6:47 am
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 The Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society and The Rooms are presenting a pair of talks this evening (April 2, 2014) and tomorrow afternoon (April 3, 2014).


Scott Neilsen of MUN's Archaeology Department will be introducing the archaeology of Sheshatshiu, Labrador. Scott has been working closely with the community to uncover an important Intermediate Period site, which is providing new clues to a poorly understood time period in Labrador archaeology.



When: 7PM, Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Where: In the theatre at The Rooms, St. John's



Laurie McLean, an archaeological consultant in the Province, will summarize the results of his recent surveys of Beothuk sites located along the Exploits River and shores of Red Indian Lake. He'll talk about the condition of the sites, their significance, and the threats they face.






When: 2:30PM, Thursday, April 3, 2014
Where: In the theatre at The Rooms, St. John's


If you are in the St. John's area, be sure to come out for these talks.  If you are unable to attend in person, the NLAS will be live-streaming and archiving the talks on the NLAS Arch Youtube Channel. If you would like to view the talks live, simply visit the youtube channel at the scheduled start time and enjoy the live stream. The talks will remain archived there, so you can tune in at a later date as well.

Photo Credits: The Rooms


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Dr. Priscilla Renouf

April 4, 2014, 9:44 am
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Its a terribly sad day here.  I woke up to word that Dr. Priscilla Renouf passed away early this morning.  Priscilla was one of my MA thesis supervisors at Memorial University of Newfoundland.  The opportunity to learn from Priscilla was one of the biggest reasons that I came to Newfoundland and Labrador to study.  The experience that I had at MUN under her guidance and the opportunities that she provided to me after I graduated convinced me to stay.

When I entered the program at MUN, it was a little different than today.  The Archaeology Unit was part of the Anthropology Department and was composed of faculty from anthropology, geography, history, and folklore.  There was no PhD program and the year I started, 1996, there were only three other graduate students starting their MA, and I was Priscilla's only new student.  I can still remember my first visits to her office in the Ingstad Building where she would open up drawer after drawer full of incredible Palaeoeskimo artifacts from her work at Port au Choix.  Priscilla invested a lot of time and guidance into her students.  Her MA students would compare notes with each other after our meetings and often it seemed like we were supervised by completely different people.  She knew what each of her students needed and gave us the guidance, or patience, or criticism that we needed when we needed it.  She didn't try to fit us into her mold, she tailored her supervisory style to fit our personalities and challenges.  The relationship that develops between a student and supervisor is something that stays with you throughout your life.  Priscilla followed all of her students with pride throughout their careers and in turn, we graduate student siblings, celebrated with her during her many academic and personal triumphs.

I always meant to tell a story about Priscilla from the field when she retired, but she passed too early, before she could savour the sort of retirement that archaeologists enjoy, working on the problems and papers that they never had the time to explore earlier.  In 1997, when I did my fieldwork in Burgeo, Priscilla was the sponsor on my permit application from the Provincial Archaeology Office.  I had to check in with her midway through the season, so I took everything that I had found and drove up to see her on the northern peninsula.  I stayed for a week and when I got there she was looking through the local paper, the Northern Pen, at a story they had just been published on her field season at Port au Choix.  It was accompanied by a terrible photo of her.  A really, really bad photo, like she was caught in the middle of a sneeze or something.  She, like anyone, was mortified and probably would have thrown out all the copies she could find, save for the fact that the incorrect name was printed in the caption.  She was unrecognizable in the picture and misidentified in the caption, so the plan became to just say nothing about it for the week and hope that no one outside the crew would even realize who the crazy person in the photo was.  She endured the week.  I helped out around the site and she gave me the feedback I needed on my own project and just as I was about to leave town, the new Northern Pen arrived. It was full of new photos and new stories and no one would ever remember that horrid old photo.  Except... the paper had caught the error in the caption and reprinted the photo, now with sincere and bold apologies to Dr. Priscilla Renouf for their mistake in misidentifying her the first time around.

I so wanted to find those two editions of the paper and bring them out at her retirement.  This just isn't the same.  I'm going to miss her greatly and I know that all her former and current students, colleagues, friends, and family will too.

Photo Credit: https://www.mun.ca/research/explore/chairs/renouf.php
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Beothuk Triangular Biface Knife Reproduction

April 7, 2014, 8:30 am
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Beothuk reproduction scrapers, knife,
and harpoon head
There were a few smaller tools included in the set of Beothuk reproductions that I recently completed for The Mary March Museum, including a hafted knife and scraper.  The scraper was a relatively simple flake scraper hafted in a nondescript wood handle with sinew and covered in red ochre.  In the photo on the right, the two tools in the left half of the frame are scrapers.  The knife next to them is based on a couple of different sources.  I used a Little Passage triangular biface from Inspector Island as the main reference for the blade and a wood handle illustrated in Howley 1915 for the handle.


The handle is based on a wood artifact illustrated in this plate from James P. Howley's 1915 book; The Beothucks or Red Indians: The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland The two items labeled  #5 are a knife and knife handle.  I used the top one as my main reference for this reproduction.


Beothuk or Little Passage reproduction knife.  Chert blade, softwood handle, gut lashing, pitch glue, red ochre stain


Here are the knife and scraper with the bow and arrow included in the set.

Photo Credits:
1,3-4: Tim Rast
2: Plate from Howley 1915 from Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website


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Half Mast

April 9, 2014, 1:56 pm
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Flags at The Rooms and Memorial University of Newfoundland were flying today at Half Mast in honour of Priscilla Renouf, a professor at MUN and the first chair of The Rooms board.  The Rooms is shown above and the church in the lower left distance is The Basilica Cathedral.  
Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Quartzite Biface

April 11, 2014, 12:55 pm
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I had a bit of trouble getting my hands on red quartzite for a couple of important artifact reproductions in the Sheshatshiu Intermediate Period set, but my luck recently changed.  This is one of two copies of a particular biface (below) that I need to make and haft.

This photo shows the original artifact.  There are a couple different interpretations of what this tool might have been used for and I'm going to make two versions and haft them in two different ways to illustrate the different theories.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

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Intermediate Period Chert Knife Reproduction

April 14, 2014, 12:26 pm
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A small knife like this was lost in
Labrador about 3000 years ago.
This is another reproduction in the Intermediate Period set based on artifacts found by Scott Neilsen's crew in Sheshatshiu, Labrador.  Like all the other pieces in this set, only the lithic component of the tool was preserved, so the organic handle and binding materials are educated guesses.  For this particular biface we went with red ochre and spruce gum glue and sinew for the lashing.  The red ochre is based on the abundance of ochre staining found in the site.  We also used antler for the handle to bring caribou into the story.  Caribou hunting would have been very important to the Intermediate Period people living in the area of North West River and Sheshatshiu 3000 years ago, so we want to reflect that in the artifact reproductions.

Intermediate Period Knife Reproduction.  Banded chert blade, red ochre and spruce gum glue, sinew lashing, antler handle
The banded chert
is not a bad match
for the original.
The design of the handle is quite simple, although we purposefully kept it long and narrow so that it could double as a foreshaft for a spear or dart.  Making the handle serve a dual purpose keeps the interpretation of the biface as a knife a little more flexible as well as demonstrating that tools could serve multiple purposes across their lifetime.  The same projectile point that was used to hunt a caribou, could be used as a small knife to butcher the animal.  I'm still working on the mainshaft that will fit this knife and a couple other hafted bifaces, so I might have to do a small bit of shaping on the end, but I think its finished enough now for you to get the idea.

This piece will be used in support of an exhibit on the archaeology at Sheshatshiu that is being developed for the Labrador Interpretation Centre.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

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Intermediate Period Spear Reproduction

April 16, 2014, 11:48 am
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The hafted reproduction
alongside a 1:1 photo of the
original artifact
This is a hafted reproduction of an Intermediate Period spear or dart point based on an artifact found in an approximately 3000 year old archaeology site in Sheshatshiu, Labrador.  It is hafted in to a foreshaft with spruce gum and red ochre glue and sinew lashing.  The foreshaft is fit into a main shaft that is based on historic Innu caribou hunting spears.  The historic period spears had permanently fixed iron spear heads and were used for spearing caribou in close quarters, especially from canoes while the caribou were swimming.  

The foreshaft and socket
The recorded lengths of Innu spears range from 4 feet to well over 7 and a half feet long, although most of the references I've come across are in the 4 to 6 foot range.  For this reproduction I used a main shaft that is just over a five feet long and the total length of the spear is around six or six and a half feet, depending on which of the foreshafts is mounted in it.  Like the historic spears, the socket of the main shaft is reinforced with lashing to prevent splitting.  I used gut for this lashing and spruce for the mainshaft.  Other details borrowed from the historic Innu spears is the straight, non-tapering shaft with a consistent circular cross-section of a little over 2 cm.  There is also a small knob on the butt end of the spear, presumably this was there to assist in thrusting and retrieving the spear.

Spruce mainshaft, softwood foreshaft, gut and sinew lashing, red ochre and spruce gum binding. The mainshaft is 5 feet 1 inch long and when fitted with this foreshaft, the complete spear is 6 feet long. (click to enlarge)

The antler knife handle is tapered at
the end so it will also fit into the
spear mainshaft.
The interchangeable foreshafts will allow the interpreters to change the character of the spear by swapping out different foreshafts mounted with different point styles.  In total, there will be three different foreshafts, each mounted with a different biface or projectile point, including the knife that I mentioned in the last blog post.  The one limit will be the mainshaft itself.  Its a very good representation of a handheld thrusting spear, but it is not an aerodynamic design and doesn't easily lend itself to the interpretation of many of the notched bifaces as projectile points, perhaps fitted onto darts that were launched with a spear thrower.  Imagine a slighter shaft, with more of a barrel shape, lacking a knob on the butt end and perhaps outfitted with feathers to create drag and spin.  Again, that's one of the benefits of the detachable foreshaft technology.  The same foreshaft that could be fit onto this thrusting mainshaft could also be used on a light dart designed to be hurled at prey with a throwing stick or atlatl.

I had a choice of projectile points to use on this reproduction.  I went with the point with the tip damage over the more complete examples because I found a stone that was a very good match to the original artifact.
 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

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Intermediate Period Quartzite Biface - Spear or Adze?

April 18, 2014, 2:19 pm
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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
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Sheshatshiu, Labrador Intermediate Period Collection

April 21, 2014, 11:45 am
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A 3000 year old toolkit
Here's a final look at the Intermediate Period reproductions that I've been talking about for the past few weeks.  They are based on artifacts recovered in Sheshatshiu, Labrador under the direction of Scott Neilsen.  The site is dated to around 3000 years ago and will be the focus of a new exhibit in the Labrador Interpretation Centre in North West River.  Aside from the two cobble tools (the quartzite hammerstone and the coarse pestle) I've documented most of these pieces in previous posts, which are indexed here:



If you would like to learn more about the archaeological site that these reproductions are illustrating, you can visit the Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society's YouTube channel and watch Scott's April 2, 2014 talk at The Rooms called "Archaeology in Sheshatshiu: A Review". 

These are the artifacts that the reproductions are based on.  Only one of the three side-notched projectile points was reproduced (the top one) and the large reddish quartzite biface was used as the reference for both a spear point and adze blade.

For this quartzite hammerstone, I went through my bag of hammerstones and found one that had a similar size and shape to the Sheshatshiu artifact.   If you've attended a MUNArch flintknapping workshop in the past few years, there is a pretty good chance that you used this hammerstone and therefore you helped make this reproduction.

This is a little rougher looking cobble that is meant to represent a possible pestle in the collection.  Its a softer rock that probably wouldn't last long as a hammerstone, but it may have been used for grinding ochre or pulverizing other materials at the site.  Mostly unmodified rocks like this present their own problems when trying to reproduce them.  Finding a cobble that matches the artifact is kind of like finding a perfect match for a specific snowflake.
 
All of the pieces.  Quartzite, chert, charcoal, softwood, spruce, tamarack, rawhide, gut, sinew, hide glue, spruce gum, red ochre, caribou skin, beach cobble, caribou antler

The quartzite biface hafted as a spear point is one of my favourite pieces in the collection.  It has a nice weight to it.

 
Seeing this coming at you would suck, if you were a caribou.

The scraper, hafted in an Innu style handle.

A side-notched point hafted with red ochre and spruce gum into a wood foreshaft with sinew lashing.

A grey banded chert knife hafted in a caribou antler handle.  The handle is designed to fit into the spear as a short foreshaft.

The red quartzite biface is shown here hafted as an adze blade in an antler socket lashed to a wood handle with rawhide.
 

The Sheshatshiu Intermediate Period Set
 Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Drone Practice

April 23, 2014, 10:54 am
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The houses and powerlines are a
couple hundred metres away.  Wide
open spaces are a must.
Over the Easter weekend I had a chance to tag along with a couple friends out for the inaugural flight of their new 3D Robotics multirotor drone.  The ultimate goal is to use the drone to assist in archaeological mapping and overhead site photography, but on this first attempt the goal was to simply get it off the ground.  This was my first time seeing a multirotor fly and I was surprised by how quiet and stable the flight seemed, even on a somewhat gusty day.  The vehicle seems perfectly suited for aerial photography at the site level and probably larger area mapping, but it will require a lot of practice.  Being on hand to see a new operator try one for the first time really impressed on me how difficult it is to learn to use one of these safely and confidently.  It definitely requires practice in a wide open space, a steady hand, and spotters on the ground to help keep an eye out for trees and powerlines and to run interference on the throngs of kids that are attracted to the spectacle. 

Marc on the controls.  

Discussing the flight plan.

Its remarkably steady in the air, especially in "loiter" mode.

A second multirotor was on the scene as well, although it was having a bit of a rough day flying.

The drone has a pretty robust chasis, but the blades are necessarily light.  The slightest tumble was enough to break two rotors. The blades are designed to be easy to replace.


Like any aircraft - takeoffs and landings were the trickiest part.

In the air, it was very quiet and stable. I can't wait to see the results once the camera gets mounted. 


Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Beothuk Iron Arrowheads

April 25, 2014, 12:52 pm
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A reproduction Beothuk arrowhead
I'm working on a couple orders right now that are heavy with Beothuk and Dorset Palaeoeskimo artifact reproductions.  Today I made four Beothuk arrowheads by cold hammering square cut iron nails.  Laurie McLean did his MA on Beothuk ironworking and I used a short publication that he put together with the Newfoundland Archaeological Heritage Outreach Program in 2003 as a reference for the work.  He shows there how the Beothuk would hammer nails in the middle to remove the end and start the shaping of the blade.  He also gives some idea of the size of nails used and the arrowheads made from them.

The four arrowheads on the right were all cold hammered and ground out of nails that were identical to the two on the left.  They lost their rust during the hammering. 


I worked two of the nails by chiseling
off the hear.  This is not how the
Beothuk worked them.
I started with 4 inch nails that I bought off a supplier that I found through eBay.  I picked 4 inch nails because I was aiming for a finished arrowhead in the 11 cm range (about 4 3/8").  I knew the nail would get wider through hammering, but I guess I wasn't thinking about how it would also get longer.  The four arrowheads that I made today were all made by hammering and grinding and they ranged in size from 10 to 14 cm long.  For the longest three, I either left the head on the nail as I hammered or chiseled it off flush with where it joined the body of the nail.  I thought that I needed to do that to preserve the length of the finished arrowhead.  But of course that was unnecessary and the better reproduction came from actually following the Beothuk method as it was preserved in the archaeological record.

Based on artifacts recovered from Beothuk archaeological sites, this is how they began working nails into arrowheads.   The nails were hammered flat in the mid section.

When the iron gets foil thin, its easy to bend and snap the nail head off.

A sequence from nail to
completed arrowhead
To work the nails, I hammered them cold on an anvil with a metal claw hammer.  I made a few strikes with a hammerstone and it worked fine, although the long handle on the hammer made things much easier.  To grind the blade down to size and make it symmetrical and sharp, I used a bench grinder for the coarse work and an hand file for the lighter work.  Again, a stone abrader worked fine, but I opted for something with a longer handle to actually do the work.  I did a small amount of hammering on the tang as well to narrow it.  This also added length to the arrowhead.  In the end, the hammered arrowhead was more or less the same length as the nail that it was made from, even with more than 3 cm removed from the head end.  The four arrowheads are all more or less correct, although as a set they feel large.  I have some 3 inch nails on the way and I think working them in the same way will give me some smaller points that will create a better collection.  I'd like the points to be in the 7cm to 11cm range when completed.

Its possible that some of the little nail heads were ground into scrapers.  It makes sense to reuse those little pieces somehow.

References: 
McLean, Laurie
2003 A Guide to Beothuk Iron. NAHOP Artifact Studies 1.Archaeology Unit, MUN, St. John's

Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Making and replacing harpoon heads

April 28, 2014, 1:31 pm
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Ivory and antler harpoon
heads in need of repair
I'm working on a few harpoon heads this week.  Some will be newly made form scratch and others are repairs or replacements of damaged harpoon heads.  I needed a theme to the week to get me motivated.  I have a long long list of reproductions to get done before I head into the field in June and a short list of people waiting for me to get the work done.  In the photo on the right, the disassembled ivory harpoon head in middle is the broken tip of a complete harpoon.  The roughed out walrus ivory block beside it will be a (hopefully) identical replacement piece that will be fit with the original iron endblade and brass rivet.  The stained harpoon head with the line and foreshaft is a Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head that I made for a client years ago and that needs a replacement endblade made.  I'm aiming to make those two repairs and make a third Dorset harpoon head and tip-fluted endblade from scratch over the next couple of days.

The original harpoon head fell and shattered, but when it is pieced back together you can see its original shape.

The iron endblade with the brass rivet still in place.

Its unfortunate that it broke, but being able to take it apart lets me see details of its construction that would be otherwise hidden.  The red stains are rust marks from the endblade inside the slot.

Having the original piece with me in the workshop helps speed up the work greatly.  I should be able to get this finished tomorrow.
Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Harpoon Head Repairs Finished

April 30, 2014, 1:25 pm
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Two antler harpoon heads and two
ivory harpoon heads
The three harpoon heads that I set out to make and/or repair on Monday are finished now.  The missing endblade on the complete Dorset harpoon is part of a larger order, so I'll hold on to that for the time being, but I can contact the owners of the other two harpoon heads and make the delivery arrangements.  I'd like to hang on to the fresh ivory harpoon head for a few days just to be certain that it is stable.  A freshly carved ivory surface is prone to cracking if its not treated carefully.  I coated the harpoon head in mineral oil overnight at various stages and now that it is done, I've added another mineral oil coating.  The oil should help mitigate the swelling and cracking as the new surfaces react to their new temperature, humidity, and pressure.

The new harpoon head is shown here alongside the broken one that it is replacing.

This is an Inuit style toggling harpoon head for seal hunting.  It is made from walrus ivory for the body, iron for the blade, and brass for the rivet to hold the blade in place.

This is a Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head reproduction with a tip fluted endblade.  It is made from antler and Newfoundland chert.

Two of the harpoon heads are part of complete harpoons.  The one in the upper right corner is another Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon head that was given a replacement endblade.  I don't have the complete Inuit harpoon, but the client sent along the ivory foreshaft so that I could ensure that the replacement harpoon head fits.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast
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Studying Arctic Drums

May 2, 2014, 7:56 pm
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Chris Wolff, Lori, and I spent the last couple of days viewing and documenting Arctic drums and drum parts in the Canadian Museum of History's archaeological and ethnographic collections in Gatineau.  We were primarily interested in the Late Dorset drums from Button Point on Bylot Island.  We thought there was one more-or-less complete drum and a second partial drum, but it turned out there was a lot more to the collection than that.   Both drum frames are actually complete and there were fragments of more than a half dozen other drums from the same site.  Its a much larger sample than we were expecting and the details of the drum construction and decoration are more apparent than we were hoping for.

To put the archaeologically collected drums into context, we also viewed the ethnographic Inuit drums in the Museum's collection.  They are in the same family of drum, but their construction and design differed in several key aspects.  Chris and I plan to prepare a publication on what we found.  It was a fantastic trip and I'll share a few more photos soon.  The collections staff at the CMH were tremendously helpful and accommodating in all our requests.

Photo Credits: Lori White and Tim Rast
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