Alberta Knapping Part 2

First point, first arrow - wow!

On the second day of knapping, there were 15 of us at the University of Calgary making arrows, hanging out and chatting.  We saw a few different fluting and indirect percussion techniques.  We made spokeshaves and used flakes to strip the bark from the willow shafts for the arrows.  There were also a few dowels and hardwood arrow shafts thrown into the mix.  A couple guys had their own hafting projects, including a scraper and knife pair hafted in rib handles and a big spear shaft for the Clovis point.  Thanks again to the Archaeological Society of Alberta for putting on a great weekend!

Straightening a willow arrow shaft over heat.

A lot of wood and stone working

Scraper and knife drying in rib handles.

Looking down the end of a drying arrow.

We used pitch and sinew for hafting the points.

Jackie's first point and first arrow - great work!

Jackie's obsidian arrowhead on a hardwood shaft.

I like the pattern in this willow arrow.

Mike made the shaft for Rick's Clovis spear point.  One of the coolest projects that I've seen come out of these workshops.

This is going to look great with a rawhide binding.  I'll try to get an update when the spear is done and ready to be raffled.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Alberta Knapping Part 1

Knapping in Calgary

This knapping vacation is drawing to a close, but I've enjoyed every minute of it.  The Archaeological Society of Alberta really knows how to put on a good show.  The Medicine Hat club had a full turn out and lots of new faces at the demonstration and talk last Thursday, and we had the biggest, longest Calgary flintknapping workshop ever over the weekend.

Explaining a harpoon in Medicine Hat

In Medicine Hat, I demonstrated making a Dorset Palaeoeskimo stone knife for more than 40 people at the Police Point Park Nature Centre.  It was a great venue, and my host and the event organizer, Janice Andreas, did a fantastic job of pulling everything together.  There were lots of great questions and enthusiasm during the demonstration and some interesting chats with folks afterwards.  If you're interested in archaeology and live in southeastern Alberta, I certainly recommend becoming a member of the Archaeological Society in Medicine Hat.

Knapping demonstration at Police Point Park Nature Centre, Medicine Hat, Alberta

Jason explaining a technique

In Calgary, Jason Roe and I led a weekend knapping workshop at the University of Calgary.  The event was also sponsored by the Archaeological Society of Alberta and Mike Turney was handling all the registration and organizing on behalf of the Calgary centre.  I'm really envious of the level of enthusiasm and organization amongst the Archaeological Society of Alberta across the Province.

A full house. A very full house.

Allan's set points from Alberta

On Saturday, we had 27 knappers of all levels of experience working in one big group around the tarp.  I think everyone got a lot out of it. In the past the new and experienced knappers had worked in separate rooms and even though this is my 3rd year leading these workshops with Jason, this was our first opportunity to sit down and knap together.  On Saturday, everyone learned the basics of hard hammer and soft hammer percussion and pressure flaking.  We went through lots of rock and I think most everyone produced something by the end of the day.

The workshop gets bigger and better every year.

Rick working on his big Clovis

With such a big group, it was great having two instructors and lots of experienced knappers spread around the room.  There were some real talented and generous knappers in the room.   I made some new friends and got to see lots of old ones, and, of course, I learned a lot again.  I really appreciate the Society's invitation to take part again this year.  Later this week, I'll put up a few photos from Sunday's session, when we got into making arrows and hafting some of the points produced over the weekend.

Rick Rowell treated us to a big beautiful Clovis point that he made on an obsidian biface that Jason had begun.   I have a few more shots of this point to share next time.  Rick donated it to the Archaeological Society of Alberta and Mike Turney is hafting it.  The plan is to raffle the finished spear as a fundraiser for the society.

Photo Credits: 
1,4-9: Tim Rast
2,3: Janice Andreas

Looking for Arrowwood

Not exactly...

I'm in Alberta now and I took my dad out for a drive on Wednesday to see the country.  When I was a kid and he told me that, it usually meant we were going to the middle of nowhere to talk to some guy about a bull or a tractor he was thinking about buying.  In this case, my loosely hidden agenda was to cut some sticks that would work as arrow shafts for this weekend’s workshop. 

Had my eye on these bushes for a while

I get my ochre from a pit near a cove in Ochre Pit Cove in Newfoundland, so why not try looking for Arrow wood in Arrowwood, Alberta?  According to the town website, the town got its name from the arrowwood shrub (viburnum), which may or may not have grown locally.  Its a pretty little town, but not the trove of arrow shafts that I was hoping for.  I didn't see any growing wild and I didn't want to cut up people's hedges, so we kept moving.  Eventually we wound our way back to a little copse of willow shoots that I'd been eyeing for several years just outside the Bow River Valley.  

Lots of nice straight shoots, with a little deer trail running through the snow.

I think we have some good straight shafts to work with.  If not, I brought some dowels to use as back ups.  

The reddish shoots were a little too slender for arrow shafts, but the shoots that were a year or two older seemed pretty good.  If they were too old, the bark started to split and wounds appeared on the shoots.  I found a dozen or so shafts, that I think will work for us.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Flintknapping in Medicine Hat and Calgary

I'm in Alberta this week attending several flintknapping events sponsored by the Archaeological Society of Alberta.  The Southeastern chapter has invited me to demonstrate stone tool making and talk about some of my artifact reproduction work in Medicine Hat hat and I'll be helping Jason Roe out with the flintknapping workshops at the University of Calgary this weekend.

Medicine Hat:

Handling Lithics: The Archaeology and Craft of Northern Artifact Reproductions 

Flintknapping Demonstration by Tim Rast

Police Point Park Nature Centre, Medicine Hat

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

7 PM

Calgary:

Introduction to Flintknapping

Flintknapping Workshop by Jason Roe and Tim Rast

University of Calgary, Earth Science Building, Room ES 859

March 3rd, 2012

9am-3pm

Calgary:
Advanced Stone Tool Workshop
Flintknapping Workshop by Jason Roe and Tim Rast

University of Calgary, Earth Science Building, Room ES 859

March 4th, 2012

9am-3pm

Photo Credits: 

1: Screen Capture from the Archaeological Society of Alberta's homepage

2,3: Tim Rast

A Sharp Learning Curve

Translucent knapped stone tool

An Elder in Pond Inlet shared a story with me about a man who had a disastrous time making the move from knapped flint tools to ground stone blades.  The man had made many flint tools in his life and he always checked their sharpness by holding them up to the light and looking through the edge.  When the flint was sharp, the edge was so thin that he could see through it.  One day, he tried a new material that was softer than flint and decided to try grinding it sharp into a saw blade.  This was his first time seeing this type of material.

Sharp slate knives are not translucent

He started grinding the soft stone and every once in a while, he'd stop and hold the edge up to the sun to see if it was translucent and sharp as flint yet.  He worked and worked for hours, but he could never see the sun through the edge of the saw and he considered it not sharp enough to satisfy his ego.  Eventually he became so frustrated that he swiped the blade against his hand to show how useless it was - and cut through the tendons on four of his fingers!

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Pond Inlet, Nunavut

Snow covered komatik

I spent a few days in Pond Inlet earlier this week attending some meetings.  Here are a few shots from around town.  The sun is up for 7 or 8 hours a day now, and the temperatures hovered below minus 30 while I was there.  The sky was pretty hazy most of the time, but on the way to the airport it cleared enough that I could see the mountains surrounding the town and across the water on Bylot Island.

Pond Inlet, Nunavut

Skins and sleds around town.

Most of the community residents are Inuit and the first language is Inuktitut.

On a clear day, there would be mountains in the background.  The land edge disappears under the snow into Eclipse Sound.

Sled dogs are kept on the ice during the winter.

A shed on the sea ice and an iceberg frozen in place in Eclipse Sound.

A narwhal inside the Library.  Narwhal hunting is very important to the community.

The hotel in town.  Great rooms.

The mountains on Bylot Island, with the town in the foreground. 

I hope to return soon.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Express Pipeline, SE Alberta 1996

A meeting over the screen

I took these photos in the summer of 1996, while I was working on an archaeology project that was excavating sites along a pipeline right of way running through southeastern Alberta and into Montana.  I posted a photo from this project a couple weeks ago and some friends who I worked with that summer got in touch with me asking for a few more.  Here are some of my favourites.

Southeastern Alberta still has miles and miles of unbroken prairie.  

The pipeline was a 30 m right of way, running for several hundred kilometres from Hardisty in the north to the Montana border.  We were responsible for mapping, photographing and excavating all of the archaeological sites along that right of way.

Most of the sites were tipi rings.  We'd put a 2 x 1 m unit in the middle of the ring in the hope of hitting a hearth and maybe finding something diagnostic.  George is taking a photo of a hearth in the wall of the unit.  This was in the days when everyone had two cameras - one loaded with colour slide film and one with black and white print film.

We used a "Tipi-Quick" to map the rings.  You set it  up in the middle of the ring and stretch out the tape to each rock.  The mapper reads the degrees off the board and the person holding the tape gives you the distance and dimensions of each ring rock.  We could map and dig a couple rings a day.  I've tried using the Tipi-Quick in the arctic and it doesn't work as well.  I think its partly the lack of soil to pin it to the ground easily, and the tents in the north are a lot smaller than Plains' tipis, so there are easier ways to map them.

Pronghorn Antelope

Me; younger and more gullible.  My boss on this project knew I was moving to Newfoundland to go to school at the end of the summer.  She told me that she had family there and the most unusual thing about Newfoundland was that they don't have any KFC restaurants.  I was so worried that I found one of those full page  Newfoundland Tourism Ads on the back of a Canadian Geographic Magazine and called the 1-800 number.   I asked the operator if it was true about the KFCs and she laughed and said they have lots - she could see one from her office.  She asked if I wanted her to mail me a brochure about the province and I said "No, I was just worried about the KFCs."  

My crew.  There were two crews working on different parts of the project.  There was  a big crew of 10 or so people who were excavating the bigger sites at the river crossings and the crew that I was on with George, Barb, Rob, Jay, and my boss, Allison.  In this photo we'd stopped into Fort Walsh just over the border in Saskatchewan to get in out of the rain.

A little bird.

We found some kind of feature.  Occasionally we'd have small rock cairns to excavate, instead of tipi rings.  I think that may be what's going on here.

Most of the sites were big stone circles, like this one.  Before we'd map them, we'd pry out all the surface rocks and probe below the surface for buried ones.  In this part of the country, almost every hilltop that the pipeline right of way crossed had tipi rings on top of it.

There were six of us on my crew, but we split up into pairs.  Each pair had a truck and power screen.   Most mornings would start with Allison handing out maps of the sites we'd be heading to that day.  I seem to have wandered away from the meeting here to take a picture.  I still do that.

This was one of the more interesting finds from the summer.  Its an Iniskim, or Buffalo Stone.  These are fossils (Ammonites, if I recall correctly) that naturally resemble buffalo.  This one was about the size of a golf ball and I think we found it buried under a rock cairn.  Again, if my memory serves, there were a couple deer teeth in this same cairn, which had us worried for a while, because they can look a lot like human incisors.  No one wants to find human remains on a project like this.

The wide open prairie was something to see.  It continued all the way to the US border.  The difference between the US and Canada was like night and day, the prairie stopped at the 49th parallel and Montana was all plowed fields.

For a few days at the end of the season, the two crews came together to tackle some big sites.   I think this is the site that was just across the road from the Canadian Forces Base Suffield.

In the four rolls of film I found from the summer, this quartzite flake and the iniskim are the only artifact  photos that I have.  We really didn't find much and what we did find was not very photogenic.  It was mostly quartzite cobbles and flakes.  There really wasn't any good fine grained material available to knap anywhere close by.  I left directly from this project to drive to Newfoundland and when I had the first meeting with my MA supervisor at MUN, she pulled open a drawer of Palaeoeskimo artifacts from Port au Choix and I knew then that I wouldn't be leaving here anytime soon.

You can make out two rings in this photo, one with all the activity in it and a finished one behind the truck.

This is Jay - my roommate for the summer.  I don't remember him being camera shy so I'm not sure what the face is about.

I think this might have been my last day on the job.  It was a dark photo and the harder I worked at cleaning it up the weirder it got. I'm the one sitting on the ground and for some reason I have a goldfish in a bowl.  I think it might have been a fish that I had in Calgary and I brought it to give to Jay when I left for Newfoundland?  I have no idea.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast