Labrador 2002 - Land

These are some of my favourite photos from the summer of 2002, in and around Cartwright, Labrador.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Arctic Fox

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Middle Dorset Palaeoeskimo Toggling Harpoon Graphic

Photo Credits: Erick Walsh

Dorset Microblade Handle Brace

You can check out this earlier Elfshot post to see how these little brace pieces were used to secure a microblade in place on a handle.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Point Revenge Recent Indian Arrow Reproduction

This is an arrow that I made a few years ago for the Gateway to Labrador Visitor Centre.  I knapped a Point Revenge style corner-notched point for the arrowhead and used Innu arrows in The Rooms Ethnographic Collection as references for the shaft, fletching, and binding.  Even though the Recent Indian points from Labrador are pretty much identical to contemporaneous points from the Island portion of the Province, the arrows made by the Beothuk and the historic Innu seem to have been quite different.  The Innu arrows I've seen are fletched with three feathers (the Beothuk used two), they are several inches shorter than the yard long Beothuk arrows, are not covered in red ochre and use pitch and sinew as a binding.  In almost every instance the things that make the arrows different would not be preserved in the archaeological record.

3 feathers, tied at the ends only and not glued down

Stone point hafted with pitch and sinew

The finished arrow on display in Labrador

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Dorset Endblade

Dorset endblade in situ

Introducing the endblade to the rest of the team

Its bifacially worked, with no sign of tip-fluting attempts

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Snowy Owl Chicks

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Coloured Glass Points

These coloured glass points were made from beer bottle and wine bottle bottoms.  I used to make a lot of nice bright blue points from recycled bottles of Harvey's Bristol Cream.  I still think flat bottomed bottles are the best and easiest material to learn pressure flaking on.  That's why I use this photo on the cover of my "Beer Bottle to Arrowhead" booklet.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Maritime Archaic Indian Barbed Harpoon Graphic

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Lemmings are awesome!

Lemmings are small arctic rodents with short tails, about the size of a hamster.

Their population rises and falls in approximately 4 year cycles.

They are at the bottom of the food chain for most of the land and air based predators in the North.  Still, they don't seem to have any real fear of people.  This one was happy to hang out in one of our excavation buckets and have his picture taken.

They'd probably make good pets.

This one looks particularly distinguished.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Labrador 2002 - Water

In 2002, I had a chance to work for the summer with my friend Chris on a few archaeology sites just outside Cartwright, Labrador.  Here are some of my favourite photos of the sea from that season.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Spot the Dorset Endblade

In theory, surface artifacts should be easier to spot than buried ones.  There is a Dorset endblade and at least 4 flakes in the above photo.

Over the millenia, lichen adds its own Arctic camo to artifacts lying on the ground surface.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast