Counting Down

Ground stone reproductions for Alaska

I have three orders to wrap up in the workshop in the next month.  Right now, I'm a little under 6 weeks away from heading into the field again for the summer, so that prep work is on my mind as well.  Last Thursday and Friday I took a Wilderness First Aid Course with a couple other archaeologists and northern scientists.  It was a nice break from the workshop.  It had been a few years since I last took a First Aid/CPR class and its good to get the reminders and confidence boost again.

Ulu and slate point reproductions

In the workshop, I'm still focusing on the Cape Krusenstern reroductions.  These reproductions are an ulu broken through a drilled hole and the tip of a slate lance or knife.  As with the other pieces in this set, I'm working from photographs and making two copies of all the artifacts.  The position of the hole in the ulu makes it tempting to imagine that the missing piece would mirror the recovered section and the original ulu had a single hole in the middle.  However, I think its just as likely that this is one end of a longer ulu and that there may have been two or more holes drilled along the edge.  I'm satisfied with the form of the ulu, but I'm working at antiquing the surface a bit more.    In the photos here, they are kind of clean and I want to dirty them up and soften some of the mottled colouring in the stone.

One central hole?

Or maybe we're just seeing one of a series of holes along the upper edge of a longer blade.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast