Pitcher Plants

When I was out looking for spruce roots last week, I was distracted by all the Pitcher Plants in their fall colours.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

More than just a birch bark tube

The quiver should have a very slight taper from the opening
to the base.

The main project that I'm working on at the moment is a reproduction Beothuk birch bark quiver.  Conceptually, its a simple tube container, but it should also be tough and functional.  It's for a museum display so it needs to be made from the appropriate materials and match the few references that we have for Beothuk quivers.  I'll go into more detail in future posts, but here is a first look at the main body of the quiver.  I've cut it more-or-less to length, although there will be pieces added to each end, so I may need to trim it again to match the size that I'm going for.  I haven't sewn the main seem up the side yet, but I've cut the outside edge of the birch bark to a scalloped or "pinked" edge.  This is a design element common to Beothuk birch bark vessels that have survived in museum collections.  This edge may be purely ornamental, but I suspect it also helps in preventing tears in forming and spreading from the edge, the same as pinked edges work on fabric.

I used a plastic map tube as a form to wrap the birch bark around.  You can see it peeking out under the clothes pins.  You can also see the zig-zag edge running down the length of the tube.  These seem will be sewn together with spruce roots.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Collecting Spruce Roots

A single long spruce root

Collecting spruce roots is one of those fun jobs that is over all too quickly.  Spruce trees have long networks of straight roots shooting out in all directions from their bases.  These roots are just below the surface and easy to access.  Some are quite large but the ones with diameters between a pencil and a sharpie make good, durable lashing materials.  I need a few feet of spruce root lashing to sew a reproduction Beothuk birch bark quiver together.

You can see the muddy path
where the root came out of
the ground and dozens of
smaller criss-crossing roots

The easiest place to collect spruce roots are in clearings in the woods where there aren't a lot of low lying shrubs or small trees between the spruce trees.  A bit of moss and forest litter is no problem.  Sometimes you can see places where the roots are peeking above the ground, but I usually just pick a soft looking piece of ground in the middle of the clearing and kick the dirt off until I start to see reddish-orange roots.  The roots are everywhere, so it doesn't take long to find one.  Pick one that is more-or-less the right diameter and start pulling it up.  You can tug fairly hard on them, but if you feel like you might break it, you can always do a little digging to loosen the ground above it.  While you are pulling up one root, you'll probably expose dozens of others and two or three of them will be about the size you are looking for.  It becomes a game of trying to find the longest, straightest root, with the least forks in it.

It only took 10 or 15 minutes to collect this bundle of roots.  Once the bark is stripped and split there should be 100 feet or so of good lashing material.

Strip off the outer layer

You can use them right out of the ground as lashing if you are building something outdoors, like a lean-to or emergency shelter, but for smaller projects, you'll probably want to clean and split them.  Cleaning the outer bark of the roots is a little tedious, but its not too difficult.  If you are very careful you can use a knife to scrape through the reddish-orange outer layer.  Once the light coloured inside is exposed, you can peel off the outer rind in strips.  A sharp edged stick is a smart alternative to using a knife.  It is just as easy, a little safer, and less likely to inadvertently damage the root.  After the outer bark is stripped, the root will be a pale blond colour.

Don't let the split run away from you,
keep pressure on both sides to keep
the split travelling down the middle
of the root.

Splitting the root down the middle will make it more flexible and less likely to kink as you use it.  To split the root, all you need to do is carefully cut a small slit in one end and start pulling the root apart into two equal halves.  Straighter roots without branches or forks are the easiest to split.  Once the split starts it is very quick and easy to make it grow the length of the root.  You want the split to run right down the middle of the root, so pull it apart slowly and if you see that it is starting to get a little thicker on one side, pull that side a little harder to coax the split back towards the middle.  Its hard to explain, but your fingers will know what to do.

Different diameter roots
give different sized
lashing

I don't want the roots to dry out too much before I use them over the next week or so, so I'm going to keep them in a cool dark place.  Which is easy to find in Newfoundland in September.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

A busy week for the NLAS

Dorset Palaeoeskimo Endblades from
The Anstey Site, Twillingate

I've been home for a little over a week now and already the summer feels like a lifetime ago.  I'm taking babysteps back towards getting back into the workshop and the production side of Elfshot up and running again, but last week was all about the Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society (I'm the current NLAS President).  Last week we had a Board meeting, an Executive meeting, a Planning Committee meeting, and a meet-and-greet at the MUNArch mixer.  Already this week we've issued a Press Release and done one quick VOCM radio interview about our big summer Community Collections Archaeological Research Project.

Photo Credit: Robert Anstey, courtesy of the Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeological Society

Sheshatshiu Archaeology Now On Display

"Archeological exhibit opens in North West River" is an article by Derek Montague published today in The Labradorian about a new display of artifacts from Sheshatshiu in the Labrador Interpretation Centre. The article explains the background of the exhibit based on the archaeological work carried out by Scott Neilsen and his crew ahead of housing construction in the community.  I was asked to make a few reproductions for the exhibit based on the artifacts recovered and this article was my first chance to see the reproductions in use and on display.

From the article:

The highlight of the exhibit is a display of artifact recreations. These replica tools are all based off of artifacts found at the site. They were built using only the materials that would have been available to the Innu 3,000 years ago. 

People visiting the exhibits can pick up the replica tools and imagine how they were utilized.

Scott Neilsen holding a reconstruction of a quartzite biface as an adze or gouge, with other reproductions in their cases behind him.

Photo Credits: Derek Montague, Screen Captures from The Labradorian  

Adjusting to home life

I don't often get a chance to knap during the summer, but
 towards the end of the season this year, a geologist friend
brought me some Missouri chert that I couldn't resist trying.

The transition between the summer field season and the rest of the year can be challenging.  I don't know whether its more jarring to step out of my regular life in the spring or to be thrown back into it in the fall.  I'm not exactly sure how to explain what it feels like to be gone into the field for three or four months.  Its like taking all of your working hours in a year and lining them up end-to-end and then living them all in a row from June to September.  For those months, the only people you see are colleagues, the only places you go are to your workplace, and all conversations are work related.  The rest of the year is your home-life.  Fortunately, I like my summer work, so I look forward to it and miss it when its gone, but I also like my routines.  It takes time to settle back into my fall/winter patterns and judging by the backlog of e-mails and phone messages it should be a busy winter in the workshop.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Ice

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Fog

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Dawn

The sun is setting and it's getting dark at night, so things like day and night and dusk and dawn are starting to mean something.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Sorted Polygonal Soil

The land on north Baffin Island is shaped by permafrost and there is very little soil and vegetation cover to hide the effects of the freeze-thaw cycle in the ground above the permanently frozen earth.  The landscape has been shaped by glaciers and meltwater run-off and then by several thousand years of annual freezing and melting cycles.  Patterned ground is common and can happen on a lot of different scales.  Some of the polygons are so large that they are only noticeable from the air, while others are more obvious on the ground.  This patch of sorted polygonal soil measures a couple of metres across. The sandy soil and naturally fractured plates of dolomite exaggerate the effect here.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Arctic Foxes are Jerks

I love almost everything about the arctic, except the foxes.  This is the first Arctic Fox that I ever met, when I worked on Little Cornwallis Island, back in 1994 and he was a jerk.  He would visit  our camp regularly and lick the spot we poured our dishwater and chew through things like my knee pads or the leather strap on the shotgun.

But the absolute worst was when he would follow us to the outhouse (shown above) and try to crawl into the hole under the seat while you were sitting on it.  You had to take a handful of gravel to keep him at a distance until you were finished.  Some things should be done in peace, but Arctic foxes have no respect for that.  Because they are assholes.

These scruffy little brats are still following me around.  This is one that visited us at a recent site. (I don't know whether he's pissing or crapping on that rock. Probably both.)  As often as not, when we return to a site in the morning there are signs of a fox being there while we were away.  So far, we've come back to fox pee on the backdirt pile and the stadia rod (that we know of).  The thing about Arctic Foxes it that they find what it most dear to you and then they destroy it.  If they can't destroy it, then they crap or piss on it.  They've eaten pin flags and then spit them out so we would find the evidence.  Last night one chewed through the strings gridding out units and torn the flagging tape off of marking pins.  Not everyone's string or flags - just the ones closest to where I was digging.  We've come back to find their crap in our units, on the tarp covering our gear, and on the tote box where I was sitting the day before.  They find where I've been on site and then desecrate it.  I hate them.

 Photo Credits:
1,2: H. Gibbins
3: Tim Rast

Loon

There are a few loons around the river that we are working along.  I think this one is a Common Loon.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Another Day on the Tundra

Click to Enlarge

Photo Credit: Tim Rast