Beothuk Gaming Pieces

Beothuk game piece reproductions

Late last year, I worked on a set of bone Beothuk Game Piece reproductions.  They were a birthday present ordered by a friend for her archaeologist husband.  I made 13 pieces in total and we selected seven of the nicest pieces to make the gift set.   This old blog post discusses some of the primary sources and interpretations of how the game pieces may have been used.  The pieces are carved in bone (I primarily use caribou long bones) and decorated with incised lines on one side.  They are covered in red ochre.

Thirteen finished game piece replicas

Like anything, the more time you spend with a project, the more detail that begins to emerge.  All of the known game pieces are either diamond shaped, rectangular, or irregular.  A complete set seems to have been composed of three diamond, three rectangular, and one irregular piece. There also seems to be a different approach to the thickness of the different game pieces.  The irregular and diamond shaped pieces are quite thin and flat, and often have a slight curve to them, probably from the shape of the bone they are made from.  The rectangular pieces are much thicker and blockier.  They aren't cubes like a six-sided die, but they are not simple flat tiles like the diamond shaped pieces either.  I tried to reflect this difference in the reproductions.

Carving the designs is a multi-stage process.  The final designs are quite complex, so I don't carve them all at once.  I begin with the borders and longest lines first and then add progressively more detail in additional carving sessions.  You can see my pencil marks on the blanks in this photo.  The reproductions are sitting on a sheet of paper that is printed with the original artifacts that I used for reference.

This is the final set of game pieces for my friend's birthday.  It has three diamond shaped pieces, three rectangular pieces and one irregular piece.  I'm especially happy with how the ochre took to the bone - they really capture the look and feel of the original artifacts.  

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Provincial Historic Sites Reproductions and Games

Red Ochre stained Beothuk
knife reproduction

Last week, I delivered an order of artifact reproductions and games to the folks at Provincial Historic Sites to use in interpretive programming.  One set was a collection of Beothuk hunting tools, including a knife, scraper, deer spear, harpoon, and three arrows.  A second batch of games included rawhide buzzers, a waltes set, and pin-and-cup games.

The harpoon and deer spear (lance) are
very hard to photograph because of
their length.

Some of these pieces are new to me, including the Beothuk lance.  I used the archaeology site at Russell's Point as the reference collection for the lithics in the collection.  The knife blade, end scraper,  arrowheads, and lance head are all based on artifacts found by Bill Gilbert in his MA research at Russell's Point.  I used a metal endblade on the harpoon because I've only seen metal endblades on Beothuk examples of that implement.  It's possible that some of the lithic artifacts that we find in Beothuk sites and classify as arrowheads or triangular bifaces were used to tip harpoon heads, but no one has found one in association with a harpoon head to prove it.  Here's a link to a blog post from 2014 where I discuss the references available for Beothuk harpoons and deer spears.

Beothuk harpoon and lance reproductions

The point of this lance is based on a large bi-pointed artifact found at Russell's Point.  It's possible that it was an unhafted bifacial knife, but it was symetrical enough that it's possible that it tipped a long deer spear, similar to the long iron tipped deer spears of the later historic period.

An antler harpoon head with a steel endblade and sinew lashing.  Like all of the Beothuk reproductions that I make, it is covered in red ochre.  The harpoon head has a line attached and is designed to slip off the end of the long wooden harpoon shaft when it is stabbed into a seal.

The complete harpoon and lance.

According to historic observations and drawings by Shanawdithit, the harpoon and dear spear were very long.  The deer spears were reported to be 12 feet long, while harpoons were variously reported as 12-14 feet long.  The one shown here is 13 feet long and the deer spear is 12 feet long.  These tools are so lengthy, that I make them in two pieces with a hard raw hide socket to join them together.  The can be taken apart for transportation and storage and reassembled for interpretation.

Beothuk style chert knife in a wood handle with sinew lashing and red ochre staining.

Hafted endscraper.  The endscrapers at Russell's Point were primarily made on flakes and had very rounded scraping edges, especially when compared to similar Palaeoeskimo artifacts from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Wood artifacts are very rare form Beothuk archaeological sites.  There are a handful of pieces from ethnographic contexts, but things like tool handles are very hard to come by.  When I don't have archaeological references to use, I try to fill in the blanks as simply as possible.

Beothuk arrow reproductions.  Chert, sinew, pine, goose feathers, red ochre

The Beothuk reproductions together.

Raw hide buzzer game

A buzzer in action. You can do the same thing with a big button twisted on a string.  It sounds like the wind when it whirs.

Bone and antler pin and cup games.

Success!

Waltes.  This is a Mi'kmaq game.  There are many examples of this game in the Maritimes and it's becoming popular among the Mi'kmaq of Newfoundland.  The game is played with a shallow wooden bowl and six game pieces.  The game pieces are blank on one side and incised with a design on the other and the game is scored based on the combination of face-up and face-down dice when they are flipped in the bowl.  The sticks are used for scoring.  Provincial Historic Sites tried unsuccessfully to find a Mi'kmaq craftsperson in the Province to make this game set before coming to me.  It would be good to see someone from the Mi'kmaq community making these.

Photo Credits: 

1-6, 8-10, 13, 15-17: Tim Rast
7, 11, 12, 14: Lori White

Newfoundland Harpoon and Arrow Reproductions

The pointy ends of harpoon and arrow reproductions

I completed a set of artifact reproductions based on artifacts found in Newfoundland and Labrador this week.  The set included a complete Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon, a Dorset harpoon head with a tip-fluted endblade, a barbed Maritime Archaic harpoon head, and a Beothuk or Little Passage style arrow.  These pieces are on their way to Nova Scotia right now and will be used by an archaeologist friend of mine in school talks.  

 

The set is intended to represent four different cultures and illustrate some of the different technologies used in the pursuit of food over time.  The complete Groswater harpoon can be used to demonstrate how a toggling harpoon works.  The small Dorset harpoon head fits onto the whalebone foreshaft on the Groswater harpoon, although it lacks an harpoon line.  The barbed Maritime Archaic harpoon head belongs to a completely different time period and cultural group so it isn't compatible with the Palaeoeskimo harpoon.  It shows a contrasting technology that would have been used for the same purpose; hunting seals.

I modeled the main shaft of the harpoon on the wooden harpoon shaft found at L'Anse aux Meadows.   

The Groswater harpoon, with it's distinctive harpoon head and endblade in place.

Ochre staining the Maritime Archaic barbed harpoon.  Unlike the Palaeoeskimo harpoon heads with a line hole centered in the middle of the harpoon head, this style of harpoon head has a single line hole positioned close to the base.  It relies on the barbs for gripping the seal and won't toggle in the wound the same as the Dorset and Groswater harpoon heads.

Another view of the Groswater harpoon head with a shelf cut on one side and lashing holes gouged through the nose to tie the plano-convex, box-based endblade in place.  The endblade is knapped from local Newfoundland chert, the harpoon head is antler, the foreshaft is whalebone, and the mainshaft is wood.  Sinew and sealskin are used to tie the various pieces together and to create the harpoon line.

 

Side views of the reproductions.  From left to right, Maritime Archaic harpoon head, Little Passage Arrow, Dorset harpoon head, and Groswater harpoon.

 

Dorset harpoon head made from antler with a tip-fluted chert endblade.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

All done but the drying

Sinew lashings on red ochre
and spruce gum adhesive

 The Northern Archaic and Ice Patch darts and atlatls are all done.  They just need to dry overnight and I can photograph them and then put them in the mail tomorrow morning.  I'll share those final images here on Friday.   Between the various stages of lashing and drying I managed to get a couple copper riveted ulus finished as well.  Its a load off.  With two days left before the weekend and then travel north on Monday I have one small jewellery order that I'd like to at least attempt before I close up the workshop for July.  Fortunately the size and make-up of that order is a little bit vague, so if I can get anything done it will be better than nothing.

The hafted ice patch dart reproduction (right) and reference dart points collected from the Yukon.  There's a pretty wide range of point styles represented.  I tried to match some of the lanceolate forms in the bottom row.  You can see the ghost outline of the red ochre and spruce gum adhesive on the base of the points in the lower right corner of the photo.  The original image can be found in this article: The Archaeology of Yukon Ice Patches: New Artifacts, Observations, and Insights 

 

Slate ulus with spruce handles.  The two laying down have copper rivets securing the blades in place and the one standing up is tied together with sealskin raw hide.

A profile view of the ulu blade.   As a general rule, ulus were sharpened unifacially so that they'd have both a sharp cutting edge and a steep scraping edge for hide working.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast   

Assembled Beothuk Arrow Reproductions

Chert and iron arrowheads and Beothuk arrow reproductions

The Beothuk arrow reproductions that I talked about on Friday are assembled now and stained with red ochre and oil.  I've made plenty of these arrows with stone points over the years, but this set includes the first arrow that I've made with a hammered iron arrowhead made from a modified nail.  I have made look-alike arrows for film props in this style, but they weren't hammered out of nails and lashed on in the correct fashion. I left off Friday's post wondering about the change in Beothuk arrows that came with the adoption of arrowheads hammered out of nails.

Pine shafts, goose feathers, chert or iron arrowheads, sinew and hide glue binding, red ochre and oil stain

Stone and iron points. The pointy part
of the arrowhead doesn't change a
great deal, but the hafting area of
the arrowheads are very different.

The iron arrowheads were hafted differently because the body of the nail was used as a long skinny tang that would have been lashed into a channel gouged in the side of the arrow shaft.  In contrast, the chert arrowheads that the Beothuk and their ancestors made were designed to be tied into a slot cut into the end of the arrow shaft.  The process of chipping the corner notches into the stone arrowhead created backward facing barbs, so that when the arrow went in, it wouldn't come back out again.  These barbs disappear on the iron nail arrowheads.  The general size and shape of the cutting and piercing part of the arrowhead isn't much different, but the barbs, which had been part of Beothuk arrowhead design for centuries suddenly vanish on the iron arrowheads.  It would have required a little extra effort, but it would have been possible to cut or grind barbs into the iron arrowheads, however the Beothuk chose not to.

Modified nail arrowhead (left)
Knapped chert arrowhead (right)

One difference between iron and stone would be the durability of the arrowheads.  A stone point is very likely to break if it encounters a bone or hits a stone or root on a missed shot, whereas an iron point is much more durable.  Perhaps the barbless design of the iron points is evidence that iron-tipped arrows were designed to be re-used.  Without the barbs, arrows could easily be withdrawn from the killed animal.  With stone points the chance of the point being re-usable was much lower, so there's no reason to make the design easy to remove from the wound.  The iron would also probably have a little more value associated with it, both because its durable, but also because its new and rare, compared to stone.  Again, this would create more incentive to retrieve and reuse the arrows.

Arrowhead and two feather fletching based on historic descriptions and drawings of Beothuk arrows

The same arrowhead and feathers shown in profile.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Staining Beothuk Reproductions

A first coat of ochre
and oil

 I'm finishing off the week by staining some Beothuk reproductions.  I need to ochre stain some pendants and gaming pieces and try to get some rust and age on a few nails.  I need to pull together an assortment of old fashioned square cut nails to show the sort of nails that the Beothuk were scavenging from early European sites in Newfoundland.  Right now I have three different sizes and vintages of nails ranging from antiques to newly made nails and I want them all to look more or less contemporaneous.  I'm starting by staining them in tannic acid made from tea.  I'll see what they look like after a soak overnight.  I imagine I'll wind up taking a hammer and blow torch to them as well.  Hopefully that will be enough to blend them into one coherent batch.  If not, there's still muriatic acid.

The carved pattern is nearly invisible on the unstained bone, but once the ochre goes on the lines start to pop.

Tea staining the iron nails.  You can see a few little shiny nails in the mix, I want to antique those so that they match the bigger rusty nails.

Ground ochre and oil for the bone pendants and gaming pieces.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Beothuk Triangular Biface Knife Reproduction

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

Beothuk Birch Bark Containers

A pair of red ochre stained Beothuk birch bark containers on display in the Mary March Museum in Grand Falls-Windsor.  I have a Beothuk birch bark reproduction on the horizon, but it will have to wait until later next year because I've missed the window for harvesting bark for this year.  The best time to harvest the bark is late spring or early summer.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

The sticks are not selected with any great nicety...

Ochre staining the bows
and bow strings

I've been test shooting and ochre staining the Beothuk bows over the past week.  They still need a bit of time to dry, so I'll have to save the final reveal for another day, but they are very nearly finished.  There's a tip from at least one broken chert Beothuk arrowhead embedded in my shed door, which I'm quite proud of, although it does make me want to make a few iron tipped Beothuk arrows for target shooting.

The top bow is shown with its back
up and the lower bow is belly up.

The ochre staining is the final step.  Of the two bows, the one that has been stable as it dries is still stable and the bow that twists as it dries has been twisting less, so hopefully its becoming more stable as well.  As the red stain goes on, I don't want the ochre and oil to be so thick that it obscures all of the details of the wood underneath it.  I purposely left the backs of the bows as rough and unmodified as possible.  For the overall general shape of the bows, I used the photo references found in Howley and this description made by John Cartwright in 1768:

The sticks are not selected with any great nicety, some of them being knotty, and of very rude appearance; but under this simple rustic guise they carry very great perfection; and to those who examine them with due attention admirable skill is shown in their construction. Except in the grasp the inside of them is cut flat... - Lieutenant John Cartwright 1768

It was important to me that there be
knots preserved on the back of the
 bow (top), while the belly (lower)
should look much flatter and
smoother by comparison.

What I wanted was a finished bow that would look like a random stick when viewed from the back, but with a flat, obviously worked belly and a nice even arc when it was drawn.  Not exactly a character bow, but I didn't want to hide the imperfections in the wood either.  I wanted a person viewing the reproduction bows to go through the same stages of understanding as Cartwright from first seeing a very rough stick to arriving at the conclusion that they were holding a carefully crafted instrument upon closer inspection.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast