A few good sites...

Check out today's article in the Lewisporte Pilot about the discovery of the Change Island's Cache by Neil White and Marion Adams.  There are some great details about the find in the article: Change Islands Couple Makes a Rare Find.  If you'd like to see photos of all the artifacts, then check out this earlier Elfshot post: Change Islands Cache.

Inside Newfoundland and Labrador Archaeology: Digging through the files.  If the Change Islands Cache story whet your appetite for Newfoundland and Labrador archaeology, then check out this new blog from an archaeologist working in the Province.  The author is in a unique position to highlight some of the Province's archaeology and history that might be sitting in a cabinet or on a hard drive, just waiting to be dusted off and shared with a wider audience.

Magnetic North: Arctic Studies at the Smithsonian  This blog is only a few weeks old, and holds a lot of promise.  There is already a post on a film project with Innu youth in Labrador and a link to the Arctic Studies website - where you can get lost reading for days.

Spindrift Handkints: Its a poorly kept secret that field archaeologists in this province shop at Spindrift.  You wouldn't have to search too hard on the Elfshot blog to find a picture of Lori wearing a knitted moose flap cap by Spindrift.  They have a brand new website, which showcases some of their traditional and contemporary designs, including Rune hats with Newfoundland sayings and my personal favourite - the Seafaring Compass Cap, which has a magnetic button on the top in place of a pom pom.

Photo Credits: Screen Captures from linked sites.

Terra Nova National Park Reproductions

Bank Site reproductions

These four Recent Indian arrows and Dorset Palaeoeskimo knives are heading to Terra Nova National Park, here in Newfoundland and Labrador.  They are based on artifacts found by Jenneth Curtis at the Bank Site during recent excavations in the park.  They'll be used as part of the interpretation of the site for visitors.

The reproduction points

The Globe and Mail has a nice photo of some of the Bank Site Recent Indian points in a piece showcasing artifacts from Parks'  archaeological sites across the country.  The photo in the Globe article focuses on the exotic material from the site.  According to the caption, 14 Ramah Chert projectile points were found at the site, which is a pretty high number, considering the quarry at Ramah Bay is a 1000 km away in northern Labrador.  The people who used these little arrowheads at the Bank Site are most likely the ancestors of the Beothuk, who lived at the Bank site between 1000 and 500 years ago.  Even though the points are small, I could match the neck width on most of the them and still fit them on the long, Beothuk style arrows.  Others were too narrow across the hafting area, and assuming that they would have been hafted in a similar fashion, they would have fit on smaller arrows, perhaps from a child's bow.

Fletched with two goose feathers

Other chert and rhyolite artifacts were found at the site, including stone that likely came from the Bloody Bay Cove rhyolite quarry, which lies just north of the Park boundary.  I used a combination of rhyolite and chert for the points in this set and hafted them in shafts that match the description of Beothuk arrows, made several centuries later. I made the pine shafts an arm length long, fletched them with goose feathers and sinew lashing and covered them in red ochre.

The arrows are about a yard long, or the distance from the centre of the chest to the tip of an outstretched finger; the draw length on the long bows used by the Beothuk and, presumably, their ancestors.

The reproductions and reference material

The little knife belongs to a different, earlier culture; the Dorset Palaeoeskimo.  I've made several of these lately, but this is the only one based on a specific artifact.  The original knife was made from rhyolite, which I matched with non-archaeological rhyolite from Bloody Bay Cove.  The Dorset occasionally ground their artifacts, especially in the southern and eastern areas of Newfoundland and this little knife has a ground facet in the centre.  I found that the rhyolite ground a little easier than chert and periodically grinding the surface made working the stone easier.  I find the rhyolite particularly tough to pressure flake, but grinding the surface would help see me through some trouble spots.  It may have played a similar function to the Palaeoeskimo knapper who made the original knife.

Dorset Palaeoeskimo knife; chipped and ground rhyolite blade from Bloody Bay Cove in an antler handle.  The handle is based on artifacts from Port au Choix, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Dog Whip

Central Arctic Whip

This sealskin whip was the last piece, number 17 in a set of 17, for the Central Arctic set that I began working on at the start of this year.  I only shipped it a week ago, but it seems like forever ago.  As with the other reproductions in this contract, the original artifact that this whip is based on is in the collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.  You can see the original whip that I used as a reference here:

Whip: IV-C-3235

Antler handle and sealskin thong

sewing with gut cord

The last couple of weeks have been a blur - I didn't even measure the length of the whip stretched out, but it was somewhere around 8m long.  At its core is a single, long thong of sealskin.  Towards the handle end there are several layers of sealskin sandwiched around that centre strand and held in place with a leather lace that is threaded through a series of holes punched through all those layers of hide.  Finally, around the end of the caribou antler handle and the base of the whip there is a final sealskin sheath sewn in place with a strong gut cord.

I'm not sure of the exact length, but I think its at least 8m from end-to-end

dried and antiqued gut lacing

Whips like these were an important part of the dog team equipment.  It would have been used to encourage a lazy dog who wasn't pulling his fair share of the sled's weight.  Each community in the north has its own distinctive style of whip.  According to the CMC catalog, this is a Netsilik style whip.  I used pieces of leather from several different seal skins, but it used up a lot of hide.  There's pretty much a whole sealskin in one whip, which I found a little surprising.  There's just so many layers to it.

Antler handle before fitting

Part of the antler handle was visible in the reference photos, but the end of it was secured inside the whip, so I looked at other whip handles for references.  This style has a hole through it, and grooves on the distal end to help secure the hide to the handle.  Finally, there's a loop of leather around part of the whip where the skin meets the handle to create a strap to fit over the wrist.  I antiqued it with charcoal and antler dust.

At home in the snow

I tried it out in the backyard. and was pleased that after the days of lacing and sewing it actually worked.  I didn't use it on any dogs, but it sure groomed a lot of snow.  I wish I'd had more time to play around with it and it was so labour and material intensive it will probably be quite a while before I make another one.  Its really at home in the cold and snow.  The stiffness in the line works itself out quickly as it absorbs moisture from the snow.  Dry and indoors, it feels a little rigid, but outside and slightly damp the weight and flexibility feel very comfortable.

Mini-museum in the basement

All of the pieces in this set have now been shipped and received by the client.  A lot of work and research went into all.  I shipped it in two batches, so I don't have any group shots of all 17 items together and they ranged in size from thimbles and needles to harpoons and arrows, so it would be tough to show everything in a single image anyhow.  Still, I'll do one more post summarizing the whole project and indexing all of the summary posts for each reproduction in the set.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Knapping a Dorset Palaeoeskimo Knife; A Photo Essay

The Knapper

Here's a photo essay documenting the steps and tools that I use to reproduce a Dorset Palaeoeskimo knife blade from a stone core.  The stone that I'm working in this demonstration is chert from Newfoundland's Port au Port peninsula.  In this scenario, I am making a new blade to fit into an existing handle.  This would have probably happened many times over the life of the antler handle, which I think is actually a very stylized polar bear carving.  From an archaeologist's perspective, the stone blade seems permanent, but to the person who made and used these knives every day, the handle would be the part that they would own for years and the blades would wear out and be thrown away. These photos were taken by Michael Burzynski in Gros Morne National Park on March 25th, 2011.

The finished knife, with an antler handle, chert blade and sinew binding.  The Dorset Palaeoeskimos made knives like this when they lived on the Island of Newfoundland between about 2100 and 1300 BP.

Reference knives, the chert cores (top right and left), hammerstones, antler billet (bottom middle) and antler tine pressure flakers used in this demonstration.  The tools are pretty generic - I use this same kit to reproduce tools from a number of cultures.  Probably the most Palaeoeskimo inspired tool that I use is the small, cigar-shaped grey-green hammerstone in the middle.  Hammerstones found at palaeoeskimo sites in the province are often long like that and can be used like a short billet.

This is the original knife blade that I want to copy.  Normally this would be worn out and much smaller when it was replaced, but for the sake of the demo, its still new.   I'm holding it in front of the core where I intend to remove the flake to make its replacement copy.

Weighing the hammerstone.  I use a large hammerstone to remove the initial flake from the core.

I support the core on my thigh against a leather pad in the hopes that I will keep the flake in one piece when I strike it off with the hammerstone.

I detached a triangular flake, thin at the base and a little larger than the blade that I want to make.

I use the gritty white, round hammerstone to abrade the edges.  I use this same abrading stone throughout the demo to grind the edge and prepare sturdy platforms for flake removal.

The first few shaping flakes that I remove from the flake are removed using the little cigar shaped hammerstone.  I swing  it like a short antler billet.

The antler billet is soft.  It grips more of the edge and lets me take off wider, flatter flakes that help thin the biface down.  A biface is a tool with flakes removed on both surfaces, like a knife or arrowhead.

swinging the antler billet

After a few shaping and thinning flakes are removed, the general triangular shape of the knife blade starts to appear.  On the left is the original knife blade that I am working towards.

Most of the final shaping is done using pressure.

I hold the small antler tine against the edge of the tool and push flakes off.  The Palaeoeskimos may have used dense sea mammal bone pressure flakers from walrus bone or seal baccula. 

I brace the back of my left hand inside my left thigh and the elbow of my right arm on my right thigh and squeeze with my whole body to generate the force needed to push a flake off the stone.

I'm trying to even out the edge and create the final shape.  The original knife blade is on the left and you can see that it has a clean straight edge, compared to the blade in progress.

Examining the edge.  There's a lot of stopping, thinking, and planning involved in knapping a tool.

With more pressure flaking, the new knife blade starts to take on the thinness of the original blade. I'm especially careful to thin the base, where the knife will fit into the handle.

I have left the edge thin and sharp and slightly serrated.  The outline is finished and its ready to notch.  The flat piece of antler in my hand is the notching tool.

My notcher is filed flat like a screw-driver head so that its both strong and narrow to fit into the little notches.  The notches on a Dorset Palaeoeskimo knife are relatively shallow and placed on the side.  I use the notcher to nibble them in place - taking a few little chips out on one side, flipping it over, and taking out a few more little chips in the same place.

When the knife is fit into the slot in the handle, the notches will line up with the groove.

Fit in place.  This is why it was so important to thin the knife - especially at the base.  Its part of a composite tool and the thinner the base, the easier the hafting ob will be.

The final step is using a length of moist sinew to tie the knife blade in place.  The sinew shrinks and dries and holds the blade firmly in place through the side notches.

The finished tool and some of the debitage (waste flakes) from its manufacture.

 Photo Credits: Michael Burzynski

Gros Morne Trip and Filming

Moose pausing for a drink

I spent Friday and Saturday in Gros Morne National Park.  It was a quick trip and the weather was mostly white out snow squalls, but its still such an amazing place that I was able to fit in visits with old friends, spot a thirsty moose along the side of the road, fill myself up on Northern Peninsula morel mushrooms, garden grown salsa and local berries, have a caribou sausage breakfast (with a bakeapple cheesecake desert!), hike through drifting snow at Western Brook Pond and get a little bit of flintknapping in as well.

Fitting the new blade to the old handle

The flintknapping was the purpose for the trip.  Ron O'Connell from VidCraft came up from Corner Brook to film the session so that Parks Canada would have footage of stone working for the upgraded displays at L'Anse aux Meadows.  I knapped a Dorset Palaeoeskimo knife blade and fit it into an antler handle that I'd prepared earlier.  The handle is based on an artifact from Port au Choix, which we talked about during the filming, so Parks may find uses for the footage at other sites in the Province.

filming in the theatre

We filmed in the theatre at the Parks Canada Visitor Centre at Rocky Harbour.  While Ron was filming me work, a few Parks Canada staff watched and assisted.  Mike Burzynski took a couple hundred photos of the session and thanks to Ron's studio set up and Mike's keen photographer's eye - the photos turned out amazing.  So by the end of the 3 hour session we had the whole process documented on both hi-def video and still photography.  Mike gave me a CD of the images and said I could use them on my blog.  I've only included a couple here today, because they are so good and so thorough, that I want to present them as a separate photo essay at a later date to show all the stages of knapping a Droset Palaeoeskimo knife.

Fused glass cod at the Deer Lake Airport

I love the west coast, and Gros Morne, in particular.  The last time I was on the left side of the province was last spring for the Craft Council AGM.   The stone that I used in the Dorset knife demonstration was some of the chert that I collected on the Port au Port Peninsula on the way home from that trip.  During the AGM weekend we visited craft producers in the area, including Urve Manuel's stained glass studio, where we saw a large piece that she was working on for the Deer Lake Airport.  Since I flew in this time, I was lucky enough to see the completed work installed.

Urve Manuel's installation "Coming and Going" at the Deer Lake Airport.  Cod on the left and Atlantic Salmon on the right.

Cold didn't seem to phase this moose

I looked, but the only caribou I saw were on my plate at breakfast.

Bakeapple cheesecake!  

Cold, stormy day on the west coast

Wow.  Bald All-Season tires for winter driving in Newfoundland - thanks Budget!

High Seas

 Photo Credits:
1, 4-11: Tim Rast
2,3: Michael Burzynski