Maritime Archaic Reproductions for Port au Choix

Bird headed pins made from caribou long bones
and needles made from bird bones and caribou ribs.

This is a set of reproductions that I recently completed for Port au Choix National Historic Site on Newfoundland's northern peninsula.  The set includes a hafted ground stone axe, slate lance, barbed harpoon, bird headed pins and bone needles.  Some of these are newly made and others are pieces that I've had in stock and that I've shown on this blog before.

The pins and needles have been slightly antiqued to take off the fresh white bone sheen.

 

Some of the needles have flat cross-sections and are made from bird bones and others have round cross-sections and are made from caribou ribs.  All of them have gouged eyes and they range in length from 5-11 cm.

Often when I make these pins, they are intended to be used as hair pins with sealskin barrettes.  However, the ones in this photo are intended to be used in display and public programming, so I was able to show more of the variety in the actual pins and pendants and not just the long pointy pin versions.  Many of the bird headed bone carvings at Port au Choix adorned shorter pendants, with gouged holes in the shaft opposite the bird head.  Presumably these were used as pendants or hung from clothing.

 

The larger, hafted pieces in this set include a ground slate (or argillite) axe hafted into a wooden handle. The axe head is secured with pitch in the hole in the wood which was burned out with hot coals.  The rawhide lashing is there to reinforce the handle and prevent it from splitting in use.  The harpoon in the middle has a barbed antler harpoon head with a whalebone foreshaft and spruce main shaft.  The slate lance is hafted to a wood shaft with spruce pitch glue and gut lashing.

Ground slate lance head.  The lancehead is about 22 cm long, which is on the large end of the spectrum for Port au Choix.

The harpoon is covered in red ochre. The Maritime Archaic certainly covered their bodies and tools with red ochre as part of their burial ceremony, but it is unclear if they used ochre as frequently in day-to-day life as the later (and unrelated) Beothuk.

This style of harpoon head is not designed to toggle, although the Maritime Archaic did also make toggling harpoon heads.  The barbs would have secured the harpoon head and line to the prey animal - most likely seals.

The harpoon line is braided sealskin.  The harpoon is about 72" fully assembled and the lance is about 92".  I don't know how long the main shafts of the Maritime Archaic versions of these tools would have been.  Generally the tool components are larger than the later Dorset and Groswater Pre-Inuit who lived in Newfoundland, so I tend to make the overall reproductions larger and longer as well.

 

The lance is fixed to the wood shaft.  I envision these long straight sided lances as close range piercing tools, especially for penetrating the thick blubber layers of marine mammals.  A fixed lance head could be stabbed and pulled out repeatedly.  The harpoon head, on the other hand, is designed to detach and stay in the animal with a line attached.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

PalaeoIndian Reproductions

A foreshaft assembly with a
Folsom point based on
a theoretical reconstruction

I'm still around.  Although you might not realize that if you follow this blog.  I've been plugging away in the studio on reproductions throughout the year and travelling a lot for work.  Some of the projects I've worked on have embargoes on them until exhibits are opened or programs aired, which has given me an excuse to be extra lazy on this blog.  I'll try to use the end of the year as an incentive to document some of the projects that I've participated in during 2018.  

Here is a look at some pieces that are fresh out the door.  These are for a museum exhibit in the US and represent PalaeoIndian artifacts.  The reproductions include a fluted Folsom point made from chert, hafted in an antler foreshaft that fits into an antler socket which is glued and lashed to a wooden mainshaft.  The mainshaft is cut short for dispaly purposes.  Three bone needles, sinew, and a bone thimble (based on an Inuit design) make up part of a sewing kit.

A progress shot of the stone point, antler foreshaft and antler socket pieces.  The most important piece for the museum was the foreshaft, so I tried to match that as exactly as possible to the reference drawing.  The stone point came out a few millimetres larger than the reference point.  I find fluted points very difficult to make and this was my fourth attempt at this spear point and I didn't dare try to work it any more after both flutes came off reasonably well.   The socket needed to be a bit longer than the drawing for functional reasons, but overall the final assembly was within a couple centimetres of the illustration.

Bone needles and thimble.  The bone needles are based on PalaeoIndian artifacts and are made on long bones.  The thimble is based on Inuit thimbles in the Canadian Museum of History Collection.  

 

The complete set included some sinew thread to go along with the needles in the sewing kit.  All of the pieces are antiqued and the spear shaft was cut short because the storyline of the display focuses on the foreshaft assembly.

The museum requested that the sinew lashing be left off of the spear point and foreshaft.  Fortunately, the flutes on the Folsom point allow the spear point to be gripped fairly snugly by the foreshaft even without lashing or glues.  I don't think I'd trust it for hunting, but in a display and normal handling it is a good, secure fit.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Bone and Antler Games for the Canadian Museum of History

 

These Bilboquets or pin and cup games are on their way to join the Canadian Museum of History's travelling Kids Celebrate exhibition.  The pins are all antler and the cups are either long bone sections or caribou antler with the porous interior scraped hollow.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

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

Harpoon Heads for Nunavik Sivunitsavut

Nearly 3000 years of
Arctic Harpoon Head evolution

I shipped a large order of harpoon heads and Dorset and Thule artifact reproductions to Nunavik Sivunitsavut, an Inuit post secondary school in Quebec.    The reproductions will be handled by students in their archaeology courses.  The harpoon heads were particularly interesting for me because of the breadth of examples requested; in total there are fourteen harpoon heads in the set composed of seven Dorset and seven Thule examples. 

Assorted Dorset and Thule Artifact reproductions. Chert microblades, knife, and scraper, slate tools, whalebone handles, nephrite Burin-Like Tool. 

A valuable reference

My primary reference for the harpoon heads in this collection is the book Ancient Harpoon Heads of Nunavut: An Illustrated Guide by Robert Park and Douglas Stenton.  I made all of the Dorset harpoon heads illustrated in the book and all of the Thule harpoon heads, except for the large whaling harpoon head.  There are also three Pre-Dorset examples in the book that we didn't cover here, but otherwise I worked through every page of the publication.
The book was extremely useful in selecting the raw material for each example and planning the general size and design of the pieces.

Common raw materials
and sizes are listed

As the reproductions neared completion, I also used sources like the Canadian Museum of History online catalogue to see actual photos of the examples as well as primary reports and archaeological publications.  Several of the harpoon head designs were new to me, and I've never attempted to make so many different styles all at once.  There were days when the rapid switching in the workshop between all of the various designs, materials, and styles kept my head muddled.  But over time the bigger patterns emerged and helped me understand the various stages in the sequence.

Thule Type 1

One of the things that struck me was how continuous the sequence actually is. Early and Middle Dorset contrast sharply with more recent Thule and Inuit harpoon heads where design elements like gouged versus drilled holes and dual versus single basal spurs create very different looking implements.  However, there is a much more grey area during the Late Dorset and early Thule where designs overlap.  In the archaeology of the Eastern Arctic there is a gap between Dorset and Thule and the cultural remains that we usually encounter look very different, but when you look west the differences are a little more subtle.

Thule Harpoon Head Reproductions, (left to right); Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4, and Type 5

Tyara Sliced - Early Dorset. Walrus ivory and chert

Kingait Closed - Middle Dorset. Walrus ivory and chert

Nanook Wasp Waist - Middle Dorset. Walrus ivory.

Dorset Parallel - Early, Middle and Late Dorset. Antler and Chert.

Dorset Type G - Late Dorset. Antler and Chert

Dorset Type Ha - Late Dorset. Antler

Dorset Type J - Late Dorset. Antler

Thule Type 1 - Classic and Postclassic Thule. Antler

Natchuk - Early Classic Thule. Antler and chert

Thule Type 2 - Classic and Postclassic Thule. Antler

Thule Type 3 - Classic and Postclassic Thule. Antler and copper

Sicco - Early Classic Thule. Ivory and copper

Thule Type 4 - From Classic Thule through Historic times. Whalebone and slate

 

Thule Type 5 - Postclassic Thule into Historic times. Whalebone and steel

The complete Dorset harpoon head set.  Ivory, chert, and antler

The complete Thule harpoon head set. Ivory, antler, whalebone, steel, copper, chert, and slate

Photo Credits: Tim Rast