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   

On to the next thing...

Four of these slate ulu
reproductions are heading
to Port au Choix

I finally have the order for Port au Choix out the door and I can move on to the next project.  Before I leave for the field in two weeks, I need to wrap up two orders that I've already started and try to finish a third that I have yet to begin.  Here is one last look at some of the reproductions and original jewellery that will be available this summer at the Heritage Shop in Port au Choix.

The ground slate bayonet in the middle of the photo and three of the lances are also on their way to the Northern Peninsula.

Fibre Optic Cufflinks.  

These four obsidian flake necklaces are the most recent addition to the "Lost Stone Series".

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Ground Stone Tools

Ground Slate

 I just need one more day to finish up this order and get it shipped.  Unfortunately, I have two days of CPR/First Aid training starting tomorrow morning, so that one day of work probably won't get done until the weekend.  The order is already late, but I was really hoping that I could get it all together and shipped before the start of th First Aid course.  It sucks, but I tried.  I hate missing deadlines, but even worse is there are some cool pieces in the order and I'm not able to take the time to really enjoy them.  Here's a look at the finished Maritime Archaic ground slate lances and a few slate and spruce ulus that are almost ready to be lashed and glued together.

The red slate lances have been oiled.  The grey slate ulus are still dry, but they'll take a nice gloss too once I add a bit of oil to them.  I'd really like to get the lashing and glue on them tonight so that they can dry overnight.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Open Minds

Student ulus

I'm putting the blog on auto-pilot for the next couple of weeks with pre-scheduled posts.  I've been wrapping up a few small Elfshot jobs this week, including one last Open Minds workshop at The Rooms.  I'll be back in later in March to work with another class of students making ground stone ulus.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Ulu kits for students

During the last half of this week I've switched my focus to education, especially hands-on learning.  I helped facilitate a ground stone tool making workshop at The Rooms yesterday, where I took this photo of the tools and materials that we use in the Open Minds program.  Over the coming weeks and months I will be doing work with a couple northern organizations that would like to bring a program like this into schools in Nunavut and Nunatsiavut.  In the workshop, I'll be making bow drill sets for archaeologists in Nunatsiavut to use in school programs in northern Labrador and, in the office, I'll be working with the Inuit Heritage Trust to write up the instructions and assemble the materials for teachers to use in programming in Nunavut.

Tools and materials used for the slate ulu making workshop. A) Rubber mat to protect the table, B) File for sharpening the slate, C) Sandstone abrader for grinding the slate, D) Bow drill bow, E) Bow drill spindle with nephrite bit, F) Bow drill socket (mouthpiece), G) Ulu handle, H) Ulu slate blank, I) Scissors, J) String, K)Assembled ulu

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Completed Dorset Harpoon and other Arctic Tools

Arctic artifact reproductions

Here's a final look at the Dorset Palaeoeskimo harpoon that I've been working on for the past few days.  The harpoon, along with a ground slate Thule ulu and an antler, sinew, and copper-tipped Sicco harpoon head is packed and ready to ship to the Department of Anthropology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.  For the harpoon, the endblade, harpoon head, and foreshaft are based on artifacts from the excavations at Port au Choix, while the mainshaft is a spruce version of the Groswater Palaeoeskimo harpoon shaft found in the bog at L'Anse aux Meadows.  Both sites are on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula.

Dorset Palaeoeskimo sealing harpoon reproduction.  Chert endblade on an antler harpoon head.  The harpoon head fits onto a whalebone foreshaft that is inserted into a spruce mainshaft.  The mainshaft has sealskin lashings.  The harpoon line is sealskin and there is a short braided sinew lanyard fed through the single line hole in the toggling harpoon.

The little Sicco style harpoon head and slate ulu would be at home in a toolkit belonging to the earliest Thule migrants into the Eastern Arctic

You can see the tip-fluting on the chert endblade in this photo and how a thin braided sinew line may have been used to create a secure attachment to the harpoon head.

The ulu is based on an ulu blade with three holes from Labrador that is on display in The Rooms in St. John's.  The original blade is missing it's handle and lashing, so that part of the ulu is based on other Inuit women's knives found in the Eastern Arctic.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

March is going to be busy

An Open Minds workshop at The Rooms

It's kind of a hectic month.  I still have a couple big orders to fill in the studio, but workshops and demonstrations have really piled up in my March schedule as well.  At the moment,  I have 14 workshops, one knapping demonstration and a public talk scheduled across three different provinces during the month of March.  Some of those workshops are with elementary school kids while others are with university students and members of archaeological societies in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Securing the gut hafting on an ulu
at a MUNArch workshop.

Tonight is the second MUNArch ground stone ulu workshop.  We had 10 people come out on Monday night and everyone finished a slate ulu.  This is basically the same workshop that I do with the Open Mind's students at The Rooms, but we use sinew and gut lashing instead of string and people are responsible for chipping their own blanks and cutting their own handles.  For kids, we start with sawed blanks and handles that are already cut to length.

A Little Passage
(pre-contact Beothuk) knife,
ready to glue and lash together.

In the studio I'm continuing to work on Beothuk and Intermediate period reproductions.  The Intermediate period pieces must match a specific suite of artifacts from Sheshatshiu, Labrador, while the Beothuk pieces can be a little more generic.  I'm pulling from a lot of different archaeological and historical references for the Beothuk pieces.  For example the knife on the right is based on a biface found by Ralph Pastore on Inspector Island but the handle comes from a wood handle that was photographed by James Howley for his 1915 publication, The Beothuck or Red Indians.  For the Intermediate period pieces from Sheshatshiu, I'm using ethnographic Innu artifacts to help fill in some of the blanks.

The scraper in the upper left hand corner is meant to be a reproduction of the scraper in the photo immediately below it.

The original artifacts will be shown in the display as they were found and the reproductions will illustrate how they may have appeared to the people who originally made them, complete with lashings and handles and all the missing pieces that were not preserved in the ground.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Checking Inventory

Thule Inuit Ulu and Recent Indian arrowheads

Its time to get organized and back into the workshop.  I have a handful of orders to work on over the coming weeks and some workshops and demonstrations to prepare for the fall. A few of the workshops are on familiar turf, but others will require a bit of travel and planning to pull off.  In the meantime, I've been rummaging through my inventory to start piecing together a few sets of Beothuk, Inuit, and Palaeoeskimo artifact reproductions for several clients who have been very patiently waiting for me to get out of the field and back into the studio.  Its nice to start filling boxes without getting too dirty.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Stone, Culture, and Science in the Classroom

Two of the student's reproductions

During this time of year I do a lot of work with school kids, primarily through the Open Minds program at The Rooms art gallery, museum, and archive here in St. John's.  Sometimes these are talks about archaeology and the pre-contact cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador structured around a flintknapping demonstration.  Lately, I've been doing ground stone tool making with grade 5 students.  We've been making ground slate ulus and men's knives based on Inuit artifacts from Labrador.

One for each student

In one of these workshops, I bring in prepared slate blanks, wood handles and all the grinding, drilling, and tying tools that the kids will need to complete the project.  With a class of around 25 kids and a half dozen adult helpers, we can help each student create their own slate ulu or men's knife in about 2 hours.  Its a satisfying project for everyone involved and the kids learn about Inuit people, archaeology, patience, and perseverance as they work to create their own stone tool artifact reproduction.

Parents and teachers help with the drill

An important part of the process is using traditional tools, like the bow drill, to create their reproductions.  This works especially well in the Open Minds setting at The Rooms because the classroom is set up next door to the Connections Gallery where many of the original artifacts are displayed.  During lunch or recess, the students have the opportunity to visit the Connections Gallery and see first hand the tools that they are using and recreating in the classroom.

A finished ulu - great work!

Yesterday, during the review at the end of the session, the instructor asked the grade fives what words they would use to describe Inuit people after their experience with making and using the traditional tools and the kids replied with; "Hard-working, Strong, Independent, and Patient".

"Hard-working, Strong, Independent, and Patient" 

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Chipped Slate Ulu Preform

Ulu Preform, Baffin Island, Nunavut

We found this ulu preform broken in five pieces and hidden in plain sight on a boulder ridge overlooking a river valley this summer.  It looks like it was broken in manufacture and discarded where it broke.  Artifacts like this aren't as pretty as finished tools, but they have their own stories to tell.  The work done up to this point on the ulu blade would have been erased by the grinding process, so it gives us a glimpse of how these tools were made.

Reproduction and Artifact

The first thing that struck me about the blade was how large it is.  I'm used to seeing the worn down and resharpened blades in museum collections and sometimes forget how big they were when they started.  There are some little slate ulus in the collections from Labrador with blades that have be so worn down that they look like toys.  If this blade was finished and hafted like the reproduction in the photo it would have more than an extra inch of useable blade.

The Hot Side

The ulu preform is uniform 5-6 mm thick, with the thickest portion toward the blade edge.  Its more-or-less a quarter circle, with a squared edge at the top where the handle would attach and edges that are a little shy of 90 degrees from each other.  It would have been about 25 cm wide across the blade and about 15.5 cm tall from blade to stem.  The blade and both edges are worked by short, bifacially removed flakes.  The squared edge across the top wasn't chipped - it was already the right shape.

Chipped slate blades in manufacture

There's really only a few minutes worth of work done on the blade up to this point, although the stone isn't from the immediate area, so the person who broke it still probably regretted it.  Maybe they selected a couple nice flat slabs from the outcrop and had a back-up slab on hand to start working when this one broke, or maybe they had to walk all the way back to the stone source.  The reproductions on the left are from the ground stone workshop I taught in Calgary last winter.  The blanks were trimmed from slate slabs using hammerstones, and look pretty much identical to the archaeological example. Nice work folks!

The working edge was trimmed bifacially.  Which is interesting, because ulus are generally sharpened on only one face. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, I also find it easier to trim the stone bifacially and add the unifacially ground edge at the end.

The blade, in situ

 Despite the stone's best efforts to blend in with its surroundings, a couple of the sharp eyes on the crew were able to pick the pieces out.  The four pieces from the top of the preform were found within a few centimetres of each other and the blade section was spotted a couple metres away.  There were a few tent rings and a cache on the same ridge, but the preform wasn't found directly associated with any particular structure.

The lichen gives the impression of great age, but I've been told that this sort of jewel lichen can grow within a few years, given an adequate supply of bird poop.

Arctic Camo - two pieces in this photo

Its tough to date.  The style is certainly Inuit and slate tools were made from the time the Thule arrived in the Eastern Arctic by 800 years ago up until the 20th century.  There's nothing at the site to suggest that its recent or historic, so it probably falls somewhere between 100 and 800 years old.  My hunch is 100-200 years old, but I don't really have anything to support that.

It might have looked something like this in the mind of the maker.

Photo Credits:
1-3: Tim Rast
4: Michael Turney
5-9: Tim Rast

Labrador CURA Brings Slate Ulus to the Classroom

A nearly finished slate ulu

During the last week in November, the Labrador Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) members toured communities in southern Labrador.  They traveled from town to town and presented their latest research and initiatives to the communities that the project is partnered with.  

Grind stone in the classroom

One aspect of the trip was providing a heritage program to school kids.  I couldn't attend, but I supplied a ground stone tool making kit.   Kids could have a go at making their own slate ulus, using traditional tools and techniques.  It sounds like everyone had a good time.  Thanks to Amy, Andrew and Michelle for delivering the program!

Andrew helping set up a bow drill on a slate ulu blank

Michelle showing how the drilling is done

Using a nephrite bit to drill through a slate ulu blank

Amy helping tie the handle on to a drilled slate ulu

Slate blanks, handles and string

Photo Credits: Phillip Cairns, courtesy of Labrador CURA

Calgary Flintknapping Follow-up

Make the tool, Use the Tool

Here are a few shots from the Flintknapping Workshop I lead in Calgary on February 27, 2011.  This class was sponsored by the Archaeological Society of Alberta - Calgary Centre  - they did a great job of organizing the event and filling seats!  Jason Roe's class was bursting at the seams with folks wanting to learn how to knap stone tools.  My session was for people who already had some knapping experience and wanted to be challenged with something new.  We made knapped stone drill bits, hafted them onto wood shafts and used them to drill slate and wood to make ground stone ulus.

The finished chert drills and the ground stone ulus made using them

I've known about this course for 6 months and it kept me up more than one night trying to figure out a theme that would be interesting for the participants and challenging, but not overwhelming or frustrating.  Last year we made hoko knives in the morning and then used them to carve handles for other knives and points in the afternoon.  I'd debated doing something with ground stone, but it was a flintknapping course and I wasn't sure how to bring in the flintknapping angle until just a few hours before I flew out to Calgary.  I got out of bed in the middle of the night and went out to the workshop to pack my bow drills.

Nephrite and chert (middle) drills

My toolkit is a little biased towards nephrite drills inspired by Thule and Inuit artifacts from Labrador, but the first drills that I learned to make were the knapped "T" shaped bits found on the plains.  Sometimes the archaeological specimens are made on old projectile points and when you are first learning to flintknap arrowheads its not uncommon to make lots of of accidental drillbits.  If you are having a tough time thinning your arrowhead and it gets narrower faster than it gets thin, it will wind up looking more like a drill than a projectile point.

Everyone made a drillbit first thing in the morning and hafted it onto a square wooden drill shaft using 5 minute epoxy and artificial sinew.  We used the epoxy to create a quick, solid bond so that we could use the drills immediately after they were made.

The ulu blanks and handles roughed out

When I do ground stone workshops with kids, I cut the ulu blanks ahead of time and the kids just file an edge on them and drill the holes.  With this class we started with the same Home Depot 12 x 12 slate tiles, but the participants prepared their own blanks.  We split the tiles to a good thickness using a hammer and chisel and then everyone trimmed their ulu blanks by carefully chipping the edge unifacially with their hammerstones against wooden anvils.  After the blanks were made, everyone filed their blades sharp, used their drills to sink holes through them and then tied them to their carved wood handles with sinew and hide glue.

These workshops are pretty loosely structured and people work at their own pace, but I like the format of making a simple tool from scratch in the morning and then using the first tool to make a second, more complex tool in the afternoon.  That's worked for the past two years.  I think arrows or spears with foreshafts might be a fun plan for a future session.  Although there's still lots of ground stone options and we were even joking about moving up to copper - after all we've moved from the palaeolithic (knapping) to the neolithic (ground stone) in just 12 months, so we could just keep on rolling into the chalcolithic (copper).

I had a great time!

On a personal note, I was really happy to have Don Hanna attended the workshop.  Don taught me how to knap back in the mid-1990s when I was an undergrad at the University of Calgary.  It was really great to sit down and chat with him about knapping again.  At one point someone at the opposite end of the room was talking about how to hold a biface for knapping and we overheard; "See, Tim hangs it over his knee and Don does it the same as Tim..."  Don barely glanced up, but he said; "No.  Tim does it the same as Don, not the other way around.  And Don does it the same as Don Crabtree."  With everyone's pedigree established, we went back to work.

Photo Credits: Michael Turney