Change Islands Cache

Change Islands Cache Bifaces

Late last summer, a Newfoundland and Labrador couple stretching their legs at the Change Islands ferry terminal unexpectedly made a spectacular archaeological find.  In September 2010, Neil White and Marion Adams discovered a tighly packed cache of 32 large rhyolite bifaces.  The stone artifacts were buried standing on edge stacked together "like a deck of cards".  A few biface fragments were on the surface and caught Neil's eye.  He recognized that the stones were flinknapped from watching survival TV programs.  The tip of one of the points had been exposed on the surface long enough that it was spattered with paint from nearby construction. A backhoe used in the construction had stripped several inches of debris and soil over the cache and when the White's found them they were very near the surface.  Not realizing the size of the cache, the White's pulled the bifaces out of the ground one after the other.   As they slid each one out of the ground they could hear it rasping against another one still in situ.

Beautifully worked rhyolite

Neil and Marion immediately recognized the significance of what they had found and they didn't want to disturb the whole cache, but they were worried about its security if it was left partially exposed.  Neil said that the entire cache came from an area in the ground no bigger than an apple crate.  Originally, the bifaces may have been wrapped together in a leather or bark bundle, or buried in a small hole.  They decided to gather up the bifaces and contact an archaeologist.  They took the bifaces to the nearest museum - the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd's Cove.  Karen Ledrew-Day knew that this was something very special and contacted the Provincial Archaeology Office (PAO).  Ken Reynolds drove out to the Change Island's to meet the Whites, further excavate the findspot, and collect the bifaces.  Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the whole story is the selflessness of Neil White and Marion Adams, whose first thought was to report their find and donate the artifacts to the people of the Province.  They deserve a lot of credit for how they reported the find.

An awe inspiring visit

Lori and I had the opportunity to see and photograph the bifaces when Ken brought them back to the PAO for cataloguing and analysis.  We've been waiting for the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation to publicly acknowledge the White's find before we mentioned the cache here.  Disappointingly, that never happened, but the cache was reported in the Provincial Archaeology Office's annual archaeology review earlier this week (Volume 9 for 2010 Field Season), so Lori and I can now share our photos of the bifaces.

For their size, they are very thin

Although they vary in size and 4 of them are wide flat platters, the 32 bifaces are remarkably uniform in style.  They are all made from the same material and are equally thin and well finished.  Everyone who sees them feels that they were all made by one person.  There are some breaks, but between the White's initial collection and Ken's subsequent excavation of the findspot, many of the missing tips and corners were found.  It appears that the bifaces were perfect, whole, and unused when they were originally cached.  These are not preforms in the midst of transport, or blanks prepared for heat treatment, but completed tools, that were never used.  If the larger bifaces were bifacial cores, then they were used up and the edges carefully finished.

The cache at the PAO

The exact age of the cache is uncertain and will be the subject of future research, however, there are a couple likely candidates.  The Maritime Archaic Indians and Recent Indians both made large bifaces from Rhyolite and could have left the cache.  Given the location of the find very close to the modern shoreline, I feel that the Recent Indians are the more likely candidates.  The shoreline in this part of Newfoundland has undergone several metres of submergence since Maritime Archaic Indian times, which means that an Archaic cache at this spot would likely be underwater, unless it was placed at an unusually high elevation.  If it is a Recent Indian cache, then the earlier Cow Head or perhaps Beaches complexes (ca. 2000-1000 BP) seem more likely than the Little Passage or Beothuk, because such large stone tools are rare in the more recent periods.

Some were very large

The source of the stone will also be more fully researched as there are several rhyolite outcrops and quarries on the Island that might have provided the stone.  When Ken was in the area, he revisited the Rhyolite outcrops and workshops at Brimstone Head, near Fogo and collected samples that are a very good visual match for the artifacts in the cache.  Its the closest known rhyolite source to the cache and seems like the most likely candidate for the rock.  Researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland are doing non-destructive testing on the bifaces to attempt to determine the source of the raw material.

The Change Islands Cache (click to enlarge)

For more information on the Change Island's Cache - check out the Provincial Archaeology Office's Archaeology Review, Volume 9 for 2010 Field Season, pg 137-140.

Here are the photos of the 32 bifaces that Lori and I took last fall.  You can click any of the images to see a larger version.  Thanks to the PAO for letting us see these unique pieces and especially to Neil White and Marion Adams for sharing this amazing find with the all the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast
Edited April 6, 2011 to correct Marion's name.

Switching back to Newfoundland and Labrador Reproductions

Tray of Maritime Archaic Artifacts

Its back to making hafted stone tools from Newfoundland and Labrador archaeology sites today.  I have three government orders (two from Parks Canada and one from the Provincial Museum) for artifact reproductions that need to be completed and delivered by the end of the fiscal year, which is the Thursday after next.  I have several pieces for each order started or completed already, but as of right now I need to dedicate my schedule to completing the rest.

Lacing the last whip  with gut

Over the weekend, amid scheduled seminars and one big surprise party, I've wrapped up the Central Arctic set that has been my focus for the past couple of months.  There's still a little bit of drying to watch and final photos to take for my portfolio, but the build phase is pretty much over and I survived and all the pieces have survived, so I'm happy.  The last piece is a sealskin dog whip, which I'll profile in an upcoming post.

checking the hafts on barbed points

This morning, I'm printing patterns from reference photos and locating the raw materials that I'll need for for the next few pieces.  With the exception of three Dorset Palaeoeskimo knives that I'd like to finish by the weekend, I'm going to start with the most complicated pieces first.  I want to get the things with the most potential for unexpected challenges or that need the most drying time out of the way first and leave the safer, more familiar pieces until the end.  Plus, the new pieces are going to be fun - like turning some of these long barbed points from the Maritime Archaic site at Port au Choix into a 3 prong fishing spear.  I'm thinking that I might finally use some of that seal intestine that's been hanging over my head in the workshop for the last year as lashing material on some of these pieces.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Caribou belt and ornament

Caribou hide, teeth and hooves

This caribou hoof belt and caribou teeth ornament are reproductions number 15 and 16 of 17 in the Central Arctic set.  They are based on Inuit artifacts in the collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.  Once again, the copyright for the images of the original artifacts lie with the CMC, so if you'd like to check out the artifacts, you can visit the Online Artifact Catalog and see them here:

IV-D-1301: Belt

IV-D-1013: Ornament

Belt: The original artifact has 32 polar bear claws strung from it on sinew thread, which would require the claws from two bears.    I managed to source 7 of the 32 claws before the client decided that we should go with caribou hooves or dew claws in place of the bear claws.  I was happy with that decision because I didn't know where I was going to get the rest of the claws from.  The switch meant I needed to get the feet from four caribou instead of the toes from two polar bears, which seemed much less daunting.

Caribou hooves and dew claws strung on a hide belt with sinew

Rangifer tarandus hooves

The hooves that I found still had the toe bones in them and were attached to a bit of skin.  I boiled them down, soaked them in water and detergent, and then water and borax.  While they were still wet, I popped the toe bones out to make hollow hoof cones.  There was a lot of variability in the size and shape of the hooves and dew claws and in the end I used a combination of medium sized hooves and large dew claws, because I felt that it gave the best match to the look of the original artifact.

The belt hanging from a door - its big!

The scale of this piece is a little deceptive.  The length of the artifact is listed as 136.5 cm.  I made the rangifer tarandus hide belt a few centimetres longer than that so that when I tied the loops and knots in the end of the belt it would end up being 136.5cm long.  It still seems quite long, but if it was worn outside of a skin parka, its just the right size.  The caribou hooves, aren't exactly authentic for the piece, but they create the same generally impression, size and shape of the polar bear claws, so I'm satisfied with the end product.  The hooves make a nice tinkling sound when the belt moves.

Caribou teeth and rawhide

Ornament:  This piece has 9 sets of caribou teeth mounted in caribou rawhide, suspended from a short belt.  This one was a bit of a challenge.  I've been working from photos for all of the pieces in this set and usually I have at least a front and back view, but these particular piece was mounted on a board and the reverse image is a picture of a sheet of plywood.  Fortunately, the McCord Museum in Montreal has a similar piece in its collection and their online catalog has amazing photos; ME982X.156 Ornament.  The caribou teeth ornament from the McCord Collection is in worse condition than the CMC piece, but the photos are so good that I could still see a lot of details about the construction, including the reverse side of the teeth.

Rawhide ornament with caribou teeth and sewn with sinew

Caribou teeth, loose after boiling

When I originally saw this piece I though that the teeth were still embedded in the jawbone, which was then suspended from the hide straps.  I was still working on that assumption when I boiled the jawbones, so I was extremely disappointed when the teeth became loose from the boiling and the left and right mandible split apart down the middle on many of the jawbones.  They seemed ruined.  Some of the teeth came out individually, but the majority popped out as a set, still embedded in the skin and gums which shriveled and detached from the bone during the boiling.  However, it turned out that was exactly what I needed - I just didn't know it at the time.  If you check the McCord piece you can see that the teeth are still embedded in that little flap of gums and palate.

Teeth set in the drying rawhide

All of the jawbones that I got from the Province were missing the middle two incisors, which had been removed for aging studies.  This meant I had to mix and match the teeth a bit to reconstruct complete sets of 8 teeth.  I embedded them in damp rangifer tarandus rawhide strips cut to the shape of the end of a caribou jaw.  As they dried and shrank they held the teeth firmly in place and took on the rich golden colour seen in the rawhide in the artifact.  They even wrinkled up the same as the artifact.

A little macabre, but I like it

When they were dried, I added a bit of hide glue to the back of the teeth to keep them solid, although the constriction of the drying rawhide really held them firmly all on its own.  I sewed the teeth sections to the whitish bands at the top of the ornament.  I tried to use similar stitches to the sinew thread on the McCord ornament.  Overall, I'm really happy with how this piece turned out - I think its a really close match for the original at the CMC.


Photo Credits: Tim Rast