Snowy Owls

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Boyd's Cove Beothuk Artifacts

A few years ago I was commissioned to make a reproduction of this pendant for the Province.  The original artifact was found at Beothuk site at Boyd's Cove, which was excavated in the 1980s by Dr. Ralph Pastore.

There are many artifacts from the site on display at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd's cove, but this piece was amongst the thousands of artifacts housed in the Archaeology Collection in the Basement of The Rooms.

There are trays and trays of neatly packed and labelled boxes from Boyd's Cove and hundreds of other sites in the vaults.

They're available to researchers and are always being selected for display in new and changing exhibits.

This is a hammerstone - notice the damage done of the right end.

This is an iron pyrite nodule that would have been used by the Beothuk for fire starting.  I was looking for this picture a couple months ago when I was writing about Why Pyrite Makes a Spark when you strike it.   Better late than never.

The collection is primarily made up of stone tools and flakes, like this little box of assort lithics.

These tiny stemmed and corner-notched points are typical of the stone arrowheads made and used by the Beothuk.

Another bone pendant with ochre staining.

More little arrowheads.  Some are so tiny that they may have been used on children's arrows.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Split Handle Hafting

This is a trick I learned from the perfectly preserved Saqqaq Palaeoeskimo tools in Greenland. If you make knife handles in two halves then its relatively simple to carve out the socket.

I get the blade to fit in the socket and make sure that the join between the two halves is flush before carving down the outside of the handle.

You can see in the illustration next to the reproduction that the final step is wrapping a lashing material around and around the handle to hold the two halves together.  The Saqqaq people used baleen on their knife handles, but you could use any type of string, leather or cord.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Labrador-style Snow Knife

Whalebone snow knife reproduction.  This is a piece that I made few years ago for The Rooms.  Its based on Thule Inuit snow knives from Labrador.  I can't recall the exact dimensions, but I think it was around 16-18 inches long.  Its flat on one face and slightly convex on the other - kind of like a plane's wing in cross-section.

This is one of the knives in the collection at The Rooms that I used as a reference piece.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Sea Ice

These shots were taken along the coast of Baffin Island in June of this year.

A Lead Forming

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Beothuk Bone and Ochre Sampler

An assortment of  red ochre stained Beothuk Bone reproductions, including combs, pendants, needles and gaming pieces.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Woolly Lousewort

Woolly lousewort, Pedicularis lanata

A tiny tundra plant.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast