Shed Antlers

When we spot bones or antlers on the tundra, we tend to take a look at them.  Many are natural, like this shed caribou antler.  Some are still attached to skulls and may come from animals that died of natural causes.  Other times, they are near hunting blinds or caches and we can tell that the belonged to animals that were hunted.  Unless they are clearly from an archaeological context we leave them where we find them.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Scruffy time of year

Its a scruffy time of year.  

The northern animals are losing their shaggy winter coats.

While the southern ones are starting to grow their's.

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Summer on the tundra

Summer on the tundra.  

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Purple Saxifrage

Purple Saxifrage provides one of the first bursts of colour on the tundra once the snow begins to melt.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Seal Breathing hole drains

As the sea ice starts to melt under the 24 hour sunlight in Nunavut, fresh water starts to pool and flow on the surface of the snow and ice.  In places where seals maintain breathing holes, the meltwater drains down the hole, through the ice and into the salt water beneath.

Some of the bays and inlets are full of the holes and channels.

They can be quite stunning from the air on a sunny day.

In this photo, you can see a dot on the ice next to the drain.  That's the seal who maintains the hole, up for a bit of sun lying out on the ice.

This is the same drainage system as the above shot with the seal.  You can see a bit of dirty ice where the seal hauls up and how big of an area drains through the hole.

Not as complex a drainage system, but the hole through the ice is pretty clear in this shot.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Lithic Artifacts

In this colour plate, take the bluish tinge in the quartz microblades (A,B) with a grain of salt.  They are actually clear, but  they were photographed against a blue background which I removed and replace with plain white in photoshop.  Its misleading in the colour image, but in the black and white version of this plate that will appear in publication, its not an issue.  (A,B) stemmed quartz microblades, (C) chert micorblade core, (D,E,F) Chert microblades, (G) Distal end of a biface, which is probably from an asymmetric knife, (H-L) Stemmed and notched biface bases, (M) sideblade, (N) Asymmetric knife, (O) biface, that may be an endblade, although its is thinned at the base similar to knives, (P-S) Endscrapers - the top one (P) has slight ears, but most of the scrapers found at the site were small and traingular in outline.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Endblades

Sample of Groswater Palaeoeskimo endblades from the Peat Garden site in Bird Cove on Newfoundland's northern peninsula.  In each pair, the dorsal surface is on the left and the ventral surface is on the right.  These have a "plano-convex" or D-shaped cross section, so the dorsal surface is convex and the ventral surface is flat.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast