e
j__ana ana (Jnaerwater xcavatio at l~iare f^aroor, fvlécatina
y\J\\\\am\/\J . f^itzhugh 20 1 2
photo CLontnbutJons \jy y\J\\Çreê Kicharcl P roducec! by Lauren
Smithsonian Institution
le (gateways \ reject 20 ! !
Land and (Underwater L xcavations at La re Lnrb or^ fVlécati na
Will lam VV- f^itzhugh
March 20 1 2
photo (P ontributions by VVilf red jPicharci (Pompiled by [ auren Marr
bie of (Contents
Fig. 1. 1: Pitsiulak from Hare Harbor site. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Figure List . ii
1. Project Goals . 1
2. Acknowledgments . . . . . 2
Strategies of Intervention
3. 201 1 Expedition Journal . 4
4. 2011 Gateways Excavation Field Notes . 39
5. Conclusions . ..50
6. Flare Elarbor-1 (EdBt-3) . 54
Area of Research
201 1 Excavation Maps
2011 Profiles
Artifact Inventory
Artifact Gallery
Artifact Drawings By Square
7. Eittle Canso Island (EhBn-9) . . . 1 34
8. Canso Island 4’ickle (EhBn-10) . 137
9. Hare FIarbour-1 201 1 Underwater Site Report by Erik Phaneuf.... . 139
1 0. References Cited . 1 48
Appendix 1 : Hare I larbour- 1 2011 Land Excavations Artifact Catalog.... . 151
Appendix 2: Hare Harbour- 1 201 1 Underwater Excavations Field Catalog . 162
1
rs U re List
Figure Caption
1 . 1 Pitsiitlak from Hare Harbor site. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.2 2011 site Structure 5 view to the west. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1.3 2011 fieldcrew, 1 to r, Wilfred Richard, Justine Bourguignon-Tetreault, Perry Colbourne, Sarai Barreiro-
Arguellas, Janine Hinton, Bill Fitzhugh, Vincent Delmas, Erik Phanuef and front; Lauren Marr. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.4 22N 26W soapstone fragments in situ. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.5 Sarai Barreiro-Arguellas digging Area 8 midden view to the North. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.6 Bill Fitzhugh checking packs on Will’s Volvo. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.7 Harp seal bathing on an iceberg. Photo by Bill Fitzhugh.
1.8 Porpoise appears in the Straits. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
19 Janine Hinton prepares to remove turf. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
110 Bill Fitzhugh enjoying Red River hot cereal. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
111 First day on the site, southeast view. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
112 Lauren Marr holding a Ramah Chert point found in S5. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
113 Justine Bourguignon Tetreault. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
114 The Evans’ girls and mother Christine all grown up! Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.15 Soapstone cooking pot fragments in situ, 22N 28W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.16 Rrih surrounding the Pits. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
117 Northern lights seen our HH-1 site. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.18 Alvin Bobbit artifacts. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
119 The Pitshilak meets the Alca 1. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.20 Groswater Dorset chert microblade recovered from 20N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 21 Research crews from the Pits and the Alca /. crew. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .22 Sarai holding soapstone lamp fragment from 20N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.23 Land crew headed back to the site. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .24 Underwater barrel staves. Photo by Erik Phaneuf.
1.25 Charcoal pit found in 20N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .26 I4N 26 W pavement. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.27 Will’s birthday celebration aboard the Pits. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.28 Marine life in the underwater site. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.29 S-4 midden view to the north. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1 30 Perry finds a new friend. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1 3 1 Entrance to S5 view to the North. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.32 Beads found in S4 midden, 4N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.33 Wood stratification in underwater site. Photo by Erik Phanuef
1 34 Backfilled site, view to the west. Photo by Bill Fitzhugh.
1 35 Final goodbye at the Evans’ house. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.36 Our Montreal team says goodbye at Harrington to fly back home. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1 .37 Nick Shattler meets the crew outside St. Augustine. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
I 38 Three house structures on Canso Island- 1. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.39 Nick Shattler in cache pit. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 40 ClitTord Hart with Bill Fitzhugh and Perry Colbourne. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.41 Rainbow outside of Blanc Sablon. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .42 Bill Fitzhugh holding the speedboat line. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.43 Bill Fitzhugh holding the broken line from the speedboat. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .44 Lauren Marr and Janine Hinton showing off their new “Newfie” status. Photo by Willliam Fitzhugh.
1 .45 L’Anse au.x Meadows new interpretation center. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1 .46 Icebergs off of St. Anthony. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
I 47 Icebergs off'of St. Anthony. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 48 Perry Colbourne navigating the speedboat back to Long Island. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .49 Lauren Marr holding her berry-picking spoils. Photo by Janine Hinton.
1 .50 Farewell at Perry’s house. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 5 1 Site photo to the west. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .52 Area 7 in the foreground, view to the southwest. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Figure Caption
1.53 Structure 5 entrance view to the northwest. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.54 16N 26 W square. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.55 14N 26 W square. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.56 Prehistoric finds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.57 22N 22W square. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.58 22N 24W square artifacts. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.59 Copper headband fragment found in 22N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.6 22N line west to east. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.61 20N 30 W square (hearth platform). Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.62 22W 32 W soapstone lamp. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.63 20N 32W square S7 charcoal pit. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .64 20N 32W square S7 charcoal pit. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.65 14N 30 W square. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .66 S4 midden view to the south. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1.67 4N 20W decorated midden earthenware. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1.68 ION 20W artifacts. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1.69 8N 20W square. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
1 .70 Area 8 8N 20W bellarmine ceramic. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .71 Reconstructed soapstone fragment from Area 7. Photo by Bill Fitzliugh.
1.72 S7 Charcoal Pit. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.73 Underwater ballast pile. Photo byErik Phaneuf
1 .74 Fox trap on Canso Island Tickle- 1 . Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .75 Area of research on Quebec Lower North Shore, 200 1 -20 1 1 .
1 .76 Map of areas visited on 201 1 voyage.
1.77 Map of Petit Mécatina Hare Harbor- 1 site. Section of map 12J/11.
1 .78 HFl- 1 areas of excavation 2002-20 1 1 .
1 .79 Area 7 and Area 8 midden rock map
1 .80 201 1 Area 7 and Area 8 Structure Map.
1 .8 1 Area 7 and Area 8 elevation map.
1 .82 Area 7 and Area 8 overall artifact map.
1 .83 Area 7 and Area 8 ceramics, glass and tile map.
1 .84 Area 7 and Area 8 metal (excluding nails) map.
1 .85 Area 7 and Area 8 nails map.
1 .86 Area 7 and Area 8 ornaments and decorative artifacts map.
1 .87 Area 7 and Area 8 other artifacts map.
1 .88 Area 7 and Area 8 overall profile map.
1 .89 South Profile at 16 North
1 .90 North Proh le at 1 8 North
1 .91 North Proh le at 20 North
1 .92 East Profile at 22 West.
1.93 East Profile at 26 West.
1 .94 West Profile at 32 West.
1.95 View of 12N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.96 .Artifacts from 12N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.97 View of I4N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.98 Artifacts from 14N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .99 View of 14N 24W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.100 Artifacts from 14N 24W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1. 101 View of I4N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.102 Artifacts from I4N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.103 View of 14N 28W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 104 View of I4N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.105 Artifacts from 14N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 1 06 View of 1 6N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.107 Artifacts front 16N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Figure Caption
1.108 Artifacts from 16N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.109 View of i6N 24W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.1 10 Artifacts from 16N 24W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.1 ! 1 View of 16N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.112 Artifacts from 16N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.1 13 View of 16N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.1 14 Artifacts from 16N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.115 View of 16N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.116 Artifacts from i6N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.117 Artifact from i6N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 1 !8 View of i8N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.119 Artifacts from 18N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.120 Artifacts from 18N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.121 Artifacts from 18N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.122 View of 18N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.123 Artifacts from 18N 24W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.124 Artifacts from I8N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.125 View of 18N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.126 Artifacts from I8N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.127 View of i8N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .128 Artifacts from 18N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.129 View of i8N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.130 Artifacts from 18N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.131 View of 20N 22 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
i .132 Artifacts from 20N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.133 Soapstone fragment with bevelled out marks from 20N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard. ! . 1 34 View of 20N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.135 Artifacts from 20N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.136 Viewof20N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
! . 137 Artifacts from 20N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.138 Viewof20N 28W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.139 Artifacts from 20N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 140 Cioseup of stoneware from 20N 28W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.141 View of 20N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 142 Artifacts from 20N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.143 Cioseup of soapstone from 20N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.144 Viewof20N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.145 Artifacts from 20N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.146 View of20N 34W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1. 147 Artifacts from 20N 34 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.148 View of22N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 . 149 Artifacts from 22N 22W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.150 View of 22N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.151 Artifacts from 22N 24 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.152 View of 22N 26 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
! . ! 53 Artifacts from 22N 26W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.154 View of22N 28W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.155 Artifacts from 22N 28 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.156 View of 22N 30 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.157 Artifact from 22N 30W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.158 View of22N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.159 Artifacts from 22N 32 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.160 View of22N 34W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.161 Artifacts from 22N 34 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard. i.!62 Viewof22N 36W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
IV
Figure Caption
1.163 Artifacts from 22N 36 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.164 View of22N 38 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.165 Artifact from 22N 38 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.166 View of22N 40 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.167 Artifacts from 22N 40W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.168 Artifact glass bottle found in 2010 backdirt. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.169 View of 4N 20W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.170 Artifacts from 4N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.171 Artifacts from 4N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.172 View of 6N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1. 173 Artifacts from 6N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1. 174 Artifacts from 6N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.175 Artifacts from 6N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.176 View of 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.177 Artifacts from 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.178 Artifacts from 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.179 Artifacts from 8N 20W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.180 Artifacts from 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.181 Artifacts from 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.182 Artifacts from 8N 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.183 View of ION 20 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.184 Artifacts from ION 20W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.185 Artifacts from ION 20W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .186 4N 20W Decorated marmite sherds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.187 4N 20W Earthenware sherds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.188 4N 20 W Beads. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.189 6N 20W Sherds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.190 6N 20 W Bellarmine sherd. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.191 ION 20W Beads. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.192 12N 30W Flint sherd. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.193 16N 30W Clay pipe bowl. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.194 18N 22W Ramah Chert point. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.195 16N 34W Lead musket ball. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.196 20N 22W Earthenware glaze. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.197 20N 22W Beads. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .198 20N 26 W Bead and glaze sherd. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.199 20N 28W Bead. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.200 20N 32W Dorset microblade. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.201 20N 30W Soapstone lamp. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .202 20N 28W Ceramic sherds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.203 22N 26W Fishing line weight. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.204 22N 28W Copper headband fragment. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1 .205 22N 28W Ulu made of glass. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.206 22N 28W Soapstone pot bottom fragment. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.207 22N 28W Soapstone pot reconstruction. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.208 Prehistoric finds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
1.209 Little Canso Island- 1 (EhBn-9).
1 .2 1 0 Little Canso Island site map.
1.211 Map of Little Canso Island (LhBn-9)
1 .212 Flare Harbor- 1 undei'water site plan with excavated squares from the 2007, 2008, and 201 1
1.213 expeditions.
1.214 Stratigraphy of the northern wall of square CO- 1
1 .2 1 5 Fragment of a yellow glazed fine earthenware container.
1 .2 16 Fragment of a black glazed stoneware container.
Mid- 19th century clay pipe bowl.
V
Figure Caption
1.217 Pitcher fragment from TPCl-î.
1.218 TPCO-1 with some clams still in place in L3, eroded northern wall on top.
1.219 TPCO-1 with some clams still in place in L3, eroded northern wall on top.
1 .220 Elements of cooperage from Layer 2 in TPC 1 - 1 .
1 .22 1 Elements of cooperage from Layer 2 in TPC 1-1.
1 .222 Wood chips from L2 lying at the bottom at the end of the dredge.
1.223 Stratigraphy of the western wall of the TPB2-1 square.
1 .224 Stratigraphy of the western wall of the TPB2- 1 square.
1 .225 Woven grass mat from TPC 1-1.
1 .226 Common yellow earthenware jar fragment.
1 .227 Searching through a Layer 2 sample for small artifacts and ecofacts.
1.228 Ballast stones partly covered by calcareous algae and mollusk bore holes.
1 .229 Some of the ballast stones removed from TPB2-1 and a top of the pile ballast stone.
1.230 Stratigraphy of the northern and western wall of square B2-2.
1 .23 1 Stratigraphy of the northern and western wall of square B2-2.
1 .232 Barrel stave and part of a tapered log.
1 .233 Bird bone collection from L4.
1.234 Worked piece of oak wood.
1 .235 Leather shoe sole.
1 .236 Pitch made of sap.
1 .237 Unidentified pieces of lead.
1.238 Fragment of a pot found in between Stone Pile 4 and 5.
1.239 Fragment of a pot found in between Stone Pile 4 and 5, in situ.
1.240 Pot handle from organic layer.
1.241 Vincent Delmas and Erik Phanuef holding underwater finds. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
VI
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1 -20 j 1 1 roject (joais
Discovery of a Basque site at Hare Harbor (EdBt-3), on Petit Mecatina Island in 2002, and ensuing investigations through 2009, resulted in excavations of the site’s land and undenvater components, including a cookhouse, blacksmith site, middens and underwater ballast dumps and deposits. The site is unusual for having a long history of Basque and other European occupations dating from the mid- 16th to the late- 19th century, for having contemporary land and underwater components, and for evidence of prehistoric and historic Inuit settlements (Fitzhugh et al. 2011).
The general goal of Gateways Project research has been to develop a better understanding of ( 1 ) the culture history of the Lower North shore;
(2) the relationship of its cultural components to neighboring regions, especially northern Quebec-Labrador, Newfoundland, and the Upper Gulf of St. Lawrence; (3) the archaeological remains of its early European settlement; and (4) the preservation and conservation of its cultural resources and its potential for tourism, heritage programs, and economic development.
Fig. 1.2: 2011 site Structure 5 view to the west. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
More specifically, in recent years and
as proposed this summer, we have been investigating this unusual (due to its Basque, European, and Inuit components) site, with attention to recovering both land and underwater materials. Pelationships between Europeans, Indians, and Inuit are a special focus of project, and previous research has resulted in documenting archaeological ly several expansions / migrations of Paleoeskimos and limit cultures into the Gulf of St. Lawrence — atopic long debated by experts (Martijn 1980). Discovery in 2009 of Inuit houses that appear to be contemporary with the site’s ca. AD 1700 European occupation pose exciting potential for research. If this contemporaneity can be verified, it will be the first archaeological instance of direct Inuit-European collaboration in the North Atlantic European fishery. For these reasons we have given special attention to preparing a detailed map of all site features and excavations, topography, and landscapes.
Our special target for the 201 1 season is to complete investigation of the west end of the site where we discovered in 2009 a series of structures, two of which appeared to be Inuit winter dwellings. We excavated S4 in 2010 and found it to be a classic Inuit winter dwelling with sod walls, a sunken entrance tunnel, paved floor, and sleeping benches. An oil-encrusted lamp stand and a fragment of an Inuit cooking vessel also supported this view, even though most of the artifacts recovered were of European origin. One of the unusual features of this structure was that its foundation walls used wood charcoal as a matrix for rocks and occasional sods and whale bones, rather than being of rock and sod construction as most limit winter dwellings. Immediately west of S4 was an adjoining structure (S5) which was roughly rectangular, with the same east-west axis as S4. Like S4, S5 was entered through a sunken passageway that twisted through an irregular barrier of boulders, some of which were rockfall that had been cleared from the
I
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^5
Fig. 1.4: 22N 26W soapstone fragments in situ.
Photo by Wilfred Richard.
of the site? We also planned an underwater excavation to extend the results of our research on deposits in the harbor associated with several ballast piles of Basque origin.
house area. The rear (uphill) wall was excavated into the bank as in the case of S4. From surface indications it was impossible to clearly identify the west wall of S5, and rock alignments suggested two possible locations, one along the 28W line and the other ca. 3 1 W. A much more irregular grouping of boulders forms the southern wall of this S5 “extension”, and there is some indication of a passage through this wall to access the western part of Area 7. West of this structure there is a 2-meter wide pit which we tested in 2009 and found full of pure charcoal. These features are our primary target for the 201 1 season. The questions include: ( 1 ) is S5 Inuit or a European? (2) Does Area 7 contain one or two separate structures? (3) Are the S5 structure and Area 7 hearth at 20N 30W contemporary with S4? (4) What is the relationship of these structures to the other structures at Hare Harbor? And (5) what is the relationship of the charcoal pit in the western part of A7 and the rest
Acic nowiedgments
As in previous years, the 2010 season was conducted with a small field team: Periy Colbourne seiwing as P/A/w/aÆ skipper, William Fitzhugh (Smithsonian) as field director, and Wilfred Richard (ASC Research Collaborator) as photographer. On land field assistance was provided by Lauren Marr (Smithsonian), Janine Hinton (Smithsonian), Justine Bourguignon-Tétreault (University of Montreal), Sarai Barreiro- Arguellas (University of Montreal), and Alexandra Evans. Underwater site investigations were completed by Erik Phanuef and Vincent Delmas (University of Montreal). We received gracious material and moral support from the Colbournes of Lushes Bight, Newfoundland, and many friends in Harrington Harbor, Quebec. Pemiits were provided by the Department of Culture and Communication of Quebec, and financial support and materials came from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural Histoiy, the Arctic Studies Center and the University of Montreal, courtesy of Brad Loewen.
Lauren Marr and Laura Fleming provided research assistance, and Lauren Marr prepared the maps, illustrations, and oversaw the technical preparation of this report.
Fig. 1.3: 2011 fteldcrew, I to /; Wilfred Richard, Justine Bourgiiignon- Telreault, Perry Colbourne, Sarai Barreiro-Arguellas, Janine Hinton. Bill Fitzhugh, Vincent Dehnas, Erik Phanuef and front: Lauren Man: Photo by Wilfred Richard.
I
Z - Strategies of |nterventio
n
The purpose of the 201 1 was to explore Structure 5 and excavate along the drip-line below the cliff overhang, to excavate a charcoal- filled pit discovered earlier, and test for other features encountered. The 2011 Gateways Project employed similar strategies of intervention as in previous years at the Hare Harbor 1 site on Petit Mécatina Island. Our focus this season was to excavate the site’s Area 7, which extends west of the Structure 4 Inuit winter dwelling in an area that appeared to have another similar stnjcture, which we designated Structure 5. S5 appear to also be of Inuit construction, based on the presence of an entrance passage in a wall of rocks along the south side of the structure, paralleling these features in S4. Our methods included extending the site grid west of S4, clearing Area 7 of surface
vegetation, systematic excavation, data-collection, and back-filling and stabilizing the site. Other areas of the site remained untouched in 2011, with the exception of the undemater excavations in the harbor area adjacent to the site, where we extended our earlier grids and excavation several new 2-meter squares. These excavations followed established protocols for underwater archaeology, with full photography, object plotting, excavation by troweling assisted by dredges, mapping of features, and creation of stratigraphic sections.
_ . .
Fig. 1.5: Sarai Barreiro-Arguellas digging Area 8 midden view to the north. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Systematic Excavations: When research began at Hare Harbor 1 in 2002 we established a grid based on a datum at the top of the ledge bounding the southern edge of the site. Secondary datums were established as needed to facilitate measurements in the vicinity of Areas 1-6. In 2010 we established a datum on the western wall of S4, and in 2011 we continued to use this as the basis for extending the grid into Area 7. The grid’s northern limit ran along the 22 North line west to a large rock-fall boulder, and its southern limit ran along the 0 North line. Later a trench was laid our extending south from the entrance of the S4 entry tunnel into an area where we found a midden connected to the S4 occupation. Following photography each 2-meter square was excavated according to stratigraphic levels and data were recorded photographically and on paper map grids. Ail rocks, features, flakes, tiles, and artifacts and samples were piece-plotted in three dimensions. A composite map was prepared and stratigraphic profiles were drawn for the important sections. At the conclusion of the work the excavated area was back-filled and stabilized with rocks and sods.
Processing, Analysis, and Reporting: All artifacts recovered were traced, plotted, numbered, and described in field notes, and interesting objects were photographed at the time of excavation and in lots by 2-meter square. A field catalog was prepared and everything was carefully packaged and delivered to the Quebec archaeological Laboratory for cleaning, conservation, and formal cataloguing. All maps, and relevant photos and illustrations are reproduced in this field report. Technical analysis of materials is on¬ going at the time of this report and will be published in detailed monograph in the future.
5
5-201 I Expedition Journal
22 July — Friday I rendezvoused with Lauren and Janine at Reagan National Airport at 9; 1 5, lugging my dive gear and personal stuff, with the temperature already in the low 90s, and due for a record- breaking 104-5° later in the day. It will be good riddance to a week of ridiculously hot weather. But upon landing in Portland where Will Richard greeted us at the airport with temps in the high 80s, it still seemed like we were in a blast furnace. The second surprise was Will’s new metallic grey Volvo, second-hand, but with few miles on it, and in great shape. We piled in, and an hour later arrived at his beautiful home
in the Georgetown woods having a light lunch with Lindsey. Then to the tip of Georgetown Island for a visit with Brenton Perow and his wife Julia, who provided us with our evening lobsters and a few nips of Brent’s raspberry wine. Across the mouth of the Kennebec we could see the old Civil War fort and the surf crashing on a beach jammed with swimmers and the odd kayak paddler. By the time we got back the temperature had dropped a couple degrees. The lobster dinner turned out even better than last year’s, and by 10pm we were all asleep to the booming of the bullfrogs in the pond.
23 July - Saturday We were up by 5am and on the road by 6, with four big bags of gear on the roof The day passed quickly as we wound our way north to the turnpike, then east to the Canadian border at St. Stephens. By early evening we were at the Canco Canal and by 7:30 at the North Sydney Nova Scotia ferry terminal. The major excitement up to this point was the search for gas around Pictou and the sticker shock at tank-fills of $60-70 ($1 .32/liter). The feny — The Highlander, one of two new ferries recently brought on¬ line — left on time at 1 1 :30pm and got us in to Port aux Basques by 6am. A smooth ride, fairly comfortable lounge seats to sleep in, and an OK cafeteria for breakfast.
24 July - Sunday The heat wave in the northeastern US had produced stormy weather, fog, and rain in western Newfoundland, so the drive north along the west coast was not as pleasant as usual, but by 12 we were in Corner Brook, canvassing the Canadian Tire store for a solar battery charger and other stuff we needed. We had to pass up a chance to see Greg Wood, who has now left his farm is and back in his old home in Deer Lake, because of our pressing need to reach Harrington by the 3 1 st, when our Quebec divers arrive. The weather cleared east of Corner Brook, and by the time we reached the Long Island ferry it was sunny and blowing hard from the north. The ferry landing was lined with people casting lures into the swift current and pulling up scores of small codfish — the three-week long ‘recreational fisheiy’ had just begun. Within a few minutes we were at Perry’s and Louise’s and had become part of the Colbourne extended clan’s Long Island Day reunion. This year’s LID drew a couple hundred folks, many coming from afar, including twm of Periy’s brothers, Christopher and Peter, who live in Ontario, whom I had never met. Eugene the oceanographer, Kay, as well as the local Colbournes, were all on hand for a big dinner at Barb’s and Maurice’s ‘shed.’ Jill and Matthew had moved from St. John's to Corner Brook, were she has landed a medical technician position in a lab, while Matthew is working on boats in the Great Lakes. Louise now has an empty house, except for Perry, but
at least the girls — other than Tracey in New Brunswick — are pretty close at hand. We immediately took up our lodgings on board the Pits, which was resplendent in her new paint at her old slot at the pier. Perry has done a great job getting her ready, and all systems are ‘go’ except for the same old problem with the navigation computer, whose auto-pilot will not function. Peny thinks this is related to the switch to a new computer a couple years ago, and to Chad Caravan’s failure to have the software registered. J'his won’t hurt our work but is a nuisance, since we paid for the work and Chad’s expertise. Now he’s out of touch fishing off somewhere in the Grand Banks. It was great to see the whole Colbourne clan in one place, and Grandma Nan looking as chipper as I’ve seen her in years, although a bit banged up from a fall when she was out on the Pits a week ago. Ever the tough but gracious lady mistress of the clan!
Fig. 1.6: Bill Fitzhugh securing packs on Will’s Volvo. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
25 July — Monday The night at the pier was quiet, with only a few knocks from the speedboat tied alongside. By 7am we were up at Perry’s and into a mug of coffee, and by 8am Peny, Lauren, and Janine were on the ferry bound for Gander where they picked up the air compressor from Kelly and Robert Linfield. Their Dive-Master business has tanked and Robert is now into fishing and doing a bit of dive work on the side. In addition to the compressor we got ten tanks and three weight belts. While waiting for Robert to switch the electric motor for the gas engine, they visited the Gander crash site memorial. Meanwhile Will and I headed back to Springdale to exchange money, pay the fuel bill, and get groceries. Banking was a shocking experience this year, as I lost $800 off the $10,000 — the worst US-Canadian exchange rate Pve ever seen. For Peny this means ‘losing’ $250 every Smithsonian pay period! There were better times of course, but that does not help now! By the time we returned Louise had baked some bread for the trip. When Peny returned we finished loading the boat gear and decided we would be able to leave by midday Tuesday. Perry and Louise prepared a nice seafood dinner, complete with cod fillets and ‘cod faces’ — the head bones with their tasty morsels — provided by Dennis, and snow crab and mussels from Perry’s freezer. Another quiet night at the pier. Usually the girls stay at Nan’s, but this year the house is filled with Kay and Rosemary, Perry’s mute sister who lives in Ontario and is a delightful lady who
has risen above her handicap. Kay will be flying back with her tomorrow. Kay has moved on from God’s Lake, NWT, to another Indian community even further north, where she is a teacher.
26 July - Tuesday The boat was still all night — no speedboats banging on our side. After a breakfast of bacon and eggs we gathered aboard for the final preps, with a plan to head at least for Fleur de Lys on the Bay Verte Peninsula. We tried contacting Jesperson/Nobeltec service people to see about fixing the computer navigation problem, but the service guy (in India) told us Nobeltec and Jesperson parted ways three years ago and we should be contacting Nobeltec now. We tried but they were still closed (east coast time), and so went off without our autopilot again. We got underway at 1 1 :30 in a light SE breeze, passing a few cod-fishers near Gull Island; but otherwise the bay was empty. Passing Cape St. Charles we decided to head direct for Englee, which we could reach by dark, avoiding windy White Bay. This year we saw nothing moving in or on the water except a few gannets, all the way across, until just outside Englee, where a pod of white-sided dolphins were feeding on capelin or some small fry, surrounded by a flock
of similarly-purposed puffins. The lack of wildlife was more than compensated by the presence of ice, however. North of the Horse Islands a huge flat piece of shelf ice had broken in two and the seas for miles around carried its calved off-spring. This was the first piece of the mammoth Petermann glacier/ice island that broke off two years ago and then blocked the narrow straight between Ellesmere and Greenland before finally passing through and entering the Labrador Current stream. The largest piece — about nine miles long — is off Battle Harbor and can easily be seen, along with its smaller ‘children,’ scattered all about the southern Labrador coast. Many pieces have passed into the Strait of Belle Isle and east along the northern coast of Newfoundland. We’re going to see lots more of this Petermann ice along the way. 1 imagine it’s having an impact on international shipping through the Strait of Belle Isle, and it will mean we have to be very cautious, as the smaller chunks can be nearly invisible and do not show up on radar. Englee was almost like a ghost town when we arrived, its fish plants along the harbor-side slumping and docks rotted. “Nothing going on here,” replied one guy stringing up electrical cable on his boat at the town wharf “No fish, capelin, or anything else.” Several more-or-less decrepit long-liners were tied up along the pier looking like they hadn’t been out for a long time, fhe only ‘action’ were a few small boats scattered around the ‘cod islands’ near a stranded ice-berg — recreational fishermen looking for a few fish for dinner, and a large contingent of ravens and gulls. One other notable presence was a large woman in the harbor-master’s shack who was looking after the town’s financial interests and dunned us $5.65 for tying up for the night. While the girls wandered about town, attracting quite a bit of attention. Will put on one ot his spaghetti dinners, replete with ‘trumpets’ from his mushroom ‘garden’ and a fine $2 bottle of wine. This year the Canada custom’s folks did not ask for any duty on Will’s case; in fact they let us in with no questions at all.
27 July — Wednesday We were up at 5:30 and undenvay at 6, passitig a few small boats already out cod-fishing at the entrance of the bay. Wind was nil and the morning looked good for travel. By the time we reached St. Anthony a light SE breeze had arisen, but it disappeared as we rounded Quirpon and remained essentially fiat calm all the way across the Straits to Blanc Sablon, which we reached at 8pm. Just as we were about to enter the Quirpon tickle we passed a large tabular mass of ice that was tilted up and had a haip seal sunning itself at the crest. What inspired it to claw its way up the inclined slope can
2
'J
‘ ’ tî ”<■ J
Fig. l. 7: Harp seal bathing on a Petermann iceberg. Photo by Bill Fitzhugh.
only be imagined — perhaps a better view? In any case it was not concerned with our close approach for photographs and conspicuously raised its head at the proper moments. We circled and made a second pass and he still did not panic — and too bad for us, as the sight of a large seal sliding down the sloping ice would have been spectacular. Only one other time have Perry or I seen such a display — the other being in Frobisher Bay, when Paloosie shot a big bearded seal sunning itself on the ice in front of our cameras. We considered stopping at Quirpon for a visit with Boyce Roberts, and Will talked with him at 10am about whether we might stop, but he said the weather was calm there and the chance of rounding Nfld and gaining a day on our schedule was too good to pass up. So instead of stopping we hove to in Quirpon Harbor, where Perry did his engine
checks and oiling, and continued on. There were several fishing boats at the wharf, so there are more signs of life here than we have seen during the past couple of years. Rounding Cape Norman we came across our first humpback and a group of porpoises. Very little else stirred as we passed down the Newfoundland coast except gannets and fulmers, and many of the latter were molting and could not fly. The gannets were flying about in their desultoi7 way, occasionally wheeling out of the sky and crash-diving into the sea, much like pelicans. The big hit of this passage, though, was the massive ice platforms we encountered in evei7 section of the coast. They looked like giant floating islands, and most were two or three times the height of Pitsiulak — great tabular things with waterfalls of meltwater running off their sides and seabirds stationed like gendarmes all across their edges. They seem attracted to these perches, perhaps because cold air helps keep their parasites at bay, like caribou on snow patches. The largest piece of ail was a few miles east of Blanc Sablon; it must have been 300-400 meters long and 30m high. Three or four boats and a guy on a jet-ski were circling if daring its sides to collapse on them. Some of these boats looked like they were catering to tourists, and this ice — here and elsewhere around southern Labrador and northern Newfoundland — is certainly a major attraction. Nothing like it has ever been seen in living memory. It is also having a major effect on international shipping, because we saw no ships in the Strait other than the Blanc Sablon ferry.
Freighters and tankers are all taking the route south of Newfoundland to avoid the ice hazard.
Arriving in at Blanc Sablon, while preparing a dinner of macaroni and corned beef, we were greeted by a Monsieur Beaudoin, who said he owned the fish plant and other shore enterprises here. He’s been all over the Canadian Arctic and swapped stories for awhile, admiring our “good old fashioned” boat while waiting for his brother to arrive at the dock with a load of herring. From him we learned that ClitTord Hart was out of the hospital, living at home with Florence, demented but otherwise okay. After dinner I was able to reach Nick Shattler’s wife in St. Augustine and arranged to meet them tomorrow in Cumberland Harbor, where he wanted us to check out some pithouses he has located. A call to Christine and Wilson in Harrington went unanswered. We’ve burned 600 liters of diesel fuel since leaving Long Island.
28 July - I’hiirsday It turns out that even the Blanc Sablon pier can have a quiet night (we once had a terribly stormy night here). I heard nothing until one of the big fishing boats pulled out about 4;30. We turned out about 6 and tuned up for the run to Cumberland Harbor, where we were to meet Nick Shattler at 1 pm. Our departure was delayed by a glitch in the navigation computer, which this time was not
Fig. 1.8: Porpoise appears in the Straits. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
6
receiving a GPS signal. Eventually we left anyway, and Perry was able to solve the immediate problem by plugging in a small automobile GPS receiver — ^all this after we have paid several thousand dollars for expensive navigation programs. The last of the Petermann glacier ice showed up a few miles west of Blanc Sablon, and we saw no ice further west in the Gulf We arrived at Cumberland Harbor about 1 1 :00 Nfid time and anchored in our usual spot. Nick arrived at 1pm Quebec time, 1 .5 hours later than Nfld time, and we had a short chat about his pithouse and chert finds. It turns out that the chert did not come from the pithouse but from another site on Bayfield Island, probably not far from the high terrace chert site we found several years ago. We decided not to visit these sites now but rather to wait until we come through on our way home in August Nick gave us four nice sea-run trout (essentially brook trout with red spots that looked identical to char) and we hoisted anchor and headed west through the inner passage. Gorgeous rocks and coves. Rain storms were building up on the interior, but nothing reached the coast.
I spent the rest of the voyage working on the final version of Will’s “Maine to Greenland”. We passed Tabatière about 6 and Mutton Bay about 7, and airived at Hare Harbor under a dramatic display of clouds and sun shafts at 9. The entire trip was made in two and a half days with nothing stronger than a 5mph breeze and zero sea swell since St. Anthony. This was the same phenomenal luck we had coming home last August. In other developments, we’ve found several ants running around, and Perry says there still seem to be some of last summer’s infestation alive and kicking. Pretty amazing that they have survived the winter. Tm hoping that we don’t have a real outbreak now that we have real food aboard again and are throwing old beer and pop bottled in the trash, one of their favorite haunts. Hare Harbor looks trim and like we left it. Lots of grass and brush to cut, as usual. No sign of peregrines, but there are several white splotches up on the clilT face that may be gull nests. We are wondering if we will be greeted by dead baby harp seals on shore again as last year (this did not happen!).
29 July 2011 — Friday Our first day on the site was a good one with great weather. The high that has settled over Newfoundland and the Gulf continues to bring sun and light winds, today from the southwest, just enough to keep the bugs away. We got up at 6:30 and spent the morning transferring gear ashore and whacking the half-meter-high grass and weeds. Fortunately we had brought both weed whackers. The quantity of hay and silage produced would keep a cow happy for months. Perry spent the morning cleaning the boat and mounting the solar charger, so now we have a passive way to trickle-charge our often-depleted batteries, two of which we replaced this spring. We returned for a lunch of char, finishing off Nick Shattler’s gift of yesterday, and returned to the site at 2:00. We are still on Newfie time, and so the clift'shadow engulfed us at 3:30 instead of at 2:00 Quebec time. We shall probably shift to Quebec time when the dive crew arrives in a couple days. The weather turned chilly by 6:30, so we returned for supper a bit early. Lauren and Janine volunteered to cook and cast around for some time before settling on macaroni with moose meat sauce, the latter from Periy’s stash — his share of the moose he kills or butchers and packs for friends and neighbors in the fall. With another bottle of Will’s wine and the last of Louise’s homemade bread, we had a great meal enlivened by a long discussion about the state of US and Canadian economies. Today was the day the US government is supposed to shut down if the Congress does not solve the budget impasse or raise the debt ceiling.
Work at the site progressed really well, considering it was our first day. Eveiything was in order, as we left it last summer; even our 2x2m grid photo template was untouched, leaning up in the rock shelter where we left it. The Inuit house (S4) excavated last year was in excellent shape. Grass had stabilized the rear wall and grown up around the sides and front, leaving the paving slabs on the floor visible. A few of the floor paving slabs cracked over the winter, and we found a couple of clay pipe stems that eroded out from the front wall. After cutting the grass we gridded out the S5 structure and extended the grid all the way into the big perched rock. The result is quite spectacular, showing a very habitable piece of land that follows the drip-line of the cliff above. There is a very clear wall along the south front of the structure and numerous visible features inside, including clusters of rocks that look like hearth piles, others that seem to be walls or dividers, and large slabs that may be seats, platforms, or hearth stands. A sinuous entryway snakes through the south wall of boulders and rockfall. This wall seems to have been constructed with
F/g. 1.9: Janine Hinton prepares to remove turf. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
7
rock-fall material that had been cleared from the interior spaces. When all the squares were gridded we photographed the entire Area 7 (everything west of S4, west of the 22W line), and in doing so it became obvious that we probably cannot excavate all 30-40 of these squares in the next three weeks with a dig crew of 5, so we shall have to sample and likely do some triage (ion the end we did in fact complete almost all of these squares). Toward the end of the day we were able to open up two 2x2m squares in the middle of S5, one (the easternmost, 18N 24 W) contained out test pit from 2009. Both had a thick layer of charcoal-rich soil just under a thin turf layer. Will’s square (18N 26W) turned up a piece of brown earthenware with tiny pits in its surface, and Janine and Lauren’s an iron nail soon after they got started. The cultural layer — a charcoal-rich black soil with lots of sand (eroded from the cliff face above) and small fire-cracked rocks in it — is about 1 5 cm thick, overlain by 2-3cms of turf We have yet to reach the floor or sterile subsoil. As we left the site, a screech from the cliff above seemed to announce the presence of our old friends, the peregrines. No sign yet of the chattering red squirrel or the lugubrious porcupine.
30 July - Saturday It was very still in the harbor last night, although the boat rocked occasionally from swells entering from the Gulf Nevertheless this was enough to kindle concern from Janine, who shined her flashlight in at me in my berth on the pilothouse floor asking if the speedboat was bumping. Probably she was just getting introduced to the sound of the anchor chain scraping across the bow-plate as we swing at anchor. Lauren was tiying to reassure Janine, but in the morning when we tried to figure out what the trouble had been, Lauren remembered nothing — testament to a good sleep and hard day’s work. Or maybe it was the Red River hot cereal that I had made for breakfast. I had not had this breakfast delight since canoeing at Camp Keewaydin in the 1950s, so when I found it on the market shelf in Springdale 1 couldn’t resist. It’s more like bird-seed than other types of porridge, but it packs a whallop, sticks with you much of the day, and apparently induces amnesia in sleepy women! This morning I made cream of wheat, a more dependable day-starter.
Surf was crashing on the outer shore, a good indication of a strong southwest wind. However it was calm in the harbor, and we were able to get in a morning’s work before it started to rain during lunch. Will made some grilled “Mac-/7'Ari//«Cv” from English muffins, tomatos, cheese and salami — quite tasty. We decided he should offer his recipe to a McDonald’s.
At the site we continued excavating 18N 24/26W and opened 18N 28W, extending the excavation down the middle of the structure. By noon 18N 24 W was beginning to reveal some structure, with a linear feature (FI ) of roof tiles and cobbles extending NW/SE, a series of floor pavement slabs in the northern and eastern areas, and a large granite slab in the SE corner, perhaps a seat or a hearth base (it turned out to be a fallen wall slab). Like the other units inside S5 the soil profile showed three levels; LI : 2-3cm of turf; L2: 3-4cm upper cultural layer of sandy soil mixed with charcoal and chunks of cliff-fall rock and the occasional nail; and L3, a lower cultural level with iron nails, tiles, and charcoal of 3-10 cm, above floor cobbles and slabs or on sterile sand. While some nails are found in L2, most of the cultural deposits are in L3, which is dominated by a matrix of charcoal and fire-cracked rock with little sand. Most of the sand in L2 seems to have eroded from the cliff above or washed down from the shelter. In 18N 28 W I found an old soil surface separating L2 from L3, perhaps indicating a roof deposit of sod or skin, or a stable ground surface after the abandonment of the house. Below this level the soil becomes filled with chunks of charcoal, and for the first time a combination of tiles, nails, and pieces of burned or FCR appear. Most ot the artifacts were from 1 8N 24W. where Lauren and Janine have been working just above a cobble pavement (with some roof tiles) on sterile sand. Most of the finds in this square come from just above the pavement in the L2/3 charcoal-tilled levels. The use of roof tiles as paving stones indicate access to these Basque materials, which are tiot found in L2. Finds included a pipe stem, nails and spikes, a fragment of a small blue seed bead, and a glaze fragment spalled from a piece of earthenware ceramic. Will’s unit had
Fig. /. 1 0: Bill Fitzhiigh enjoying Red River hot cereal. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
8
similar stratigraphy but has produced only spikes and nails and a small piece of undecorated earthenware with tiny pits on its surface. As in 18N 24 W, he has a cobble and tile feature in the southern area and slabs in the northeast. The floors of both 18N 24 W and 18N 26W are inclined down to the south toward the S5 entry. The northern half of 18N 28 W has similar stratigraphy and produced nails from L2 and the top of L3. We need to understand why so much charcoal is found in L2 in a loose, sand-filled deposit that seems like fill rather than house deposits; perhaps this material derives from a charcoal furnace that operated after the occupation of the house So far, the concentration of tiles (rare or completely absent in the turf and L2), nails, and a glass bead hint at an Inuit occupation dating to or shortly after a Basque occupation and preceding a more industrial operation that produced large amounts of charcoal. (NOTE: This turned out to be a false, as in many other areas we found the charcoal production phase to precede constimction of S4 and S5.). A major difference between 18N 28W and the two units to its east is the complete absence in the latter of a floor pavement at the base of L3 and the near absence of artifacts fronr the L3 level.
31 July — Sunday (Hare Harbor to Harrington and return) The weather had not cleared by morning, and it remained showery and unsettled until late afternoon. We decided not to work at the site and to leave for Harrington after breakfast. Will made his excellent sour cream pancakes and fried bacon. We left about 9:30am and had an easy passage to Han'ington, arriving just as the church bells started pealing. A Sunday klatsch of men had gathered outside the Paul Rowsell’s store, CMR Sales. Paul’s brother Mark Rowsell gave us the low-down on the winter — not as bad as last year because they had enough snow and ice for snowmobile travel. Harp seals came in the fall, but there was no sea ice for birthing and whelping, and they saw no young seals. The summer weather was cold and wet until this past week, and there are few bakeapples showing. The fishing was generally poor — few codfish or lobsters — and the quotas were also low, so the fishing season has already ended at Harrington. One event of interest was the discovery of scallop and other sea shells when the town dug out the small back-up water reservoir at the east end of town; many of the smaller shells were found in the mud in growing position when they were under the sea. Lany Ransom gave me a bunch of shells to use for cl 4-dating, but 1 still need to get the elevation of the mud above sea level. We found Wilson Evans at home in his workshop. He had arrived earlier in the morning from Muttton Bay where the rest of the family will remain until Wednesday. Their daughter Alexandra is home from northern Canada after a year away and will be working for the school board on non-classroom education projects in Hairington this year. Mark was kind enough to open the store for us even though it was Sunday, and we took the opportunity to stock up for the coming week when we will have a crew of nine. We cleaned up the boat and prepared for the arrival of the Quebec team by plane from Montreal and Sept Isles. They came from Chevery by water taxi at 7:00, and we set out almost immediately for Hare Harbor, taking advantage of the last evening light. On the way we had a pizza and salad dinner from the HH restaurant and got to know our old and new partners — Vincent Delmas and Erik Phaneuf, and new-comers Justine Bourguignon-Tétreault and Serai Barriero Arguellas (from Mexico), the latter two students at the University of Montreal. Brad Loewen is supporting their participation and Erik’s salary with a contract through his environmental company — AECom, a worldwide enterprise for which he is covering archaeological activities in Quebec. The passage was smooth and soon after
anchoring we were bedded down in all available nooks and crannies, the girls in the foc’s’cle and the guys back aft. In Harrington, at the last minute while I was walking to the boat, I realized 1 had not secured our emergency oxygen tank from the hospital. At the hospital 1 found a new nurse on her first day of duty. She knew nothing about oxygen tanks but put me in touch with Nurse Micheline Bernard who remembered us from last summer and helped us get a loan of a tank of oxygen.
1 August - Monday (Hare Harbor)
The day dawned clear and bright, with a light north wind — perfect to start diving and to introduce the UM students to the site. 1 laving shifted to Harrington time.
Fig. /.//.' First day’ on the site, southeast view. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
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we got up at 5:30, an hour after sunrise, and after breakfast assembled the diving gear, posted the emergency telephone numbers for medical assistance on the pilothouse wall, and went ashore. I decided not to dive for a few days, until I see what progress we are making on the land site. We have laid out near fifty 2x2m squares, and we’ll be lucky to do thirty. Ashore, we assigned new squares and broke Justine and Serai in on our excavation procedures, and soon we had seven squares working. Down in the cove Perry, Erik, and Vincent got the dredges in the water and set the mooring for the speedboat, where Perry would man the two dredge pumps. Erik and Vincent also made their first reconnaissance dive, finding the underwater site in good condition.
No scallops or lobsters seen. At noon we returned to the Pits for lunch and found Vincent had prepared tomato soup and sandwiches. We returned to the site for the afternoon, which turned cool and foggy.
The divers got the pumps operating, and a bit of dredging was done while the land crew opened up several new squares. We quit digging around 7:00 and returned to Erik’s spaghetti, eating our first group meal around the galley table, debating the quality of French vs. other wines and watching with amazement while Janine ate a third helping.
Some appetite that girl has! Everyone was in bed by 10 after what was
2 August — Tuesday (Hare Harbor) Fog hung around all night and into the late morning. We rose at 6:30 to find a light southerly breeze, a lifting fog, and people whoosey from swatting mosquitoes during the night. 1 had made the mistake of leaving one of the pilothouse windows open a crack for air. Our
other insect pests — the ants — seem to be building their forces, with several more seen each day, and larger size. Erik says the solution for carpenter ants such as ours is to prepare a mixture of borax with jam, which they cany back and feed to queen. I keep wondering how riddled the boat is after a full year of these critters munching through our timbers. Within an hour or so the fog burned off and we enjoyed a pleasant morning’s dig, intenupted for an hour by the dredge pumps. Underwater, Erik and Vincent got started with their excavations on either side of the central ballast piles. No spectacular finds but the dredging has hardly begun. One highly notable feature: the temperature of the water is very low at 40-50 feet — about 2 Celcius, or ca. 36F, much colder than in previous years. After a lunch of Vincent's doctored-up scrambled eggs and toast we returned to the site and had a spectacular afternoon of finds. Justine started off with several earthenware ceramics; 1 found more of the stoneware pitcher first recovered yesterday. Then Lauren found a beautiful Maritime Archaic stemmed point of Ramah chert just under the sod in the wall of Structure 5, and right after that I spotted some tell-tale white scratches on a cobble in the stone pile Serai was neatly cleaning. When we extracted it we discovered it was a small Labrador Inuit soapstone lamp turned up-side-down, with only a small piece missing from the rim. A few minutes later 1 found several pieces of a broken Inuit soapstone cooking pot in the 22N line. A banner day, some of the most important finds recovered from the site over many years. The Ramah chert point might have been in some sods used for house constmction, but our elevation may be below the sea level for this coast 3500-4000 years ago. It could have come from the MA people living in the longhouse we found in trap cove on the southern tip of P. Mécatina if the MA sea level is below our site. Otherwise it must have been a relic collected by earlier folks or by the Inuit.
3 August - Wednesday (Hare Harbor) By 6am the Pits was swinging back and forth at anchor and a cold wind was pumping through the boat through the window screen. The wind was in the southeast and a bank of fog was moving in. It looked like it would be a rummy day, but at least it was not raining. We got to the site by 8:00, and after that conditions improved steadily. The divers got their squares working and on land we found more pieces of the Inuit cooking pot and the stoneware jar. About 1 1 :30 we heard
Fig. /. 12: Lauren Marr holding a Ramah Chert point found in S5. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
Fig. 1.13: Justine Bourguignon Tetreault. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
a strenuous but a productive day.
the chugging sound of a boast entering the harbor. It was Wilson bringing Christine, Alexandra, and Sarah back from Mutton Bay where they had been visiting Christine’s parents, the Vatchers, for a week. They tied up alongside the Pits and we had a nice lunch, catching up on affairs. The girls are so grown up now it’s hard to tell who the mother is! They are all off with the Vatchers to Montreal for a couple weeks. After showing them around the site we returned to work. So far not a lot of finds have been made underwater, and Erik is thinking of moving the dig Lipslope into shallower water partly because of the cold water at depth and because he thinks we may get better material. After the dive Erik and Perry towed the underwater camera Erik had rented for the project around the harbor with the speedboat. The camera is remote, powered by a 12-volt cable from the boat, and gives a good view of the bottom if you can manage to keep it moving slowly enough. You detennine this by watching the picture on a monitor and adjusting speed accordingly. So far they have seen nothing of note; the bottom is almost completely devoid of objects or life except for brittle stars (starfish). The apparatus works well at shallow depth but is hard to position at depth. The idea is to identify prospective sites like wrecks before you go to the expense and trouble of launching an underwater excavation. We worked until 6:30 and returned for a diner of tacos and salad. After supper Lauren tried out her star-gazer computer program that identifies the constellations for any time or place you program into it. Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy!
2011 Field Program We have now been digging for five days, last week with four and for the past two days with six on land and two diving. During this time we have made major progress at the land site but have only begun the underwater work. On land we have concentrated on Structure 5 in Area 7, the region of the site west of the S4 the Inuit winter house, where we suspect at least one other Inuit house is located as well as a charcoal production or some other kind of industrial facility. To date we have opened fifteen squares oriented east-west along the axis of the S4 structure and have completed ten. Following presents our rationale and procedures to dale.
Archaeology Update / We began work at the land site by cutting the grass off the entire area and gridding the A 7 area from 22W to 36W and 12N to 22N. During the first few days we excavated six 2-meter squares that covered the interior ofS5: 18N / 24-26-28W and 20N / 24-26-28W. These squares included the interior spaces of S5 north of the structure s front wall and part of what should be the sleeping platform in an Inuit house. The stratigraphy in 18N 24W and 18N 26 was similar; Level I, 3-5cm of turf overlying Level 2, a dark charcoal-rich 'black earth ’that included cultural materials. This layer lay above a pavement of tightly packed beach cobbles that Jormed the floor of the house. Beneath this level was sterile sand. The units to the north, 20N 24 W and 20N 26 W had similar stratigraphy: however the cobble pavement extended only one meter north of the 20N line. At that point the cultural level rested directly on sterile sand that angled up toward the north, where it intersects a layer of in-situ beach cobbles. Until we complete the surrounding squares the position of the side and rear walls of S5 remains unclear. The east wall is shared with S4's west wall, but we have yet to determine whether this wall was a common wall for a joint settlement by or was modified by a later occupation of one of these structures. The position of the east wall is suggested by a line of large boulders that arc around from the front of the house and meets a boulder and gravel mounded wall that extends toward the hillside. This wall seems to be the west wall of the dwelling for the cobble pavement ends at the inside edge of this feature. However, the front 'wall' of S5 extends 4 meters west beyond this 'wall' and encloses a floor area that ma}> have been a separate dwelling or working place although this area has no cobble or slab pavement (see photo). (We later determined that this area was outside the S5 'house 'floor.)
4 August — Thursday Today was a day of surprises, at the site and on board. The day began like the past few days, overcast with a light southeast breeze. Early in the morning I began to feel the Pits swinging back and forth on the anchor and the sound of the waves on the shore getting louder. Upon getting up, 1 found the wind was “in’’ -into the bay — and the fathometer showed 4.2 fathoms, shallower
Fig. 1. 14: The Evans 'girls and mother Christine all grown up! Photo by Wilfred Richard.
than usual. It seemed if the boat swung just a bit more on her anchor we might be on the rocks. Erik and I discussed the unusual location and I mentioned it to Perry as we left the boat for the site. Soon after we got ashore and starting working I heard a commotion from the boat and saw Erik in the speedboat messing with the anchor chain. As we had suspected, the anchor had become fouled and the boat had dragged about 50 meters. This is the first time this has happened in many years, perhaps due to chain falling on the anchor while we anchored, or by the boat swinging around the anchor with changes in the wind. Soon the Pits was secured and we turned to the dig work, which benefitted from improving weather. Janine, Lauren and Will were working on the east wall of S5; Justine in the inner entry of S5a, the potential ‘house’ area west of S5, and Serai and I on the bank at the rear of the structure in 22N 28 and 22N 30W. In taking the sod oft' my unit 1 found more remains of the smashed up rectangular Inuit soapstone cooking vessel I had found previously in 22N 26W, and more pieces were soon found scattered higher up on the bank. To say the least, it is odd to find an Inuit woman’s treasured cooking pot broken up and scattered about like this, and I could not help wonder about the circumstances; was the old traditional vessel cast out by an Inuit woman who obtained a European metal replacement? Could it have been an accident? Or was it a malicious act by intruders? The lamp and pot are the center of the Inuit domestic household and is a virtual requirement for traditional Inuit life. An Inuit woman could hardly manage without it. Also, these vessels were usually invested with strong life force and had spiritual meaning. Eater in the day Justine recovered a large iron bolt from the S5 “west entry,” where she also found tiles used as a pavement beneath large rocks that appear to have been thrown in, filling what appears to be an entrance passage. (Later we determined this was not a house entry, only a gap in the boulders.) Will found some faience with brown and blue painting on a thick white glaze. Lauren, Janine, and Serai also had good linds.
As we approached the Pits at dinner time we found Erik flailing the water with a fishing pole and hauling small herring into the boat. The fish were roiling the surface in a frenzy, feeding on a huge mass of krill schooled so thick that the water around the boat was bright red. As the fish cut into the swarming schools the masses of krill dodged and weaved about, swirling in loops, spirals, and long flowing chains, flying into the air tiying to escape the herring lunges. Later we found krill plastered on the sides and even on
the inside of the zodiac, and when we went to use the toilet, we found krill were being sucked into the toilet intake, swimming in the bowl whole or floating around as body parts or detached dark eyes. Gulls and gannets were wheeling and diving into the mass of krill and herring, and even a young grampus (minke) whale showed up to share the feast. The action continued for several hours, during which Erik landed enough herring for lunch. None of us, including Pen7, had ever experienced such an event before and we all felt privileged to witness it close- up. The krill seemed attracted to the Pits, hugging its hull and the small boats; Perry thought they were using the boats as a partial shield from their predators.
5 August — Friday (Hare Harbor) The same weather pattern is persisting — a light eastern breeze in the morning, following by partial clearing by noon. We seem to be in a stable cell north of a gale storm south of Newfoundland, heading east. Okay by me, as it is giving us a good stretch of dry work time.
On shore Serai anti I continued working on the 22N bank squares at the back of S5. I found more of the broken soapstone pot and large slabs which seem to have been placed as wall retainers when the bank was
Fig. /. 1 5: Soapstone cooking pot fragments in situ, 22N 2 8W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
excavated. Serai finished clearing the stone platform in 22N 30W and began clearing 22N 32W, which has a mass of large rocks embedded in the bank. Justine finished excavating as much of 16N 30W as she could without removing the large rocks that had been dumped or pushed into the 'entp/ passage’ and starting clearing 14N 30 W — we want to see what the entire feature looks like before starting to remove them to explore the basal deposits. The three squares along the eastern wall of S5 (16, 1 8, 20, and 22N/22 W) was being explored by Will, Lauren, and Janine.
Archaeology Update II — The Eastern Wall Because S4 and S5 share a common wall and there is no comparable wall foundation for S5 ’s western wall, we needed to explore the relationship betM>een S4 and S5. This has turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Tlie S5 eastern wall was explored in squares 22N 16, 18, 20, and 22W. Judging from surface topography the northeastern corner of S5 should lie in 22N 22W where the land dips down in the southeast quad, presumably because this was part of the original pit excavated for the house. The rear (northern) wall of S5 had no built-up wall of sod or rock. As is typical of most Inuit winter houses, this house (and S4) was placed on a south-facing slope and M)as excavated into the bank, which then formed the rear wall of the house. The front and side walls would be built up using rocks, turf and soil excavated from the interior. In the case of S5 there was no structure that remained indicating where the rear wall had been. The eastern wall rises from the house pit to join the western wall of S4, but from surface features it was not possible to know if this shared wall was used by S4 and 5 at the same time, or sequentially. We have not yet been able to resolve this issue from architectural information from our excavation and hope that this can be accomplished by analysis of the artifacts. (NOTE: We later determined that there was no rear or western wall for S5 and that this structure had been abandoned during construction, when activity shifted to building S4 in a more favorable location, outside the cliff shelter s drip-line.) The following summarizes the data from the relevant squares.
Will found the SE corner of the dwelling in the middle of his square marked by large rocks set into a matrix of charcoal chunks. Inside this wall the house deposits were either a charcoal-stained black earth or a brownish soil when not heavily charcoal-stained. A large number of artifacts are being found in these deposits, over 75 in Lauren s square and many also in Will s and Janine s. Other than the ubiquitous nails the more interesting materials include pitted earthenware (found throughout this pari of the site — the pits are the size of pinheads and seem to come from the dissolution of particles of temper), a reddish EW globular vessel, thin grey/grey (inside and out) Normandy stoneware, glass heads (blue, white, red). Finds were distributed evenly throughout the 20- 30cm of deposits, and we found no evidence of a floor, either of systematic paving or packed floor levels.
The special feature of the evening was the appearance of northern lights, seen from the north around into the east and southeast. Some of the crew had never seen them, so it was quite exciting. Later we heard that there have recently been solar storms that have made electronic communication systems unreliable.
6 August— Saturday (Hare Harbor) Conditions were still fine today, with the major change in out- fortune being the depletion of our food locker and drinking water, although we still have about one-third of our ship’s fresh water tank left. Since the wind looked like it would stay light, we decided to put in a half-day of work before heading to Harrington. After lunch we packed up the Pits, securing the dive pumps and got the inflatable aboard. The sea was calm for the run in and allowed lots of deck lounging. Rounding the southern tip of Mécatina at least 20 groups of gannets flew by, heading east. Eveiyone says they are much more numerous this year than ever before. When in groups they lly in line formations like pelicans and dive with the same wheeling turns pelicans do when they spot a fish and dive arrow-like into the water. In fact their behavior makes them a kind of ‘northern pelican.’ We had not been at the Han'ington pier more than two minutes before Paul Rowsell appeared on his 4-wheeier with his usual
Fig. 1. 1 7; Northern lights seen over HH-I site. Photo by- Wilfred Richard.
hearty welcome. We hadn’t seen him for two years, as he had been getting medical treatment last summer during our visit. He recommended we get our provisioning done soon, as the Relais Nordik would be arriving about 5pm and the store could get too busy. It did not take us long to rack up a thousand dollar bill. Meanwhile the girls dispatched to Wilson’s and Christine’s for showers and clothes-washing. Christine and Sarah were joining her parents on the steamer, going off for a holiday to Montreal. Just before the Nordik arrived a three-masted sailing vessel entered the harbor and docked. I was busy washing my clothes when Erik came by to say the new arrival was another Smithsonian vessel — I immediately recognized it as the one owned by Walter Adey and his wife, Karen Loveland, and crewed by friends and diver-biologists. They were on their way back from Nain, Labrador, where they have been sampling seaweed, algae, coralline corals, and sea urchins — part of Walter’s long-term marine biogeographic study of the northwestern Atlantic. 1 have been trying to track Walter down in the field for several years. Just missing him many times, so what a surprise to find us together tied up at the Harrington pier on the same day. It could never have been planned and certainly would never happen again. Yesterday they have pulled into Cumberland Harbor, where they happened to meet Nick Shattler, who said when asked about our presence, “Oh, Fitzhugh? Why I Just saw him here a couple days ago!” Walter gave me a tour of his boat, Alcai /., which is gorgeous in eveiy respect, with fine engineering and design, built on the model of a Norwegian rescue ship for heavy seas and with an ice-strengthened bow. She is all compartmentalized, has desalinization unit, a quiet air compressor, two quiet generators (contra Pits!), and a Cummins diesel main engine. Beautifully fitted-out, three-masted, but steaming largely on engine power, for efficiency, using the sails mostly for a boost when wind conditions permit.
7 August — Sunday (Harrington to Hare Harbor) The pier stayed quiet over the night, but came to life around 7am when Paul Rowsell showed up to prepare his boat Reef Rat for a day’s excursion to the mainland beach. Soon others gathered, including Alvin Bobbitt who wanted to show me his recent archaeological finds, a small Ramah chert point and a broad-stemmed quart point, both probably about 2000 years old, and a magnificent barbed harpoon of antler with a rounded base, line hole, a large barb on one side, and a small barb at the tip. It’s not Maritime Archaic and is probably about 1-2000 years, but I don’t know of comparative examples. I le says it came from the base of an eroding bank on the mainland near his cabin. It’s so well preserved it might have been in a burial. I called Lynne and heard about a growing financial crisis looming related to the insecurities of the debt-ridden world, and seemingly stimulated by the US raising its debt limit and having its bond ratings drop from the prime rate. Before leaving for Harrington our crew had a tour of Alcai i, while their divers checked out the Pits. Perry was especially envious of the quiet ‘pocket’ generator. Before leaving Harrington we pulled Pits alongside Alcai I and Will took some pictures of the two vessels and teams, so we now have a good record of this chance Smithsonian encounter far from home.
Maybe something will come of the meeting and learning more about his current research, using coralline algae growth bands to extract climate history for the western North Atlantic. These algae secrete carbonate deposits that grow very slowly but accumulate a growth-ring-like history of temperature and salinity that can be extracted by laser ablation analysis with accuracy to four-month intervals. So far he and his colleagues have been able to reconstruct a marine climate history back as far as 800 years. He was in northern Labrador this summer to gather samples from colder water where the algae grow slower and perhaps live longer. Walter gave me a copy of his recent publication on seaweeds of the NW Atlantic, in which he reconstructs seaweed biogeography from Maine to Labrador and identifies a new biotic province (Subarctic zone) for these species in the Canadian Maritimes and southern Labrador region and finds new relationships in the histoiy of these species, with a suiprising influx of North Pacific species providing the foundation for its present macrophyte flora. His work could provide and important source for marine climate data for interpreting the histoi-y of ice-related seals in these regions and the Eskimo cultures that depend on them. We’ll talk about this in the fail.
Perhaps there might be opportunities for some Joint fieldwork as well.
Right after taking pictures we left for I late Harbor, having a quiet passage except for some swells from the southeast emanating from the
Fig. 1.18: Alvin Babbit artifacts. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
i d-
gale reported for the past few days from southern Newfoundland. All hands arrived at HH without motion sickness and we hit the beach after lunch and got a full afternoon’s work in. Mostly this involved finishing up the bottom levels of the east wall squares, extending the 30W line to the south, and opening the last two squares at the back of the house on the bank, 22N 22/24 W. Some Nonnandy stoneware and a piece of whalebone (rib?) were recovered from 22N 24W, and Lauren’s and Janine’s bottom levels produced no evidence of pavement for the S5 interior. Will began work on the outer side of the entry passage. Justine turns out to be allergic to mosquito and black fly bites; large swelling occurs and overnight her left hand swelled from a bite and she had trouble using her fingers. So far she is the only one to have trouble with the flies, which generally have been moderate to absent around our site this summer. (However, a day later Janine also had a swollen hand, apparently also from an insect bite. Both recovered in a day’s time.)
While in Harrington I had a chance to see some old friends, though briefly. Amy Evans was having dinner in the local restaurant Saturday evening with a couple who were staying at her B&B. We also saw Lloyd Ransom and we had nice visits with Larry Ransom and his wife, Ada, and Sharon and Jim Ransom.
Jim has had some hernia surgery and has not been able to use his sailboat this year and will haul her out shortly. I also bumped into Helen and Miles Evans. Their youngster, Jake, is now 7 and Helen has quit her job at the fish plant, needing more time for her family and looking for other kinds of work. Currently she is managing the helicopter flights to Chevei^, scheduling passengers and attending chopper landings. Alexandra decided to come with us to Hare Harbor and dig for a couple of days.
8 August — Monday (Hare Harbor) Rain this morning, our first since leaving Newfoundland.
Sounds like it will last until tomorrow afternoon, fhe divers don’t mind but it messed up our progress on shore. We went out about 9am and returned at 12, and during this time most of those working on the lower (southern) squares had moved to squares inside the drip-line. Nothing much was found in any of our old or new units except a few nails. Erik and Vincent moved their dredges to either side of the easternmost stone pile and started digging, finding some worked boat parts, a seal phalange and a few other things. Lauren, 1, and Will returned to the site for a couple hours in the afternoon but could not accomplish much even under the rock shelter because the drip-line had moved in since morning and our dry pits had become shower stalls. Back aboard we found everyone in rainy-day mode, drinking tea and making a fancy dinner. Maybe the down-time will allow me to catch up on this journal — particularly our archaeological progress. The rain and southeast wind are supposed to continue until tomorrow afternoon. One problem that surfaced today, other than bad weather, is bug-bite allergies. Now Janine as well as Justine has a swollen right (dominant) hand, fhey are wondering if they could be getting carpenter ant bites in their bunks at night — but those are double punctures. I’m pretty sure they are reactions from black fly bites since that hand is always out in the open and vulnerable.
Archaeology Update HI — the Western Trench Justine has now cleared the vegetation from four SOW units (12-18N 32W), giving us our first look at the jumble of large mostly-granite rocks occupying a N-S depression we thought might be an entrance passage for the possible structure west of S5. This ‘possible ' structure occupied a level space betsveen the western wall of S5 (a low barrier of large rocks and gravel that stretched along the 28 W line from 1 7N to 2ÜN) and the ‘charcoal pit 'located on the 341V line. The area seemed unlikely to be a house since it lacked clear east and west \\>alls, but its north 'wall' had been excavated into the bank and a trench-like feature extended south, down-slope, from a south ‘wall’ of large granite blocks. The key to the structure would be this trench; if it had a paved floor, midden deposits, and a Inuit-style 'cold trap 'entry like other Inuit structures at Hare Harbor (S3, S4, and S5) it would be an
Fig. 1.19: The Pitsiulak meets the Alca i. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Inuit winter house.
The western trench lies in four squares: ION to 18N at SOW. The ground surface in the southern three units was covered with peat and moss with longfibeiy roots that packed the surfaces and spaces between the rocks. When the moss was removed Justine found several Normandy stoneware sherds (thin, and grey inside and out) resting directly on the rocks with no soil present. Five or six of these sherds fit together. The next level was a dark black charcoal-rich soil Fig. 1.21 : Research crews from the Pits and the Alca i. crew. Photo by that contained tile fragments,
Wilfred Richard. nails, and grains of scorched
granite, with increasing amounts
and sizes of charcoal chunks with depth. In the small spaces where the bottom of the soil could be reached (before we removed the jumbled top rocks) several large nearly-whole tiles rested on sterile beach sand, where they had apparently been placed as pavement. Several nails were found at this basal level. In I8N SOW a large lens of brown sand intruded into the black earth soil from the west, where it probably originates associated with a large (hearth?) mound we have yet to excavate. On the sterile sand at the south edge of 1 2N SOW Justine found a single large flake of “Groswater” (West Newfoundland) chert. From the bottom of 14N SOW she recovered a small piece of silver-colored foil, too deep to have been a recent tin-foil intrusion. From 16N SOW, with the same stratigraphy — a jumble of granite rocks apparently tumbled into a trench-like feature betM>een in situ bedrocks — she found a 50-cm long, 2.5cm thick iron bolt with a thin, rounded head and a distal end that may be threaded and capped with a nut (too rusted to he sure without x-ray). The context for this bolt, found on top of the roof-tile pavement near the bottom of the black earth, is with the Normandy stoneware. A piece of whalebone that may have been a knife or idu handle was found in the upper black earth with tvi’o pieces of plain earthenware with pitted surface, a nearly complete clay pipe bowl with tiny roulette marking around its rim, and a sheet of iron (possibly a blade fragment). A few pieces of glazed earthenware were jound on the surface of the brown sand lens in 18N SOW. Now that the these four squares have been excavated to the ‘top rocks 'we need to remove the tumbled-in rocks and see if we found pavement and floor deposits, which would indicate it had been used as an entrance passage. Some of the tumbled rocks look like they might have been part of an entry passage whose walls were destroyed. The absence of more cultural material (earthenware, stoneware) at the base of the black earth on sterile soil suggests this is not a passageway, but on the other hand there is not enough charcoal to indicate that the large rock-pile was a charcoal hearth. (NOTE; subsequent work showed conclusively this area does is not an Inuit entrym’ay and does not have a paved floor beneath the fire-burned jumble of granite bounders.)
Fig. 1.20: Groswater Dorset chert microblade recovered from 20N 32 W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Archaeology Update IV— The Western Floor The area between 28 M'" and the charcoal pit at 54 W is a relatively level area created by excavating into
the bank to 22N and moving rock-fall from the area south to the 16N line.
The middle of this area is occupied by a large rock feature located in 20N 30 W and 22N 30W. Sarai excavated these squares and found in 20N 30W a circular arrangement of large thick slabs surrounding fire-cracked rock fragments.
Among a group of fire-cracked rocks lying on the top of this hearth floor was the turned-over Inidt soapstone lamp.
The square adjoining to the north (22N 30W) continues this rocky bridge to the rising bank and contains large slabs inclined downwards paralleling the sloping surface of the bank. Beneath fig i_23: Land crew headed back to the site. Photo by Wilfred
these slabs two thick horizontal slabs Richard,
extend into the bank. After exposing these
rocks, we are leaving this feature intact until we have excavated the squares to the west. The general impression is of a raised hearth base; however, the slabs are not heavily scorched or fire-cracked. Most of the artifacts associated with this mound were nails; others included the bottom of an earthemvar-e vessel, a blade of an iron knife or blade, and the iron tang of a hafted hand-tool. The rocks in 22N 30 W contained two pieces of whale rib and a small piece of bluish glass. Hopefully we wall clarify the function of this feature when we complete its excavation. (NOTE: We were unable to interpret this hearth structure further because it would have required excavating deeply into the bank to the north, which we did not have time to do. Our present conclusion is that it is a hearth feature associated with the later Basque and Inuit occupation of the site.)
The squares east of this mound (18N 28W and 20N 28W), and the western Mali' of S5, are notable mostly
for the absence of diagnostic features.
9 August—Tuesday (Hare Harbor) Rain pelted us all night and throughout the morning until early afternoon. Wilson was to come early to pick up Alexandra, but the weather held him up. The wind was southeast and had raised a big swell; some were eight feet high according to Wilson. However, Hare Harbor remained relatively calm, but there was no question about working, as water was streaming off the cliff face and pouring into the site. Will and 1 went ashore in the morning to see if there was any damage. We found most of the squares dry; only a few directly under the drip line had filled, and all will drain quickly since the subsoil is sandy. Back aboard, we worked on notes and other chores while watching waves of mist roll by. The weather did not bother the divers, so they began new squares on either side of the ballast pile nearest the site. Higher up and in shallower water now the water temperature has reached the mid-fifties, so they can stay down longer and be more comfortable. So far their work has confirmed the stratigraphic sequence documented at Hare Harbor previously: sterile, wood chips, roof tiles, and fish bones. They are also starting to find whale phalanges. A couple days ago Erik sampled a large plated grass mat identical to a piece found at Red Bay which those excavators interpreted as a bag. Our piece was large and may have been a floor mat, but is constructed with the same simple plating type of weave. They have also found leather shoe materials, boat parts, a few pieces of ceramics, huge amounts of wood chips and fish bones, and a few bird and mammal bones. We have continued our previous discussions about the reason for all the chips, and why they sank and were preserved instead of floating away. The only way this could happen is if the
Fig. 1.22: Sarai holding soapstone lamp fragment from 20N SOW. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
chips remained in heaps on land where they got water-logged before being dumped or washed or eroded into the harbor. The other question is why so many wood chips? The volume is so large that they must have resulted from a large- scale timber or lumber operation. Quantities of bark and cross-cut ‘outer wood’ chips seem to have resulted from squaring logs. We wonder if lumbering or even boat construction might have been one of the enterprises carried on, as well as whaling and cod fishing. All these activities are associated with the Basques; we have found no underwater evidence of Inuit or other Europeans who used the site in the 17/1 8th century except the odd bottle or jug from the surface of the sediment.
By the time Wilson and Alexandra left the weather had broken and the sun was poking through. We spent the afternoon at the site, mopping our way through soggy squares. Not much progress with artifacts, but we are gradually expanding the 22N line west to the perched block where there appears to be a slab feature. Will finished his work in the S5 entry passage unit 14N 24 W, finding an excellent pavement and step-up threshold enti7 slab, but surprisingly without finding any Basque or inuit artifacts on or near the floor, only a couple nails from the charcoal level below the entry paving stones. Large rocks adjacent to the threshold seem likely to be fallen members of the typical lintel Inuit-style doorway. The Inuit occupation of S5 must have been very brief, if it was occupied at all. This view is also supported by the absence of fiat interior floor paving stones and lack of a floor deposit above the cobblestone pavement inside the doorway. Another odd feature is the absence of any evidence of a lamp stand or oil-encrusted rocks in a kitchen area inside S5. One possible reason may have emerged with our rain storm, which dumped large quantities of water into the middle of S5 from the cliff drip-line, which funnels water directly onto this floor. Perhaps the Inuit discovered this after they started constructing the house and switched to building the more substantial S4 dwelling to the east, outside the drip-line. Even for a winter dwelling this would have been a problem since there would be many periods of thaw before they would be moving into summer quarters.
1 spent the afternoon taking the sod oft' the two remaining squares in our large excavation block: 14N and 16N 28 W. This is the center of the pile of huge granite boulders and slabs, most having originated as rock-fall. A strong-rooted moss had colonized these rocks, as it had also in Justine’s 30W squares. After trying to cut it with a trowel and a shovel, 1 turned to the pruning saw, whose teeth did an effective job. Beneath the moss, between and under the rocks, was nothing but charcoal mixed with a small amount of sand eroded from the surfaces of the rocks. Some of this charcoal deposit was 60-70cm thick and all of it rested on sterile beach deposits. Occasionally a patch of peaty old ground surface was preserved at the bottom between the charcoal and sterile soil, and in Justine’s square a few nails and large tiles occurred here. I also found tiles and nails in the lowest levels of charcoal, but in the basal peat only a bit of tile. In the eastern half of 16N 28W 1 found a layer of cobbles, tiles, and sandy soil in a charcoal-rich black earth just under the sod and above the deeper charcoal level. In this square I only excavated to sterile in the NW quad, and down to the upper cobble level, hoping to find some evidence of Inuit material. I believe this upper black earth and cobble level is the product of Inuit excavating the S5 house pit and dumping the beach deposits into the boulders on the west side of their entry passage. However, no diagnostic artifacts were lound. The large stone blocks in these squares appear to have been levered or tipped into their current position during the charcoal production phase, since charcoal is found under and among these rocks. Nothing but nails — and few of them — and tiles were found in the charcoal deposit. Finds of grey stoneware immediately under the sod and in the sod-charcoal interface in the 30W squares gives an end- date for the charcoal production.
10 August — Wednesday (Hare Harbor) Another day with wind from the south, and overcast,
sometimes trying to clear but never quite succeeding. This year’s weather pattern is highly unusual. In
Fig. 1.24: Underwater barrel staves, and wood debris at exit end of dredge. Photo by Erik Phaneuf.
the past we would get the odd storm from the NE, E, or SE, but this year we have had almost a week of cool SE/S winds off the Gulf, and no warm SW summer wind. This continues a pattern of cold and stormy weather that the LNS has experienced all spring. If this is global warming, it’s not warming here in summer.
We got to the site early and worked on the 20N and 22N squares along the cliff drip line. 22N follows the change in slope of the bank that appears to mark the point at which the bank was cut into the slope to widen the level working or dwelling area to the south. In many places along the 22N line this cut seems to have been stabilized by placing large slabs of schist on its inclined surface. Excavations along this line also uncovered slabs that were not visible on the surface and many more that were thin and had rotted away. Most of the more substantial slabs are found in the western part of the bank where large blocks also intrude into the excavation area, particularly from 22N 30W to 36W, above and west of the hearth feature in 20N 30W. When the squares along the 22N line were excavated we usually found stratigraphy that included (1) turf, (2) an upper layer of black earth with charcoal, tiles, nails and other materials, (3) a sterile layer of beach sand and cobbles, followed by (4) a second layer of charcoal with tile and sometimes nails. This second cultural layer lies on (5) sterile beach deposits and disappears into the profile as the bank rises towards the large rock-fall material found at ca. 24N and beyond. We were not able to investigate the area north of 22N. The overburden increases rapidly due to greater deposition of eroded materials and perhaps accumulation of materials from human activities (charcoal production?) near the cliff face.
While the bank east of 30W seems marked only by inclined stabilizing slabs, in 22N 32-36W we found large blocks jutting out from the bank, and in a few cases thick flat slabs disappeared into the bank.
These rocks appear to be features, but we could not determine their function without extending our excavation to the north, which we did not have time to do.
We also began new work to investigate the squares along the 22N line from 36W to 40W. This area includes the area from the “charcoal pit” tested in 2008 to the mound of rocks immediately north of the huge perched block of rock-fall at 40W and is the western-most ‘habitable’ spot at the Hare Harbor site. Upon opening up these units we found nails and tiles in a black earth deposit a few cms think beneath the turf These squares also fall in the drip-line. Within this upper BE level we found many small broken granite rocks and beach cobbles and occasional flat slabs, but no features were identified and no ceramics were found, fhis level lies on an irregular “floor” of small broken rocks and occasional slabs, fime constraints required us to limit our work to the upper BE level. Below the rubble “floor” we noted deeper levels with charcoal that probably relate to the industrial activities association with the charcoal production phase of the HH-1 occupation. Our work in these western squares did not produce much useful information, since we found no recognizable features and only tiles and nails. Two exceptions are notable. In 22N 36W Justine found the broken base of a banded chert plano-convex biface, and in 20N 32W Serai found a mottled brown microblade. Both are Groswater Paleoeskimo artifacts and date to ca. 2200 BP.
During the afternoon the land crew took a break to visit the 1 9th C. historical site Hare Harbor-2 at the northeastern entrance to flare Harbor. We found this site in 2002 and collected a large number of ceramic artifacts from a small test pit in 2003(7). The site consists of a midden with many clay pipe fragments and utilitarian ware and a small rectangular structure on a rise between the midden and a pond to the north. We found the site undisturbed and surrounded by the first ripe bakeapples of the season. Near a small cove east of the site we found an oval boulder enclosure built up against a rock outcrop that may be a traditional Inuit cairn burial. The top of this enclosure is open, but its covering rocks may have
Fig. 1.25: Charcoal pit found in 20N 32W. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
been moved. One would expect to find traditional Inuit graves in the Hare Harbor vicinity, because at ca. 1700 Inuit would have still practiced their traditional religion.
If time permits (NOTE: it did not) we may investigate this site. In 2008 when Vincent visited this cove with a group from Tête a la Baleine, he was told that old people knew of Inuit graves near this cove. They tried to find them, but could not, and decided the graves must have been covered by a rock-side from the nearby cliff. Perhaps this is one of the earlier-known features that inspired this oral tradition.
Will has now completed excavating 14N 24-26W squares in the outer entry of the S5 dwelling. Because of the sinuous nature of the gap in the rocks I thought these units might reveal an extended, paved sunken passage; however, they did not. Rather 14N 26W showed a short continuation of the slab pavement seen to the north, but this feature did not extend south of 25N. Unlike S4, whose entry passage was filled with cultural materials (mostly European EWs), the S5 pavement did not have a distinct cultural layer, and the only artifacts found were two nails in the charcoal layer below and off the pavement to the west. The large granite blocks in the western half of the square were packed in charcoal, and an extension of this “charcoal soil” was found beneath the entry paving stones, again establishing the post-charcoal occupation of S5. To the east, in 14N 24 W, the entiy was framed by a rising, sod-covered wall of rocks packed in charcoal, as in the other eastern S6 walls. We decided not to excavate below the upper sod level in order to maintain the integrity of the wall.
Erik and Vincent continue their new pits located on either side of the northeastern-most stone pile and are recovering large amounts of material. From test pit TPB2-2 on the east side of Stone Pile 7 Erik is finding bird remains, whale bones, shoe leather, barrel hoops, a few ceramic fragments, lead, boat parts, and worked wood. Vincent, in TPB2-1 , is excavating between SP7 and SP6 to the west and is finding large amounts of wood chips as well as bird, fish bones, peat, barrel hoops in the interstices between the rocks. Many of these materials are too large to find their way down between the rocks, so these piles contain a degree of stratigraphic integrity (if one had the time and energy to excavate them!).
11 August — Thursday (Hare Harbor) More of the same today, only wet again. Wind in the E/SE
and drizzle turned to rain by late morning. It’s Will’s birthday, all the same, and he was treated to a jingle at breakfast. Last night he almost begged for beans with onions and maple syrup for lunch. We have not to this point in the trip opened one of the two several-years-old No. 10 size cans of baked beans, so today’s the day! Erik obliged with a grand pot of Will’s recipe, garnished with a raison bannock. Having returned from the site wet and cold, we enjoyed it greatly.
On shore we continued with the western fringe squares, and Will began to open up 14N 22W, between the entries of S4 and S5, but a chance discovery resulted in re-directing our last few days on site. Worried about the absence of 16th century Basque settlement on land other than the transient ‘campsites’ north of the cookhouse, 1 decided to hunt around for other possible occupation areas in the untested areas of the site. On the west side of the huge boulder, between it and the terrace front, is a level area of some 60-70 square meters. 1 dropped a 40x40cm test pit three meters west of the boulder and immediately encountered slabs, tiles, and charcoal, and soon turned up a Bellamine bottle fragment with a fioral medallion, a clay pipestem, a nail, and four pieces of worked soapstone — all in a black earth layer 10- 12cm thick, resting on sterile beach sands. As a birthday present 1 turned this square over to Will, who had barely started before he found the rim of a Normandy stoneware vessel. At this point I decided to terminate our remaining work in the western squares and shift our last few days to exploring this newly- found area, hoping we would have a structure and not just a midden associated with the S4 dwelling. The Bellamine sherd in the most significant single sherd we have found in ten years of work at Hare Harbor,
Fig. 1.26: 1 4N 26W pavement. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
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and the soapstone suggests a continuance of traditional Inuit soapstone production, perhaps with pAiropean tools long after large amounts of European vessels and technology have become available. Erik took Will’s G1 1 Canon camera in its submersible case down and got some excellent still photos of the dig, its strata, a lobster and other marine life — much better than the murky images he has been able to get with the remote video camera.
The rain and wind continued for the rest of the day and night, fortunately without much wind. We spent the afternoon reading, writing notes, and preparing Will’s birthday dinner, engineered primarily by Lauren, Serai, and Janine, with Vincent serving as chef-d-oeuvre. His manual participation was one-handed, however, as he had a serious accident after returning from his morning dive. While struggling to close the jammed cabin hatch he got his left thumb smashed tiying to close the after hatch, pulling the nail out by the root. By the time we returned for lunch he was stabilized and drugged with Motrin, and smilingly apologized to me for the ’inconvenience’ as at the time we thought we would have to return to Harrington immediately to have the nail removed. Fortunately, his pain receded and I was able to reach Nurse Yvette who assured us he could be treated on board as long as he kept it clean and dry and changed the dressing. For a while it looked like I would have to take his place as Erik’s dive partner, but by evening Vincent was talking about diving. Will’s dinner was a great success, with a fabulous pizza, the last of our salad fixings, and a decorated chocolate cake prepared by Lauren and Serai, with note of the lessons Lauren learned about our finicky oven with her ‘Will’s cake’ of 2010. After dinner Will led a long conversation about our society’s loss of ‘a sense of place’, talk that wandered across the earth with topics ranging from drugs to education to our over-reliance on technology, to the last Friday’s loss of the US’s AAA bond rating and the localizing ‘friction of distance” as the cost of travel increases. All this seems to have inspired Lauren to wake in a panic in the middle of the night crying “1 can’t get out! 1 can’t get OUT,” which elicited a massive response from her cabin mates, me, and even Erik, who got caught up in the fracas while returning from the head. “You’re fine, Lauren! You’re fine. You’re on a boat!” She had dreamt she was excavating between two rocks and fell in and couldn’t get out. The general malaise was also fueled by swarms of mosquitoes that had somehow got in and were tormenting us. So all in all, we had a very memorable the 1 1 August “Wills-day.”
12 August — Friday (Hare Harbor) For a change the wind was down and no rain even though the wind was from the same SE direction and it was overcast and chilly. The sun tried to show a few times during the day but never really succeeded. After bailing out a couple of inches of rainwater from the zodiac we went ashore and found the charcoal pit square in the ‘far west’ completely filled with water from the cascades off the cliff’s drip- line. 1 bailed while the others turned to on three squares outside the S4 enti7 6N, 8N, and ION 20 W. Justine — a former art and art history student — accepted my invitation to map the rocks on a master map and spent the entire day lugging from square-to-square the 2x2m grid template we made last year to control Will’s wide-angle record shots of each square. This
Fig. ! .28: Marine life in the underwater site. Photo by Erik Phaniief
2x2m frame is strung with line in 50cm blocks, making it easy to draw rocks without measuring then. She did a great job and finished 24 units of the 37 we have opened in the last two weeks and will finish the rest tomorrow.
The rest of the team opened the new squares south of the S4 entrance passage. In 2009 when we discovered S4, Will excavated a test pit just outside the entrance passage and found quite a bit of material, but last year, with only Will, Lauren, and me digging, we did not have time to explore whether a real midden existed, as is almost always the case with and Inuit winter house. So now we laid out three 2x2 units south of Will’s 2009 square; 6N 20W (Lauren and Janine), 8N 20W (Will), and ION 20W (Serai).
All turned out to have a high concentration of artifacts — 30 to 50 per square — balanced about 50/50 in terms of nails/other types, so that we have been recovering more materials that can actually be analyzed. All squares produced numbers of sherds of stoneware, both the thin ware with grey color Inside and out as well as the generally thicker grey/brown variety that we found on the floor of S4. Other important finds included a marmite vessel strap handle and a sherd with the traditional cross-hatched decorative band found on some mamiite vessels, several varieties of plain earthenware (none glazed), green bottle glass, a chunk of European flint, a clay pipe bowl with rosette rim decoration, a sheet of lead that had
been fashioned into a tool handle, a small rectangular cross- sectioned whetstone like those found in other Inuit sites at HH-1, a blue seed bead, and a white and red-striped black bead. Most of these artifact types were also found inside S4, so now we have a solid link between the midden and the house itself
The divers also had a productive day and returned with a huge barrel stave, more boat parts, lots of fish bone from a distinct strata that we also saw in some of the other sites. They did some strata drawings and reset the baseline. Vincent’s square was full of ballast rocks that we had to remove, and between them he often found caches of material.
While the divers were down this morning I heard Perry talking from the speedboat, after he had shut down the dredge pumps. The overhang of the shelter is a perfect sound-bouncer and we can converse from the site to the harbor-side by speaking in the direction of the shelter. Turns out Perry was talking to a large gannet that had swam up near the boat, and he was trying to lure it closer with a piece of Purity hardbread. Eventually the bird tried the biscuit, but rejected it, and then came even closer, trying out a dried capelin, but he didn’t like that either. He got so close he gave Peny’s hand a bit of a nip and showed no fear at all. But just when the divers broke the surface, he immediately split. Pen^ had never heard of gannets being this tame, yet this one seemed comfortable around people and boats. Perhaps he has been accustomed to being fed. Another maritime oddity occurred while the divers were getting ready to enter the water and saw a large splash. Not being able to determine what made the splash, they thought it prudent to wait awhile. Whatever it was — probably a seal — did not return.
Supper was by Erik: corn chips and home-doctored salsa, and a fortified scrambled egg dish with a Portuguese name. Erik had lived in the Azores for a couple years, and was once married to an Azorean woman. According to an old stoi7, an Azorean farmer (a “lavrador”) was the first to spy Labrador while on watch from the crow’s nest of a ship. By evening the weather was still tiding to clear, but at least the wind was down, so perhaps we can have a good day for profiling, photography, and continued work at the prolific midden. We had two speedboats enter the harbor early in the afternoon. They stopped near the site and I waved and invited them up; hearing them speaking French, I guessed they were Providence 1 larbor people and might be looking to see if Vincent was here, as they had met him two years ago. But instead of coming up or visiting the Pits, they turned and left, just like another boat from Providence did
Fig. 1.29: S-4 midden view to the north. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
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a week or so ago. It seems strange because we have had interesting sessions with people from there over several years. Later we learned that the Providence folks have been meeting tourists off the Nordik in Harrington and bringing them to Tête â la Baleine and Providence, stopping at our site on the way to show off the strange attraction.
13 August — Saturday (Hare Harbor) This
morning was the first really nice “summer” day we’ve had for two weeks. There was a regular stream of people through the head before 5;30, so we were up before 6. The crew said it was because of the beans we had for lunch and dinner, but I think it was the sun beaming down on the harbor for the first time in days. We spent the morning finishing up the midden squares, and 1 tidied up the S5 entry and passage, which required moving some really large threshold rocks to get at the passage below, which turns out to have a very nicely-constructed pavement that can be traced from the threshold step south for 1.5m. The entrance tunnel wall for this house is not as well-made as S4. It cuts through a deep midden of charcoal and rocks and does not have rock-lined walls. Possibly this was the first part of the house that was constructed, and it may have been abandoned before much effort was put into finishing it. Not only are the walls and cold trap not finished, but the interior floor was only paved with cobbles and vei7 few artifacts were found associated with its floor. Will’s and my excavation of the enti^ did not produce any artifacts directly associated with the enti7 floor, whereas in S4 this was the most productive part of the house. 1 think S5 may have been under construction or only used only briefly before the Inuit discovered that it was directly under a heavy drip-line stream, and decided to abandon it and build S4.
While this work was going on Janine and Lauren cleaned up the profiles to prepare them for profiling, which we began after lunch. Justine profiled the 26W line, and 1 got Janine and Lauren started on the 16N line through the middle of the site. An hour later, 1 found they were still working on the first meter of a 10m profile, mostly due to discussions about what was ‘black earth,’ ‘brown soil,’, ‘black sandy soil’ and other nuances of tone and texture. After getting them to back off and look at the larger picture and the dominant layers, they made good progress and completed the profile. Later in the afternoon Will shot controlled verticals of each square, with assists by Justine as a counterbalance for the heavy camera and tripod on his shoulder, and 1 moving the 2m grid frame from square to square. Serai is the last to abandon digging, and she opened a half square at the north end of 4N20W. I would love to have more time to finish this midden area instead of the days we spent trying to figure out what was happening at the west end of the site, but it’s too late now. 1 1er square has just begun and produced a beautiful oval blue bead and an iron ring-screw.
After the divers completed their afternoon dive they took off with Pen7 in the speedboat to find fish or bakeapples, up the east shore of Petit Mécatina past Daniel’s Harbor to a spot Perry had picked in other years. They returned a couple hours later with three small buckets — not a bad haul for a year with only a so-so showing. Erik baked a bakeapple cake for dinner, and while it did not bake ‘dt7’, it was excellent and appreciated. The main course was shaghetti with moose meat sauce I'rom Perry’s stash. We’re reaching the bottom of our larder now while still two days out from returning to Harrington. There’s lots of talk of having to deal with beans from Will’s unending supply, some several years old! As we were returning for lunch a boat appeared and came alongside. It was Lawrence Anderson and his wife and daughter from Harrington. His father had the sealing operation on the south side of Hare Harbor entrance, now rotted away. He had been at our presentations in Harrington several years ago. 1 asked him if he had heard of a dog-team going over the clilT at the site years ago, almost carrying the driver over, but he had not. He said some Tête a la Baleine people had picked up some tourists in Harrington yesterday
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and brought them back here. Perhaps that explains why Perry saw two people on top of the cliff above the site this afternoon and the boats that did not want to come ashore yesterday — folks just sight-seeing and hiking around. Lawrence had a batch of mackerel his family caught out beyond off the point.
14 August — Sunday (Hare Harbor)
This was the last day at the site. The day was one of those ‘smoky sou’westers’ with a good breeze, but murky. Since we plan to leave tomorrow for Harrington, in order to clean up and be sure we could get the Quebec team to their noon flight, we had to finish by evening, so there was a lot to do. Lauren and Janine started by cleaning up the squares, then took elevation readings on the ground surfaces at Im intervals, and drew the long 20N profile. Justine profiled the 20W wall and 16N, the profile that crosses the S5 entry threshold. Serai finished her 4N 20 W ‘half-square,’ finding more glass beads, orange-glazed earthenware with ridges and grooves under the rim, and marmite earthenware with much finer (small-mesh) cross- hatched decorated bands. Her square also produced a chert biface edge and some flakes, probably of Groswater (Dorset) Paleoeskimo. We’re very aware that there are more productive midden squares here west of the big rock and along the terrace front, but everything has an end and more excavation does not seem warranted. By noon we had removed the balks on the ‘floor’ of S5, finding nothing of importance.
I excavated the pedestailed rocks and tiles Will had left inside the threshold rock north of 16N at 22 W. There was about I 5cms of charcoal between this upper ‘fioor’ and the cobble pavement that appears to form the working floor for about 1 .5m circumstances north of the enti^. This charcoal deposit does not exist north of the 26N line, where only black earth occurred, in which Lauren found a couple seed beads and glazed ceramic fragments. We also turned over the large slab in the SE corner of 18N 26W, thinking this might be the missing hearth slab; however it turned out to be a large wedge-shaped rock, not a slab, and had no hearth stain. Rather than a hearth slab, it was probably part of the corner wall construction.
In fact, we have found no evidence of a hearth in this structure, no clearly-defined west and north walls, no slab construction on the working floor, no external midden, and no cultural deposit or artifacts on the entry fioor — all support the view that S5 was never completed or occupied. Construction appears to have begun in an area of the site that had previously been used for charcoal production, leaving huge deposits which were easy to excavate into. Strangely, very few artifacts except nails and tiles became incorporated in this charcoal event. We have not been able to determine the originator of the charcoal production phase, if different from the late 16th C Basque or Inuit. Justine found stoneware shed on the top of the rocks, below the moss in 3ÜW area of the rock pile, possibly equating this even with the Inuit and cook-house components. It is hard to see how this huge event that so altered the landscape in the west end of the site could have been produced without leaving identifiable cultural markers. For this reason I tend to feel that it is probably associated with the ‘Basque’ component, as represented by the SI cookhouse fioor. This same time period seems to see the appearance of Inuit, whose soapstone vessels and lamp stains are found on the SI cookhouse fioor and in S4 and on the bank north of S5. This period would also equate with the codfish horizon in the undei'W'ater deposits and the lead jiggers found in S4. Since the Inuit S4, 5 houses use the charcoal deposits for their foundations these structures probably just post-date the charcoal operation.
Fig. 1.32; Beads found in S4 midden, 4N 20W. Photo hy Wilfred Richard.
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The prominence of the charcoal event on land and the wood-chip horizon underwater suggest that these two manifestations are related. We have had many discussions about both, and what they signify. The charcoal is found in greatest concentration near the front (south) walls of S4 and S5 and tends to lens out in profiles north to 22N, where it disappears into the bank. Tiles, large nails, and spikes are associated with it, with tiles most common at the base of the charcoal or on sterile sand. It is thickest in the south walls of S4, and S5 and among the rocks in the rock- pile. The charcoal itself is of mixed formats, consisting of every size from particles to large ‘junks’ with ring sizes indicating timber up to 40-50cm diameter. However, the most common intact pieces are from wood that is 2-3cms in diameter or smaller. Usually the square profiles that have large charcoal strata do not contain humus levels, sand lenses, or other indicators of chronology; these deposits seem to have been laid down quickly; even tiles and nails or spikes are mostly found near the bottom of the charcoal layer, on or near sterile ground.
One possible clue to the function of the charcoal is the absence of open-air blubber try-works that are the signature features of 16th century Basque sites in southern Labrador and the “Grande Bay” region. Rendering oil from blubber at open linear strings of conical open-centered hearths was typical of 16th century Basque whaling. However this method was replaced by shipboard rendering in the early 1600s. Since oil and wood were too dangerous to use onboard ship, charcoal may have been an acceptable substitute, and if so, this could explain the large charcoal-production activity seen at Hare Harbor.
The underwater wood chips are found in a distinct stratigraphic level, often following a basal layer of peat and tiles. Whalebones are also found in these early layers. Above the wood horizon is the codfish layer, with a clear stratigraphic separation between the two. Many of the wood chips are angled slash- cuts that retain the round exterior surface and have been separated from the timber by axes with a single¬ shouldered edge. Some long pieces running with the grain have the slash-cut pieces still attached. The prevalence of this type of debitage — rather than trapezoidal chips produced when chopping down trees — indicates that producing square timbers was the dominant wood-working operation at HH-1. Virtually no plank or finished wood production has been found in the underwater deposits, although several pieces of boat parts are evidence of minor on-site boat repair or alteration, 'fhe wood chips are predominantly coniferous. Barrel hoops are mostly of red alder, and some have been found with their ends bound with bark wrappings tightened with small wood wedges. Although barrel, tub, and pail staves are common — both as fragments and whole staves — none of the wood debitage relates to barrel production. Finds at Red Bay indicated this work was done in Europe, followed by assembly of prefabricated barrel bundles upon reaching the field destination. Rolls of birch bark are also found among the wood deposits. We assume that the preservation of masses of wood debitage results from production on shore and initial deposition over the terrace front at the site. The bank is very wet and the chips would have become waterlogged, allowing it to sink after eroding into the sea. Green wood or diy chip debitage would have floated away and not entered the deposit.
The question of what the debitage represents is a more complicated stoi7. Barrel hoops and the occasional boat or tub bottom can easily be explained, but they represent less than 1 % of the sample. The dominance of timber-squaring debitage suggests the production of bulk timer was important part of the HHl economy during the site’s early underwater phase. Timber was a valuable commodity in Europe. We have considered whether the wood horizon might represent the building of small boats like chaloops, but in that case we would expect more planking and ribs in the deposits. Construction of larger vessels would not have been feasible at a small seaward site like HH 1 . The massive charcoal operation indicated on shore and thick wood debitage underwater raises the question why the debitage accumulated and
Fig. 1.33: Wood stratification in undenvater site. Photo by Erik Phanuef.
was not used for charcoal production. Our best explanation is that these two operations may have taken place at different times. Charcoal production requires a hot fire, with large amounts of wood fuel (mostly commonly branches and small limbs and trigs, followed by smothering the fire with soil and having the wood converted to charcoal without enough oxygen for continued combustion. Usually commercial production of charcoal in Europe was done by coppicing or pruning the smaller branches of trees, allowing them to re-grow for future harvesting while converting the small stuff in charcoal furnaces or fires whose air supply could be controlled. At HHl this might have been most easily done by smothering a pre-heated fire by covering it with earth and tarps. The association of large rocks and charcoal suggests that charcoal production here may have been enhanced by pre-heating these rocks before adding the charcoal fuel. We noted that most of these rocks have spalled surfaces, and many are fire-cracked. In areas where we had thick charcoal deposits we also found fire-cracked granite chunks. Alternatively, the site’s charcoal may have been produced in the ‘charcoal pit’ at the west end of the site. We were not able to complete the investigation of this feature due to time constraints at the end of the season. In the end, it does not seem possible to positively link the wood chips and charcoal to a single even or period, but it seems likely the two are associated in some way — perhaps using the wood debitage resulting from tree harvesting and timber-squaring as fuel for charcoal production. Stratigraphically this has to occur before the Inuit occupation and before the cod-fishing phase, which correlated well with the site’s Inuit occupation.
Our final afternoon was a frantic exercise in site closure. It was not until about 4pm that we completed all profiles, record-keeping, and site photography and were able to begin the daunting task of back-filling. At 5:30 we were joined by Erik, Vincent, and Periy, who added great momentum and spirit to this operation. Fortunately there was a cool breeze from the west or it would have been miserable. We did not finish until 7:30, when the fog turned to a drizzle. By this time we had exhausted our dirt and sod, packed up our stuff and got back aboard the Pits, muddy, muddy, muddy (“dirty, dirty archaeologists,” Perry kept muttering, as mucky buckets and shovels — looked like a French WWl battle trench. In the end the site looked credible with the S5 Inuit entry way uncovered and everything else sodded except for the central part of the S5 interior, which we had to leave to re-sod itself as we had totally expended our sod budget. Back aboard, we hoisted our inflatable up and packed it with gear while Erik pulled the final remnants of our food locker into a memorable dinner of rice and peas, potatoes and onion aux gratin, with canned pears for desert. We drank our last two bottles of wine and toasted ourselves for successfully completing a ten-year “Gateways” project. By 10pm I was too exhausted to journalize and as soon as traffic through my “bedroom” stopped I bedded down and fell asleep, only to wake several times to some infernal knocking as we gently swung on our anchor. Barefoot and underclad, I tried several times to discover its source, but each time 1 got out into the rain and mosquitoes, the noise would stop, leaving me to wait minutes, swatting away, only to have it cease. Inuit or Basque gremlins at work to the end!
15 August — Monday (Hare Harbor to Harrington) After a not-too-restful night turning on my creaky bones, sun filtered in through the pilothouse windows through a wispy fog at 6am and I felt compelled to make a final pilgrimage to the site to take pictures of the back-filled excavation and see if we had left — in our hasty retreat — any gear lying around. Will came along and we made a round of pictures while the peregrines wheeled and squawked above. Will thinks there may be two sets of parents and young up there, one above our site and another on the clifls to the east. We collected the square photo-grid left behind last night but found no other errant gear. The site looks fine all re-sodded except for the S5 interior, but in the low early morning light all our foot-prints were like deep pock-marks in the black earth. After retrieving our off-haul anchor we motored out to the small cove northeast of the harbor entrance where I photographed the possible Inuit grave I found a couple days ago. Too bad we don’t have time to excavate it and see if there are any bones or objects there, or whether it is a cache or some other type of feature.
It does seem like a good location for an Inuit grave, but if it is, it lacks the covering rocks usually found on top. The folks were all up and rowdy by the time we returned. They were ‘full of beans’ — no way of ending bean jokes, it seems, especially after everyone was complaining about the results of the day we had had beans for lunch and dinner. In my absence as ‘waker-upper’ and breakfast cook, Erik had usurped my role and made oatmeal. Everyone was still dirty and anxious to get to Harrington and hot water. We pulled anchor and made our final passage to Harrington, with a good bit of rolling about in some residual SW swells left over from the breeze the past two days. In town I found the fish plant open for showers and hot water for laundry, while the girls headed off to Wilson’s with huge sacks of clothes. Perry filled the ship’s water tanks (and the companion-way!) with ‘fish plant’ water, and we put 800 liters offish
plant diesel fuel in our tanks (ca. $1.40/liter as opposed to .90-something in Nfld!). Will did our grocery-shopping, and in the afternoon I made a round of social calls to say thanks and goodbye to some of our friends, including Helen, Miles, and young Jake Evans, Amy Evans (sharp as a tack, still ‘whipper-snapping’ her neat flower garden and baking great ‘crumpets’), and Sharon and Jim Ransom, who informed me that Dr. Hare, who ran the Harrington health service during the Grenfell years from 1908- 1912, had an earlier association with Handngton going back into the 1890s if not earlier, through a family connection. As the town’s unofficial ‘historians,’ I urged them to get to work on their historical memoirs, reminding them of how little is written about Harrington and the LNS in general. We ended the evening at Wilson’s, where we contributed food which ‘our ladies’ prepared into another excellent spaghetti dinner (“No more spaghetti after this!” said Perry), enlivened by the appearance of Helen, Miles, and Jake, who took a shine to Lauren’s iPad while the rest of us talked about wood chips, wooding, and pored over Wilson’s detailed maps of Petit Mécatina and the Mécatina River, where he gets his wood and spends much time exploring. We left with lots of lingering goodbyes and sad feelings about not having — for once in ten years — a definite plan to return. We were all sorry that Christine could not be with us, since she was the elegant hostess and ‘house-mother’ for our tired, hungry, and dirty crews all these years, while Wilson first identified our underwater site, led us to begin scientific diving, provided information about sites and resources, and provided equipment that helped us conduct our work and investigate the Harrington area. Back aboard, it was foggy but calm and stayed that way for the rest of the night. Hard to believe we have to leave this wonderful community. Not for good, though, as I hope to return to present the final results of our work in a year or two. Perhaps by then they will have managed to use the infomiation and finds we have made.
16 August — Tuesday (Harrington Harbor to Cumberland Harbor) fhe fog and rain continued throughout the night but let up during the morning, making it more or less assured that the Quebecers would be able to fly out of Chevery in early afternoon. We rose and 7am to one of Will’s signature sour cream pancake feeds, but when most of the crew departed abruptly to see the museum, and I to pay my food and fuel bills. Will was left with a big stack of pancakes which we munched on the rest of the day and re-heated for our breakfast in Cumberland Harbor a day later. The fuel bill was a shocking $1 1 58 at $1.40 per liter, and our CMR food and gas bill came to $1600 — not too bad actually for nine people for 16 days. When 1 paid our fuel bill I asked Madeline to thank all of our friends in management there for
the wonderful support they provided us over the years. This year they were a bit apologetic about having to close their fish sales program early, depriving us of many excellent meals, because their fish quotas have been down for the past couple of years, causing them to close down the fishing before we even arrived. 1 had nice goodbyes with Paul Rowsell and his CMR store team, and by 10:30 we had the Quebec group’s luggage on Bryce’s water-taxi and ready for
Fig. 1.35: Final goodbye at the Evans' house. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
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the run to Chevery. This time it was the Quebec team that untied our lines and waved farewell as we pulled away from the dock. We all had a great time together this summer and accomplished much more than I had thought possible, both on land and underwater. Erik and Vincent made a great underwater team and kept the “boat fires” burning preparing almost all our lunch and dinner meals. Of course their work underwater was superb and they even came up with some spectacular end-game ceramic vessel finds. Serai and Justine were excellent excavators, and Justine’s artistic training proved invaluable when it came to crunch-time with profiles and mapping. The participation of all four was made possible by financial support from Brad Loewen at University of Montreal; he provided equipment and paid travel costs and salaries without which we would never
It was a bit rough around Petit Mécatina but grew calm around Mutton Bay although it remained foggy almost until we reached Cumberland Harbor, taking the Grand Passe (Rigolet) and Sandy Island Passage in to the north end of C.H. We anchored at our usual spot and called Nick Shattler, leaving a message on his phone telling him to meet us in the morning. Will and 1 decided to break open the salt beef bucket we’d bought in Springdale and experiment making a Pitsiulak version of a “New England boiled dinner” with turnips, carrots, potatoes, and onions. Despite being tough enough to compete with Mongolia’s free- range sheep, it was tasty and edible, especially the vegetables! For the first time in three weeks we had water instead of wine with dinner — our stock had finally become depleted! The boat seemed strangely quiet this whole day. It will take a bit of adjustment to re-group into our pre-pandemonium social order.
17 August — Wednesday (Cumberland Harbor to Blanc Sablon) We were up by 7am to be ready for Nick Shattler, who was to come out from St. Augustine and show us some sites he found since our visit with him last year. When he did not arrive by 9am I called and found he never received my telephone message last evening. Nevertheless, by 10am he roared up, and we left for Jacques Cartier Bay with his light fiberglass speedboat in tow and anchored on the east side of the bay, northwest of Canso (pronounced ‘Gansa’ locally) Island, the place where I found a site with boulder caches and Inuit-style
stone fox traps several years ago. Stone traps are a tell-tale sign of prehistoric Thule (Inuit) culture activity and were used until Inuit were able to obtain steel traps from fur-traders in the 19th centuiy. The first site we visited was a small cove with a waterfall on the mainland shore a short distance southeast of the entrance to Canco Island fickle. The ledges surrounding the cove were full of pitcher plants, and bottle¬ brush (Canadian Burnet) plants had colonized some of the beach area, but most of the upper boulder terrace beaches were free of vegetation. Here, in the northern part of the beach, was a 3-4m diameter open pit which could have been a large cache or possibly a small shelter. Nearby were a conical cache pit and an undisturbed oval mound that could be an Inuit grave, although we could not tell if it had an open burial chamber inside. Across a small stream which gurgled
Fig. 1.37: Nick Shattler meets the crew outside St. Augustine. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Fig. 1.36: Our Montreal Team says goodbye at Harrington ready to fly back home. Photo by William Fitzhiigh.
have finished the site work this year.
Z5
below us through the boulders were three stone fox traps and some other caches.
Most of the traps had been partially dismantled to retrieve a captured animal.
We photographed them and designated the site Canco Island Tickle 1 and went on to a second location on Canco Island.
This turned out to be the very site we had found previously, called Canco Island 2. In addition to its cache pits and we noticed a large straight-sided pit about 3.5x4.0m in diameter at the west end of the site area that has a sunken floor in its NW sides; this may also be a small dwelling or shelter. This site almost duplicates the features of Canco Island Tickle 1. It was therefore not unexpected — although it was at the same time a great surprise — when Nick showed us a third location, this time on a small
island semi-attached to the northwest end of Canco Island, connected to it by a bar that disappears at high tide. Here in the middle of a sandy strip between a sand beach on the north side and the rocky south shore were three Inuit sod winter houses, rectangular in shape, with 4-6 meter long entrance tunnels, stone lintel entries, paved floors and entryways, and raised sleeping benches in the rear. You did not even have to excavate to know this was a small Inuit community dating to the early historical period. The shape of the houses indicated they should date to the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. The lack of enhanced vegetation growth suggested the site did not have deep organic middens. We mapped and excavated seven 50x50crn test pits outside the entrance passage where middens generally occur and found a thin cultural deposit indicated by 5-lOcms of dark sandy soil with charcoal, Basque tiles, a few seal bones, and small pieces of iron, mostly nails. The absence of other European items is probably an indicator of a relatively early contact period date, before regular trading relationships had been established. Nick was ecstatic with our confirmation that this was an Inuit village — the first so far found in the St. Augustine area. The site would be relatively easy to excavate and its architecture and pavements would make an excellent reconstruction. We left after an hour’s investigation, and Nick headed off to St. Augustine to call Chris Montague, the head of the Metis/Inuit Association with news of more evidence of Inuit in the Gulf, this time for the first time in St. Augustine, which has a well-documented Inuit immigration in the 18/1 9th
century but until now no confirmed early historical period occupation.
The weather was still good, with a light breeze from the north, off the land, so we decided to head for Blanc Sablon where we could spend the night, visit with the Harts, and prepare for a morning passage across the Strait. The trip took us outside the Old Fort islands where we had heard earlier in the year about an underwater wreck from Dwight Bilodeau. We had considered investigating the wreck but had to abandon the idea after communications broke down.
1 had also hoped to stop here and survey for an Inuit winter village among the islands, but as in previous years we had to forego this in favor of gaining a good day for crossing the Strait of Belle Isle. Next year our work may focus between here and Brador, allowing for time for such a
Fig. 1.38: Three Inuit house structures on Little Canso Island-1 . Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Fig. 1.39: Nick Shattler in cache pit at Canso Island Tickle. Photo by William Fitzhiigh.
survey. About 10 miles west of BS we passed one of the huge tabular ice bergs that had broken off the Petermann glacier and worked its way into the Gulf, probably the same one that was attracting tourist attention east of BS when we passed in late July. This time we saw no whales at all.
We arrived at Blanc Sablon at 7:30 and found a spot on the end of the pier, where we usually have to dock because all the protected berths are taken by large fishing vessels. 1 called Florence Hart and arranged to visit her and Clifford after dinner, which we took at Pizza Delight. Getting there by taxi turned out to be an expensive affair, $7 for a fare for one person and $5 for each additional person, totaling $35. At this point getting to the Harts and back to the boat would be another $85, but we had passed missed seeing them last summer and really wanted to see them as Clifford’s health has been tenuous as a result of two strokes and growing dementia. 1 wanted especially to talk to them about working at the Inuit winter village at their Brador River chalet site next summer, and they seem fine with that. I think we might even interest Florence in taking part in the digging. If we are lucky we may be able to begin an underwater survey in the nearby channels and bays as well. Florence served us a small lunch with some of her fruit ‘squares’ (pastries) and I ‘chatted’ with Clifford, who has responsive moments and reacts with some of the old spark. He still enjoys hearing his favorite musical tunes but most of the time sits in his chair watching the television, occasionally coming out with ejaculations over something on the air. Florence is clearly fatigued with being his constant care-giver, especially becau.se of his inability to walk, use a wheel-chair or a walker. She has only a few hours each week when someone comes in to sit with Clifford while she shops or does errands. The time may have to come soon that he needs the care of a nursing home. Our taxi driver came to pick us up after an hour and delivered us to the boat. He reported no special news or developments in Blanc Sablon other than the continued departure of young people for other regions of Canada. However, the Quebec Government’s new “Plan Nord” anticipates the completion of Route 138 along the Lower North Shore, and that may bring some needed financial benefits and employment from mining and hydro projects.
18 August — Thursday (Blanc Sablon to Cook Harbor) Up at 4am to find a light north wind blowing off the land — a good sign for crossing the Strait; however, the forecast was for strong southwest wind later in the day, as much as 50km, about 30 Knots. Nevertheless we should be across and beyond Cape Norman by noon. The small- boat fishermen were all going out — another good sign. All this rationale proved wrong.
For the first hour everything went smoothly, but by 7am the land breeze had turned to southwest and was building quickly. This was okay for a while, until the speedboat started cutting around, so we brought her up close to the port quarter where she would ride the big humped wave from the ship’s propeller. This adds a big strain to the tow rope and slows the Pits speed half a knot or so, but it keeps the speedboat steady and make a constant pull rather than the sudden jerks that result from her shooting down the fronts of the following seas, then veering off with a slack towline until she comes up short
I' ig. 1.40: Visiting with Clifford and Florence Han. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
and a huge jerk. Ali seemed fine until we had reached the Newfoundland side of the Strait and began the four-hour run to Cape Norman, where we would turn east and have some shelter from the land. Alt fine in theory, but our plans were suddenly interrupted by a loud crack. The tow line had parted about a foot from the speedboat and she was drifting to the wind. We brought the Pits around and approached, with a plan for me to jump aboard and attach a new line, but once alongside we realized the sea was much too rough. Plan B was to throw an anchor into her bow, hoping it would hook under the cutty and serve as a towline. Perry made several passes while I threw our small danforth anchor into the bow, but each time the hooks failed to grab or pulled out as soon as we put a strain on the line. Next we tried the big 80 pound grapnel (grapple) anchor. But when we got it rigged we realized we could not throw it far enough. Finally, we managed to get the danforth into the bow again and when she slipped out the hooks were tangled with the speedboat painter, a weathered old one-inch line tied to an eye-bolt in the stem. As Will and ! hauled the anchor in the green painter was slipping through the hooks. It seemed like we would lose this line, but at the last minute Wilt was able to grab it and we secured it to our starboard stern cleat. This was the crucial break, but it was not enough, as this line was old and would surety wear through and break when we brought the Pits up to a safe speed. All this time the wind and waves were building and huge whitecaps were rolling past, and Perry had to keep the Pits from falling off broadside to the waves so we could have a stable platform for working. What to do next? The second break came when Perry remembered we had a light grapnel stowed in with our luggage. Retrieving it, we rigged it with a half-inch line and after several failed attempts managed to get it lodged with its hooks under the cutty and found it was secure as long as there was no slack in the line. We secured this line to the port cleat, forming a towing “V” that divided he strain and kept the boat in place with a steady pull on both lines. For the first time it seemed we might have a chance of saving the boat — if the lines would hold and not chaffe through and the anchor remained hooked, for despite the “V” the boat was still being thrust about by the large waves, some of which towered a couple meters above the stern as they roared by, sometimes sporting huge two-foot high whitecaps twenty or thirty feet across. For three more hours 1 had to sit holding the grapnel line in my hand, taking up any slack that developed, with my heart in my throat every couple of minutes when she veered off and the anchor slid sideways along the speedboat gunwale, threatening to un-hook. The other uncontrollable problem was the constant threat of abrasion, since the grapnel line was constantly rubbing back and forth on the gunwale and its metal anchor shank was rubbing on the painter line. How long they would hold was an open question, especially as we had three more hours of this downwind chaos before reaching Cape Nomian. At one point I gr'ew very thirsty and Will brought water and chocolate, and spelled me on tending the towline. Perry meanwhile had to drive the ship by liand to keep her on a steady course, without wandering about as tends to happen in sailing downwind in heavy seas. By this time the wind was blowing 30-35 knots and the seas were 3-4 meters high. After what seemed like an endless time, the Cape Norman lighthouse slipped by and we rounded the cape and began the approach to Cooks Harbor. Perry came aft with a big smile on this face and we realized we were through the worst of it and had managed to avoid losing our trusty boat and motor. Just last week, Wilson Evans had commented on how we had managed to avoid losing her all these years, because towing a heavy boat some twenty feet long is tricky business and requires constant attention and a lot of luck.
Although we were out of the heaviest seas, the entry to Cook Harbor was not without difficulty. While I was tending the line. Will came back saying Perry needed me in the pilothouse urgently. Turns out the GPS chart had us steaming into shoals and soon showed as on land hundreds of meters from where we thought we were. We could see the channel buoys and the course we should take, but the small scale chart Perry had put on-screen was hopelessly wrong — a rare but not unheard-of situation. Shifting to larger scale map put us in the proper position. After a few minutes we were in the harbor and tied up, heaving huge sighs of relief that a dangerous and costly loss had been avoided. Throughout the first half of the escapade Î was convinced we’d lose the boat, and was prepared for it — she’s fifteen years old and the motor about ten — we’d recover. But it would be a hard to avoid a sense of failure. In hindsight this matter could have been avoided by taking the weather forecast more seriously and better seamanship in maintaining the quality of our tow-line, which 1 had let deteriorate, planning to replace it next year.
On inspection Î found it had broken at a knot f had tied to isolate a frayed section of the line, and 1 also found the thimble nearly rusted through and the line frayed at that point also. 1 immediately replaced the thimble, retired the line and replaced it with a new one.
For the rest of the afternoon the wind buffeted the Pits against the pier, but the fetch inside the harbor was short and the waves small. Lots of large fishing boats were also in, tied up and waiting for the wind
to drop before going out. We spent the time snoozing and tidying up, and the girls went off and came back with snacks they could not live without. Dinner was a joint effort prepared by Will and me, roasting chicken and vegetables in a one-pot meal. Quite tasty, and consumed to the last carrot slice. Lauren had been able to get email while we were in the middle of the Strait today, and one of the messages was a note from Justine with news of their eventful return. As often happens, the Air Labrador flight got delayed and Serai, Vincent, and Justine missed their connection to Montreal in Sept Isles. (Erik could drive home to Baie Comeau from there so he was not inconvenienced.) They were able to re-book, but the new tickets were going to cost $800. Vincent decided to re-book but Justine and Serai could not and had to spend the night in a youth hostel and take a 12-hour bus ride to Montreal the next day. Evening found us in bed soon after 9pm, exhausted, and the wind still pummeling us. However we expected it to abate by morning.
19 August — Friday (Cook Harbor to Quirpon) According to prediction, the wind dropped by morning, and some of the fishing boats had departed. We were not in a rush and were happy to let the seas abate a bit more before leaving for Quirpon, so Will made some of his sour cream pancakes. We got away about 10am and found a heavy swell rolling in from the northeast, where another big storm had been raging. Huge rollers were cresting up and breaking on the shoals near the Cook Harbor entry. It looks like great California surfing stuff without the surfers. Once at the pier in Quirpon we were protected from the surge and happy to find Boyce Roberts’ car parked on the pier waiting for us. We were not able to track him down until later in the day, and went off to see the L’Anse aux Meadows site and have a meal at Gina’s and Adrian’s Norseman Restaurant. They were both fine — Gina a rotund with a second child (boy) due on October. They were able to seat us despite the arrival of a large bus tour group of older folks from St. John’s. While eating we were able to catch up, and bought a few things in the shop, where one of Gilbert Haye’s Labradorite seal carvings was selling for $995. A visit to the renovated LAM interpretation Center was a bit disappointing, considering the amount of money and effort that went into it over the past couple of years. They have added new material on the aboriginal groups, but do not include any artifacts demonstrating the site’s native history and do not even display (or even mention?) the Dorset soapstone lamp found in the smithy. New work on the Jasper is not included, and the story of the site is very limited, with the key artifacts displayed almost haphazardly rather than being high-lighted.
What takes prominence are stories about flint¬ knapping, iron-making, and wood-working, but these are treated more as technologies rather than how they reveal life at the site. The lack of any European context or images leaves the exhibit quite flat, and the central piece, the fine reconstruction of the site, now with buttons that light up key artifacts, does not capture attention of visitors well enough. By contrast the Viking huts at the archaeological site are a tremendous success, with their seasoned, expert re-enactors engaging the visitors effectively and the props and activities well-made and interestingly presented. We spent several hours at the site talking with visitors and the re-enactors,
Wade Hillier, Paul Njolstad, Scott Burden, and others. Visitor interest was keen. It would be interesting to compare what they were
Fig. ! .43: Bill Filzhugh holding the broken line from the speedboat. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Fig. 1.42: Bill Filzhugh watching our cast-away speedboat in the Strait of Belle Isle. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
learning here with what they were getting out of the exhibits. There seems to be little connection between the two experiences. The Center’s exhibits could use some active docent-visitor interaction.
By the time we got back to Boyce’s he was home preparing a dinner of moose stew and fried codfish, spiced with fiery brew. We talked much about the number of moose licenses given for his region (1400) and for Newfoundland as a whole (in the hundreds of thousands), and the proportion given for bulls, calfs and females, or any of the above, noting that the recent increase in females would soon have an effect to start bringing the total population down. We checked the ice reports on the internet and found the huge Petemiann ice Island off the east coast south of St. Anthony. Huge pieces of this mass were breaking off and were cluttering the coast, with 1 20 recorded in the northern peninsula to Grey Islands, through which we would have to pass. One was blocking the southern exit to Quirpon Harbor. Later in the evening we made our pilgrimage to Skipper Hot’s Bar for a few beers and to have Lauren and Janine “screeched in” and become honorai^ Newfoundlanders. They joined a group of six others on the firing line and gave a great performance under the usual pressure of eating a dried capelin, (mo)lassi“bread, downing a shot of screech, repeating tongue-twisters, and kissing a ‘handsome,’ sexy frozen codfish after addressing it with the most suggestive language they could muster. Among the initiates was a couple from Carp, Ontario, where our ASC friend Norman Hallendy lives. The Paul’s knew of him and will pass greetings of our chance encounter at Skipper Hot’s. We did a bit of Newfie-type step-dancing — Will, Lauren, Janine, and me — to tunes like “Haul Away,” “I’se the B’y” and others before heading home about midnight, hot and exhausted. By morning it had discovered sets of muscles ! had not used for some time.
20 August — Saturday (Quirpon to St Anthony) I tossed and turned through the night anticipating
an early rising, but some strategic rain squalls intervened and convinced me the conditions we required for departure — no fog, little wind — were not present — and so we slept until 8am. It was still foggy and unsettled, with a light breeze. Perry and Î decided to wait until later in the day when visibility might improve. In Boyce’s loaned car we drove down to an overlook where we could see the southern tickle to look at the ice and found a huge mass blocking nearly the entire channel at its seaward end.
Breakers were heaving around both sides, spanning the distance from the ice to shore, blocking our passage. We could exit through the northern tickle and go around Cape Bauld, but the seas there would be tenible and it would cost us two hours travel time.
Instead, we decided to drive to St. Anthony to check conditions at that end and to see the ice reported to be filling the harbors from here to St. Anthony. People here have never seen such ice, and probably never will again, since the break-up of the Petermann Glacier and creation of a huge floating island of its seaward tongue is a very rare event.
Fig. 1.44: Lauren Marr and Janine Minion showing off their new “Newfie" status with “screeched in” certification. Photo by Willliam Fitzhugh.
Fig. 1.45: L’Anse aux Meadows new interpretation center. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
We found huge masses of ice blocking the entrance to Griquet Harbor; a large number of bergs were grounded in St. Anthony Bight; St. CaiToll’s Cove was completely filled, dwarfing this small coastal village north of St. Anthony; and several large bergs were grounded at the entrance of St. Anthony Harbor, one lodged in the middle of the channel inside the harbor. We had a ‘lunch’ at the friendly Lighthouse Café at the harbor entrance and found the wind down and seas calm, except for big swells from the northeast and southeast, remnants of the large off-shore storms of last week. Most of the big ice seemed to have collected along the shore or had entered the bays and harbors, but the sea appeared mostly clear of ice, and visibility was not bad — perhaps 3-4 miles. Reassured, we returned to Quirpon, gassed up Bryce’s car and left a note of thanks at his home, then cast off and tried our luck getting past the ice in the southern tickle. At the wharf some men from Hare Bay were launching a boat to go pick bakeapples on Quirpon Island. Perry tried to convince them the berries there were not yet ripe — a piece of insider information we learned from Boyce — but they were intent on their project, Quirpon being a near-mythical bakeapple location. Our passage past the large ice berg and heaving swells was successful and we had a relatively uneventful trip of two hours to St. Anthony — just a lot of big swells and rolling — while Will sat outside taking pictures of the ice bergs we passed. Their shapes were, as usual, fantastic; some looked like combs with teeth standing up in the air — the air spaces between solid ice lenses having been the loosely-packed winter ice and the teeth the compressed hard ice from the glacier’s summer melt. In St. A. we found a berth at the town wharf and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the boat and filleting the cod-fish I had bought from a Quirpon fisherman. Lauren and Janine strolled in town, visiting the Grenfell premises and walking the trails up on the hill behind Grenfell’s house. Dinner was a cod-fish and vegetable casserole with salad. The girls are finishing up their day goof-balling with some tunes (“Fun! Fun! Fun!”) on Lauren’s iPad. Periy greased the shaft bearings and we’re ready — 1 hope — for an uneventful crossing to Lushes Bight.
21 August — Sunday (St. Anthony to Lushes Bight) The fishing pier was stinky and bright with lights all night, but at least we were not driven from our berth by a new arrival with stronger claims to the berth than us. I woke about 5:30 as it was starting to get light and put on the coffee and generally clattered around to wake people up. This generally works for Will; and Perry, but not always for Lauren and Janine, who had taken to heart my comment that we don’t need them for such simple maneuvers as pier departures. Actually the weather did not seem too promising; it was overcast and the clouds were moving and fog hung on the hills and out at the harbor entrance. But St. A. I larbor is so tight that you can’t tell what’s outside until you go, so off we went, threading our way through the ice bergs wedged in the harbor channel and around its entrance. Once outside there seemed to be less ice around than when we came in, but the fog was a nuisance as we had only a few hundred yards off visibility. During the next hour or so visibility improved and we could make out the headlands and larger ice bergs, and there were many. Between Green Island and the Horse Islands the radar screen lit up with hundreds of bergs, of which many were long tabular pieces retaining their original Petermann outlet shape. We skirted through them
Fig. 1.46: Icebergs off of St. Anthony. Photo by William Fitzhugh.
easily, and passed a couple groups of whales and dolphins. Things were calm enough to cook a lunch.
Will made some grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and I fixed up the left-over chicken broth. By 4pm we were at Cape St. Charles and heading into Green Bay and Lushes Bight. Very little wind the whole way across, and as we approached the mainland, the makings of thunderheads appeared. It must be a hot day on shore. During the crossing Will snapped hundreds of pictures of bergs and birds, and when I asked him why so many: “One of these may be better than the ones I already have.” During the crossing I also straightened out some of my field notes and started writing up unit summaries for the field report. All in all a great final day and perfect crossing — a bit of an antidote for the hassle in the Straits the other day.
22 August — Monday ( Lushes Bight) First day back on shore! Not too much to report except that our welcome committee (Louise and Nan) were on the dock last night within a couple minutes of our arrival. The sun had not yet set and the younger folks were tubing and attempting to water ski, some with little success. Most concerned was a medium-sized white dog wanting to leap off' the dock after his master.
Will made another of his excellent spaghetti Louise joined us for a final dinner on the Pits. Janine took the offer of a real bed at Perry’s without hesitation and packed her stuff while Lauren hung in there one more night — and wouldn’t you know, had another one of her boat nightmares (“Where am I? Help! 1 can’t get out!”). I woke and rushed to the foe’s’ le to find here half out of her top bunk and just beginning to figure out where she was. So she also abandoned ship first thing in the morning, leaving Will and me to keep tabs on the leak Perry had identified a week or so ago when the bilge pump began running more frequently than usual.
We spent the morning unloading the boat, first the easily moveable stuff, then the food and kitchen gear, then the ‘zodiac,’ which had to be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed in fresh water to get the mud and slime out from our dirt-filled dig boots and clothes, and finally the air compressor, filters, tanks and weight belts. By the end of the day she was pretty well stripped and down to what Will and I needed for our floating ‘hotel’ for a couple days. The weather stayed nice and warm, so we were able to get the inflatable dried and packed in our store shed. We did notice some abrasion on the rubber bottom of the inflatable where she rubs on the deck and is subject to vibration from the prop. We need to watch that next year. We also need to get the 15HP Evinrude engine serviced, as it is sporadically firing only on one cylinder and when she cuts in the unexpected burst of speed could throw you over the stern. For supper Louise cooked up a great meal of grilled ribs, chicken, and steak which we ate on the back veranda with Nan, who is thrilled to have Perry back home. Most of the rest of the Colbourne clan is off working, only Steve home now, walking around peddling his home-grown strawbendes. I found a few blueberries ripe in the patch around the close-line, but most are still coming. Everything has been delayed a couple of weeks here and in Quebec this summer, even the bakeapples. They were scarce again on the Quebec Lower North Shore, but in Quirpon they were still not ripe when we passed through.
23 August — Tuesday (Lushes Bight) Another fine day — the summer is finally here, say the Long
[slanders, who had had a checkered summer with lots of cool weather and rain. This day we reserved for artifact cleaning, inventory, and packing in Peril’s store shed. Perry and Janine left on the 9am fen-y for Gander with the dive compressor gear, returning it to Linda and Robert Linfield — an all-day project that got them back at 5pm after burning $112 worth of gas. Will, Lauren and I worked all day until about 10pm and managed to get through all of the collections — about 40 2x2 meter squares, cleaning, making a rough catalogue inventory, and record photography for each square. Will shot the nicer pieces, so we will have a good working record after we send the material to Quebec later this week. Everything got accounted for except for one white glass bead, which seems to have got lost at the site. We packed the collections in clean bags and made sure the numbering was correct, so that Frederic Simard will have no trouble doing the formal cataloguing in Quebec. We made a few new discoveries in the process, including being able to assemble most of a small soapstone cooking vessel that had been smashed and ended up
in squares 22N 26W and 28W. That and the lamp from 20N 30W were great finds that raise interesting questions about the Inuit who lived at Hare Flarbor and why these objects so precious to Inuit should had been disposed of The other interesting find was the diversity of glass beads that were found from almost all parts of the excavation areas. Many of these same bead types we have found in other areas of the site as well, suggesting that Inuit were present throughout the area. Another interesting feature was the presence of Groswater ( Dorset) pieces — both artifacts and flakes — as well as the strange find of the Maritime Archaic stemmed point. During the evening we had another fine feed à la Louise, this time of seafood: cod, stuffed squid, mussels, and fresh home-baked bread. We had more lab work to do after
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supper. Will and I got back to the boat for the night about 10pm.
This afternoon we learned that there had been a 5.6-6 earthquake centered in northern Virginia that shook much of the East Coast, put a nuclear power plant in Virginia on emergency shut¬ down, and cracked the Washington Monument. Everyone was evacuated from the Smithsonian buildings, and Bruno Frohlich joked about being one of 5000 people on the mall without toilet facilities. Books fell but he reported no other problems. We also learned that Gaddafi has been flushed and is fighting a rear-guard action with a small band of loyalists and that rebels have taken charge of most of Tripoli. Perhaps of more importance to us is the progress of Hurricane Irene which seems about to strike North Carolina at 135mph and waffle or flood much of the eastern seaboard.
If we’re lucky we will airive in Maine just before it reaches that area, but it may screw up Lauren and Janine’s flights to DC and Lynne’s drive over from Vermont.
24 August — Wednesday (Lushes Bight) This was a boat-moving day — taking the Pits down to Triton and putting here up for the winter, a strange thing to be doing in late August, but she’s expensive to keep afloat at the Lushes Bight dock and just a nuisance when not being used. Plus we needed to find out about the leak. Uncle .lim made Will and I a breakfast of fried ham and eggs before we went to Peiry’s, where we packed the last of the artifacts in plastic pails. Then we loaded on the truck timbers, cradle props and wedges used to support the boat on land and headed down to Triton, some of us on the boat and others
in the truck. Ivy Rice, Nan’s sister, and her friend Barry Ashby — living in Ontario — came along for the ride. We had a great scenic cruise down Long Island Tickle and around Brighton Island to Triton, taking about an hour. We converged on the Marine Center where Dennis, manager of the boat operations, lifted Pitsiulak out of the water and dropped her in her winter storage place. The entire operation took only one hour. When she was set down we had a chance to look for places that might be leaking and found one glaring problem — a through-hull bolt on the exhaust manifold had corroded, leaving a large hole in the hull. Otherwise she looked in good shape, fouled only small barnacles and a ‘beard’ of hairy algae that recently has begun to appear on boats for the first time, perhaps resulting from an invasive species due to warmer water temperature. After securing the boat we took the speedboat back through the tickles and passes between the islands, passing large mussel farms and poking into some of the unusual geographic features on the south side of Long Island Tickle that Perry used to explore as a young boy rowing about the coast: the old man, the deep sea cave, pinnacles, his great grand-father’s old house site, the remains of the old boat Melvin’s drove ashore for ‘natural recycling’, and other local wonders. We were home within an hour. Dinner was abandoned in favor of a few hours of socializing at Morris and Barb’s ‘shed’ — the local term for an informal night club, a place to gather and have a few drinks without the expense and complications of a formally licensed bar. You just have to bring your own booze and snacks. Most of the Colboume’s — including Nan — show up for a few hours on Wednesday nights. We returned to Uncle Jim’s and Prudy’s loft over their garage/shop, where they have fixed up a bunkhouse of sorts to be used during summer holidays by their kids and grandchildren, all living in Labrador City. Next door, local teen-agers were hanging out at 'Ken’s Shed’ — a second Lushes Bight night spot and the one used by the youngsters, who were busy smoking and drinking and doing the usual boasting and posturing as we dropped off to sleep. Today I heard from Frederic Simard in Quebec City that he's ready to receive our artifacts, which we have packed carefully for transit, keeping the underwater materials wet and the land materials separated into fragile and non-fragile (nails, rocks) components.
25 August — I’hursday (Lushes Bight) Last day at L.ushes Bight and we had another good day with
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a gusty southwest wind. It's good we took the boat to Triton yesterday. Jim is planning to trip to the Grey Islands northeast of Englee for the weekend to pick bakeapples. He’ll need to have calmer weather to make that trip, and now that Hurricane Irene is churning up the Atlantic coast he may have to abandon the berry-picking for the shelter of a better harbor in Englee, fifteen miles to the west. We took the 10am shuttle and drove our containers of artifacts to Budgell’s Sports, where we put them on a small pallet and made arrangements for them to be sent to Quebec. We also left our 1 5HP motor at Budgell’s to have them look into the erratic ignition problem. After a seafood lunch at Fudge’s Restaurant and tidying up on the Pits (1 recovered ‘lost’ cans of beer in the galley storage crannies but failed to find the “Random Passage” DVD!) we returned to Long Island. The rest of the afternoon was a final clean-up at Perry’s, making notes, and blueberry-picking on the trail up to the gazebo. Dinner was another sumptuous meal — this time a boiled dinner with salt beef, roast tur (murre), chicken, pease porridge, stuffing, and other Newfoundland delicacies. Blueberries, cake, and whipped cream for desert. During much of the afternoon news clips kept coming in on the humicane; email from the SI indicated some damage to the Castle from the earthquake, resulting in its closure. Bmno reported my office survived the shaking without bookcase collapse. Later in the evening we sat around at Jim’s and Prudy’s chatting, watching TV and finding info on ice bergs for Jim’s up-coming trip. One Canada Ice report had a picture from, the 23rd showing two 2-3km diameter ice islands south of the Grey Islands. Apparently we passed right between without seeing them on our course from St. Anthony to Long Island. While we chatted Jim’s border collie watched TV intently, following the commercials especially, with occasional groans and moans. I’ve never seen an animal so tuned in!
26 August — Friday (Lushes Bight to Nova Scotia) Heading south! Will and I were at Peny’s at 6:30, finding the coffee perked and gear ready to be tied on the Volvo’s roof. After goodbyes and best wishes for the fall we were on the ferry — a huge one this time called Nonia, larger than Long Island needs. The politics of the feny and the hoped-for causeway are a never-ending topic of conversation on the island, and each decision seems to be worse than the last. But that’s behind us now, so on to Deer Lake. After paying the ferry fare ($8) I had only $2 Canadian left from project funds and so I had to put on my credit card the gas needed until 1 could exchange American for Canada in Deer Lake. The ride there was easy, the road in good shape. We breakfasted at the Irving Station restaurant, changed money, and left a note for Greg Wood at his ‘old’ house across the Humber River, and then went on to Meyer’s Minerals in Pasadena, a shop between Deer Lake and Corner Brook where Will has been occasionally buying art.
The owner, James Meyers, is a geologist who does as great business producing and selling stone carvings of all sorts, and he carries work from many Labrador artists, including Gilbert Hay and Semigak from Hopedale. Will bought a dancing bear of Semigak’s. They do a lot of jewelry-making with Labradorite and Newfoundland stones. It turns out that 1 had met Jamie in Nain in the early 80s when we were crossing between projects. He was working in the Tomgats with the Nfld government geologists and knew all our pals — Bill Ritchie, Gilbert, Terriak and others. He still practices geology on a consulting basis and has detailed knowledge of the rocks ofNfid and Labrador, so we has a great discussion about Ramah Chert, soapstone, and other materials. 1 suggested he get involved with the Ramah chert trade, an ancient profession that should be continued today. He noted that the famous 10-mile Bay Labradorite quarries have been shut down because the Labrador Inuit Development Council terminated their long-standing arrangement with an Italian stone polisher, and now has lost their only market-provider, fhe Chinese are now the principal ones polishing Labradorite from slabs cut in Madagascar, but this material is not as bright as the Labrador ‘blue-eye' variety and has many small dark veins absent in the Labrador stone.
Fig. 1.50: Farewell at Perry and Louise's house. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
He says 90% of the Labradorite sold in Newfoundland now is from Madagascar. He had no idea why we would find mica in our Basque/Inuit site, unless it was for windows (He reminded us of the derivation of ‘muscovite’ from mica that was widely used for windows in Moscow). Perhaps sheets were being so-used in our Inuit houses. The rest of the trip to Port-aux-Basques was uneventful except for heavy rain squalls. Light traffic and a vei7 small crowd on Highlanders, the same ferry we took to Newfoundland in July.
The weather had cleared by the time we embarked, and the sea was quite calm.
27 August — Saturday (Nova Scotia to Maine) Highlanders arrived in North Sydney about 1 1 :30pm,
disgorging us and hundreds of other vehicles onto a single-lane road that took us along the Bras d’Or lakes and across the Strait of Canco in the early hours of the morning. Will drove until about 2:30 and I took over for the rest of the passage through Nova Scotia and into New Brunswick, with a bit of ground fog but not much other complication. We arrived east of St. John about 6am and had breakfast before raiding the blueberiy fann and making off with six 10-pound flats of berries. From there it was only a few miles to St. Stevens and Ganong’s Chocolate factory, another of our ritual stops. We crossed the border there without difficulty and made our way south into Maine, where we picked up Route 1 and came down the west side of Penobscot Bay through Camden and Rockport, and from there to Georgetown and Bath, where we stopped for ice cream and I had the largest ice cream cone (ginger) I’ve ever had in my life. Arriving at Will’s completed our journey and 1 passed out for a couple hours on the moss outside his and Lindsay’s house. We had showers, cleaned up and had a great dinner of shrimp étouffé and a lively discussion about the problems facing the American education system. The evening ended with the arrival of hutricane Irene, sending her first raindrops into the woods around the house. 1 was relieved to see on the news that the storm looks like it will be passing along the coast more than in northern Vermont, therefore perhaps sparing our driveway a big washout. (NOTE: It turned out that the eye of Hurricane Irene passed up the Connecticut Valley right over our house in Fairlee, and with it came 6-8 inches of rain that devastated many of the river towns and cities of Vt and northeastern New York State. Surprisingly however, the impact on our home was minimal, with veiy little wind and steady but not torrential rain. The storm largely by-passed Maine and the northern coast region.)
"f-ZOl ] (gateways Excavation f^ieid Notes
This was planned as the last season of excavation at the Hare Harbor- 1 site on Petit Mécatina Island, located between the communities of Harrington Harbor and Tête â La Baleine on the Quebec Lower North Shore. Notes were kept on individual 2x2 meter excavation units by the excavators and by W.
Fitzhugh, who also plotted the unit maps and compiled the artifact field catalog, unit by unit. Excavations were conducted in AREA 7, which included a partially-constructed Inuit dwelling (S5), a hearth platform (S6), a charcoal hearth pit (S7), and a group of large rocks (S8) along the southern edge of Areas 6 and 7. Excavations were also conducted in AREA 8, a midden south of the entrance of S4. The unit notes below are organized by excavation area, feature, and excavation unit, from south-to-north and east-to west.
Abbreviations used: BE = black earth culture layer; CS = charcoal soil, usually including rocks and some tiles and nails, a pre-lnuit Basque/European formation; SS = sterile beach soil/deposits; BS = brown sand, the soil resulting from decay of the black schist rocks found at the base of the cliff shelter; BT = depth in cms below triangle (the local site datum plane); EW = earthenware; SW = stoneware.
AREA?
Structure 5 (a partially-constructed Inuit winter dwelling) This structure was identified from surface topography when the western part of HH-1 was first explored in 2009. At that time its observable features included a passage-like depression through the stone/charcoal pile along the southern part of Area 7, a ‘cold trap’ entry, a cobble-paved ‘floor’ inside the door, an apparent raised sleeping platform in the (uphill) rear portion of the dwelling, an east wail shared wall with S4, and a suggestion of a wall of sand, boulders, and sod on its west side. In 2009 we excavated a test pit in the center of S5 and found it differed from S4 in having a pavement of cobblestones rather than slabs. Another odd feature was the apparent absence of a west wall. It seemed possible that a N-S alignment of rocks along the 30W line might be the remains of a wall, but this would make S5 an un usually large structure.
We assumed that S5’s rear wall was similar to S4’s, created by excavating the sleeping bench into the rising bank at the bottom of the cliff shelter.
However, excavation proved our ideas
about the rear and west wall to be wrong; we were not able to identify the rear wall along the bank, and the two possible west wall features at 28W and 30W, proved incorrect. The following documents the excavation of the units in each of the features and structures in AREAS 7 and 8.
Fig. 1.52: Area 7, Structure 5 in the foreground, view to the soutlrwest. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Fig. 1.51 : Site photo to the west. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
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Structure :> Entry Passage:
Units 14N 24 W, 14N 26 W and 16N 24W and 16N 26W contained the S5 entiy passage, which passes through a barrier of large rocks derived from cliff rock-fall.
16N 26 W is bordered on the west by large irregular-shaped rocks that form the western side of the passage interior. One of these rocks was more than a meter long, pointed at both ends, and seemed like it could have served as the collapsed western ’door- fame’ upright, although how it could have supported a lintel stone is unclear. When excavation began in this unit, removal of the surface vegetation revealed a soil composed almost exclusively of charcoal between the large rocks while in the passage area BE (charcoal-stained soil) appeared next in a layer 10cm thick which had accumulated upon the pavement slabs, which were neatly laid down ca. 210cms BT. IN most of our excavations at this site, BE is generally the culture layer, with many artifacts, but in this case it contained only three nails between 173- 190cm BT. A fragment of a seal mastoid bone was recovered at 199cm BT. Three other iron spikes were found in charcoal earth along the eastern side of the unit, in wall context. No other artifacts were found on the passage pavement in 16N 26 W or the other units through which it passes (16N 24E, 14N 24W and 14N 26 W). This is unusual, for Inuit winter house entries are usually full of artifacts, having served
also as a dump or midden, as we found in S3 and S4. Beneath the pavement slabs was more CS. As this soil is not associated with inuit material and generally contains only nails and tiles we did not excavate below the pavement, also because this would have destroyed the integrity of the entry passage construction.
16N 24 W The eastern edge of the S5 entry passage is on the west and northwest side of 16N 24 W. Conditions here were a mirror image of those described for 16N 26W, with pavement slabs below a BE culture layer and CS below the slabs (see 26W soil profile). At the north end of the pavement a rectangular block served as a cold trap and a step-up into the house interior. To the east of this threshold rock a large fallen block may have served as the east entry upright, but as in 16N 26W this rock did not seem well-shaped for this task, and, as well, a horizontal lintel stone was missing. East of the pavement a wall of rocks and charcoal rises to form the east wall of the entiy passage in the southern half of the unit. In the northern half, the floor of the structure rises to the level of the house interior and is bounded to the south by the house wall, which runs east into 1 6N 22 W. All of the artifacts in this unit came from the CS in wall context in the eastern half of the square: included were a spalled piece of blue glaze, a nail, a small piece of mica, a lead musket ball, and a piece of sandstone that may have been worked. Nothing was found on the entry pavement.
14N 26W The S5 entiy' passage extends diagonally across this unit from the NE corner and ‘dead¬ ends’ surrounded by three large rocks that rise 5()-75cm above the passage door. Since these rocks block
Fig. 1.54: I6N 26W square. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
Fig. 1.53: Sructure 5 entrance view to the northwest. Photo by Wilfred Richard.
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the entry, they must have been moved into their present position after the pavement was constructed.
An opening at passage-level exists in the SE corner of the unit, but there are no slabs here, and the soil consisted of charcoal and smaller rocks similar to the matrix found in the wall areas. Two nails were recovered, and these were in charcoal ‘wall’ soil 50cm west of the passage pavement. Tiles and charcoal soil is found under the pavement and beneath the large rocks and extends down to sterile soil (SS). The large rocks must have been moved to their present location after the beginning of the initial Basque occupation as tiles, nails, and charcoal are found beneath them.
No artifacts and or ‘culture layer’ was found on the pavement.
14N 24W This unit consisted exclusively of a mixture of large and small rocks in a matrix of charcoal, capped by a thin upper level of black earth. This unit is a continuation of the wall of rock and charcoal that extends along the south front of S4 and S5 until it joins the hill-slope at 30W. Seven small nails were found between 207-221 BT. In order to preserve the integrity of the S5 structure, we did not excavate further into this wall.
14N 22 W This unit lies midway between the entrances of S4 and S5 and contains a wall-like bulwark
of large rocks running E-W, whose front inclines downwards to the south, with one large slab resting in a vertical position in the SW quadrant. The surface of the ground slopes down from 161 BT in the NE corner to 222BT in the SW corner. The sod and black earth layers were excavated, but the lower charcoal layer was left unexcavated. Thirty large nails and spikes were found in the center-eastern part of the square; most of these nails were encrusted and had been embedded in wood. No ceramics, beads, pipes, or other diagnostic materials were found.
Structure 5 Interior The interior of S5 was less well-defined than the cntiyway and door and is unusual for an Inuit dwelling in that it lacks flat slab pavements and evidence of an oil lamp hearth stand.
18N 24W Much of the central area of this unit had been excavated as a test pit in 2009. At the north end of the passageway a rectangular rock whose surface was about 40cm above the passage pavement served as a step into the house. North of this threshold rock, at approximately the same depth a pavement of round beach cobbles and roof tiles had been laid down on sterile beach gravel throughout 1 8N 24 W except in its NE quad. About 20cms above this pavement we found two clusters of rocks and roof tiles designated Features ! and 2. After excavation these features failed to materialize as hearth platfomis and seemed to have no function we could discern. A large circular fiat rock in the S17 quad appeared at first to have been a hearth base, but when we turned it over we found no oil encrustation stains and decided it probably was a displaced wall rock. The stratigraphy included a 5- 10cm layer of black earth below a thin layer of sod. The BE extended down onto the cobble floor, below which was sterile sand and gravel. Except for a piece of black and white glaze and a nail found on the pavement the remaining fifteen artifacts were found on the eastern side of the unit. In addition to nine nails, we recovered a ceramic fragment, blue and a light blue seed beads, and a clay pipe stem. The latter were common finds in the S4 Inuit house. The absence of fiat paving slabs in the working floor of an Inuit winter house, however, seemed odd considering their presence in neighboring S4.
18N 26W The cobble and roof tile pavement found in 18N 24 W extended west into this unit with a larger number of fiat slabs present. The SW corner contained two large boulders that were part of a curving line of large rocks that appeared to anchor the arcing SW wall of the structure and continued north along the 30 W line. While there were many small rocks in this unit, they were spatially dispersed and did not constitute a pavement. BE covered the upper part of the unit and continued down to SS in the northeastern half while in the southwestern quad a thick layer of CS that underlay BE lensed out slightly to the SW of the line between the NW and SE corners. CS began at I 70B 1 in the NW and at 165BT in the
4- i
SW comer, where it ended at 195BT on sterile soil (see profile at 16N). A single EW sherd was found in the BE; the other four artifacts were nails found in the black earth northeast of the charcoal lens.
20N 26W This square rises 30-40cm higher than the paved floor of the square to the south and has no pavement, only small scattered rocks in its southern half, while in the north a line of in-situ cobbles angles across the NE quad continuing the cobble border seen to the east in 20N 24 W. A few fiat slabs are found in the western part of the unit, and here some large rocks above the BE are part of a wall of rocks and gravel along the 28W line. Artifacts are found in the BE in the SW and NE quads and most were small nails, possible having served as fasteners for a wooden sleeping bench. A comeline d’aleppo bead and a piece of white-glazed ceramic were found in the BE layer above the cobbles. The southern part of the unit may have been part of the structure’s sleeping platform with a wood bench. The floor area has been excavated by the builders 20cm below the cobble surface of the original beach deposits. The profile along the east wall (26W) had thin layers of alternating sand and charcoal, the later apparently having washed down from the northern slope. There is no thick charcoal (CS) at the base of the BE culture layer. After excavating other surrounding squares we decided that this area probably was not a ‘house interior’ as it had no slab floor pavement or floor deposits.
20N 24W This unit roughly mirrored 20N 26W, having a cleared ‘floor’ area in the southern half whose elevation inclined upwards from the cobble pavement in the unit to the south, while to the north it stepped up 10-1 5cm to the in situ cobble beach rock level that extended east from 20N 26W, with its southern edge angling from NW to SE. This sterile cobble ‘floor’ also inclined up to the north until it reached the steep bank at the 20N line. Several large rocks were found in the upper BE layer, but they had no apparent function, and no flat slabs were present. The rocks appear to have fallen into the house area from the wall to the east. A thin layer of charcoal separated the BE from SS below. Artifacts were mostly small nails and came from the cobble surface (‘bench’) area, not from the cleared floor, except for an iron mass resembling a coiled spring and the head of a large spike. The small nails in the cobble layer might have served to fasten planks for a sleeping bench. However, once again, assessment of this area later on suggests that it never had been occupied as a house interior.
S5 East Wall/Border The units between 14N and 22N at 22 W fomi the eastern boundary of S5 and share many common features, exhibiting a series of sub-soil cuts wlien viewed in E-W profiles that correspond to excavation levels of the ‘house floor’ and ‘sleeping benches’. West of these cuts the soil was dominated by BE deposits containing abundant artifacts similar to those found in S4, while to the east of these cuts, CS and rocks formed a wall that was shared with S4. The edge of the excavated pit. that became S5 continued north along the 22W line until it turned west at 19N, passing south of the 20N line and into 22N 24 W at ca. 2 IN. The soil profile at 22W clearly shows the drop into the S5 house pit, the interior ‘floor’, and the charcoal soil that forms the front wall of the structure.
16N 22 W This unit was the southernmost of the S5 east wall squares and also served as the SE corner of the house interior. Most of this unit is CS wall material — large and smaller stones embedded in charcoal — but in the NW quadrant we found BE ‘house’ deposits arcing from midway down the west wall to 50cm west of the NE comer. The transition between BE and CS was clear and the presence of large rocks in CS high in the soil column extending and into 1 8N 22W indicated that this area of the house pit had been excavated into the charcoal deposits to create the S5 house interior. Most of the artifacts from this unit came from the NW quad BE ‘house’ deposits and included nails, pipe stems, glass beads, faience, EW, and SW — all similar to S4 finds. From the CS wall deposits came nails, a remnant of an iron blade and two whale ribs which extended into 16N 20E and seiwed as structural elements.
1 8N 22W The S5 east wall continues north on the east side of this unit, leaving most of the square as ‘inner house space’. The rising level of the soil suggests the unit covers part of the lower floor and the sleeping platform. Hov/ever, we found no indication of a platform, either in the fomi of a pavement or riser, or a concentrated floor or platform deposit. It is possible that a sleeping platfonn could have been present, made of wood planks as we surmise for S4. Instead of a floor level we found a deep deposit of BE containing many artifacts similar to those found in S4 and a large number of small slabs and cobbles distributed without apparent order. Eighty artifacts were recorded, mostly from the central area of the unit with the majority from just west of the ‘wail’ which follows the 22W line. The most surprising find was from the turf — a Late Maritime Archaic stemmed spear point made of Ramah chert, a type of stone
found only in northern Labrador — and has no obvious explanation as it is the only Maritime Archaic artifact known for this section of the LNS. Artifacts from the BE layer include clay pipe fragments, glazed EW faience, SW, thin goblet glass, bottle glass, mica, pyrites nodules, and nails. These materials were found distributed throughout the vertical column of BE, not in floor levels, leaving the impression that they represent a midden or refuse deposit outside the western wall of S4 rather than a tloor deposit inside S5 house. This might argue for an S4 midden rather than a S5 house pit, but on the other hand, the E-W profiles at 1 8N and 20N show an excavated cut into the charcoal/rock wall all along the 22W line, as would be found in a house pit had been excavated for S5. Our best guess is that the charcoal/stone deposits were excavated into Fig. 1.57: Prehistoric finds. Maritime archaic point and intent to create a floor for S5, but were
Gros^vater artifacts. Photo by Wilfred Richard. abandoned before completion and subsequently
the pit was used as a dump for refuse from S4.
We believe the abandonment of S5 after it had been partially constructed (entry passage and stepped up floor and bench surfaces) followed the realization that the drip-line from the cliff above runs through the middle of the house area, making its use impossible except in mid-winter temperatures.
20N 22W This unit resembles 18N 22 W in having no obvious internal structure other than a rising floor level that intersects the eastern wall’s CS and rock formation, and a fairly large number of finds from a deep BE deposit that was thickest in the NE quad where most of the artifacts were located in what would have been the NE corner of S5. Among the finds were nails, a re-worked fragment of a soapstone cooking vessel, a rectangular sandstone whetstone, some fragments of blue and white faience glaze, a large off-black color bead, and pieces of EW. Depths ranged from 80-1 l4B'f, without any clear ‘floor’ level.
22N 22 W We excavated the southern half of this square to check on the NE corner of S5 and found
this entire unit was outside the structure and above the cut-lines of the house pit (see N-S profile at 22W). The unit lay north of the S5 house wall and demonstrated four soil levels: turf above an upper BE in
which we found nails and tile, above a layer of CS, above a lower BE and charcoal level, which lay on SS. The sequence revealed an initial charcoal-rich level that was succeeded by BE midden connected to the level in which many artifacts were found in the other 22 W units.
North Bank Units 'fhe N-S profiles show the northern part of S5 from 22 W to 28 W has a series of cuts into the bank along the 22N line that seem to mark the intersection of the house’s rear sleeping platform with the house wall. The stratigraphy is similar in all of these units, indicating a similar series of events beginning with excavation into the bank,' followed by a burning episode that left a level composed of a few cms of charcoal (sometimes with tiles and nails), following by erosion that brought sterile grey or brown sand down the burned slope. This layer is usually
t. je-vx.-:'. fit::
b ig. 1.56: 22N 22W scpiare, trowel points north. Photo by