The Cultural Landscapes of Port au Choix

Based on the Port au Choix Archaeology Project, this volume provides a comparative understanding of how different cultures adapted to the changing physical environment, impacted their physical surroundings, created cultural landscapes and interacted with each other.

Newfoundland lies at the intersection of arctic and more temperate regions and, commensurate with this geography, populations of two Amerindian and two Paleoeskimo cultural traditions occupied Port au Choix, in northern Newfoundland, Canada, for centuries and millennia. Over the past two decades The Port au Choix Archaeology Project has sought a comparative understanding of how these different cultures, each with their particular origin and historical trajectory, adapted to the changing physical and social environments, impacted their physical surroundings, and created cultural landscapes. This volume brings together the research of Renouf, her colleagues and her students who together employ multiple perspectives and methods to provide a detailed reconstruction and understanding of the long-term history of Port au Choix. Although geographically focussed on a northern coastal area, this volume has wider implications for understanding archaeological landscapes, human-environment interactions and hunter-gatherer societies.

Result of 20 years of sustained research in one area Reveals an understanding of settlement and society in prehistoric Newfoundland Has wide and significant implications for hunter-gatherer and landscape studies

Auteur
Dr. Priscilla Renouf, Canada Research Chair of North Atlantic Archaeology, has conducted research in Labrador, Newfoundland, Arctic Norway and Greenland. For the past several years her research has been situated in Port au Choix, northwestern Newfoundland, where she is reconstructing 5,500 years of human adaptation to a changing environment. Dr. Renouf co-founded an international research group, called LINK, which consists of a dozen archaeologists working in North Atlantic areas: Labrador, Greenland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway. Their purpose is to integrate social and natural science research to address questions of how past human societies in the North Atlantic reacted to long- and short-term climate fluctuations. Dr. Renouf is committed to communicating the results of her research to the public as well as the academic community. She continues to achieve this through videos, exhibits, publications and public presentations.

Contenu

Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction: Archaeology at Port au Choix

M.A.P. Renouf

Chapter 2

By Land and Sea: Landscape and Marine Environmental Perspectives

on Port au Choix Archaeology

Trevor Bell and M.A.P. Renouf

Chapter 3

Across the Tickle: the Gould Site, Port au Choix-3 and

the Maritime Archaic Indian Mortuary Landscape

M.A.P. Renouf and Trevor Bell

Chapter 4

Ritual Activity and the Formation of Faunal Assemblages at Two

Groswater Palaeoeskimo Sites at Port au Choix

Patricia J. Wells

Chapter 5 Mobility, Curation, and Exchange as Factors in the Distribution of the Phillip's Garden West Groswater Toolkit

Karen Ryan

Chapter 6

A Sheltered Life: Inner Cove Groswater Palaeoeskimo Occupation

at Port au Choix

Kendra D. Wheatley

Chapter 7

On the Headland: Dorset Seal Harvesting at Phillip's Garden, Port au Choix

M.A.P. Renouf

Chapter 8

The Changing Nature and Function of Phillip's Garden: a Diachronic Perspective

John C. Erwin

Chapter 9

Settlement Size and Structural Complexity: A Case Study

in Geophysical Survey at Phillip's Garden, Port au Choix

Edward J.H. Eastaugh and Jeremy Taylor

Chapter 10

Down the Labrador: Ramah Chert Use at Phillip's Garden, Port au Choix

Robert J. Anstey and M.A.P. Renouf

Chapter 11

Whitecoats, Beaters and Turners:

Dorset Palaeoeskimo Harp Seal Hunting from Phillip's Garden, Port au Choix

Maribeth S. Murray

Chapter 12

Aspects of Dorset Palaeoeskimo Mortuary Behaviour

on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland

Stuart C. Brown

Chapter 13

In the Woods: The Cow Head Complex Occupation of

the Gould Site, Port au Choix

M.A.P. Renouf, Michael A. Teal, Trevor Bell

Chapter 14 The Life History of Port au Choix Landscapes

M.A.P. Renouf

Appendix

Radiocarbon dates from Port au Choix

M.A.P. Renouf

Index <