1 Newfoundland-Quebec 2024 Field Diary: Newfoundland Activities and Reconstructing Brador Mound #2 William W. Fitzhugh Christie Leece and Lena (Sharp) Gordon families on Pitsiulak; Perry and Treena Rebuilding Lévesque’s Brador Mound #2 2 The 2024 field season was a different venture than previous years because it did not involve archaeological research. Rather, it combined a busman’s holiday with Ann Vick and Michael Westgate— old friends from Chatham, Mass., a reunion in Lushes Bight, Nfld. with the families of Christy Leece and Lena Sharp—members of my field and lab teams of 2005—reconstruction of an Early Archaic burial mound excavated by René Lévesque in Brador, Quebec, in 1971, which he had left open, un-refilled—a glaring eyesore and professional embarrassment. The town of Blanc Sablon wanted the site returned to its original condition as a stone-capped mound with informative signage so it could be used as a tourist attraction. The latter project engaged Perry Colbourne and me for a week and enabled us to renew connections with friends from Red Bay in southern Labrador to St. Paul River on the Quebec Lower North Shore. 5 July: Fairlee VT Michael Westgate and Ann Vick from Chatham, Mass., arrived in Hanover, N.H., on the Dartmouth Coach bus in late afternoon. I showed them the new “pumpkin house” Lynne and I had purchased in Hanover just a few weeks earlier; now they and others have an in-town place to stay before Lynne and I take up full residence in some retirement phase. Dinner was with Lynne in Fairlee in the middle of an oppressive heat wave. Everything was set for an early morning departure, fortunately with a small amount of luggage compared to previous years. Will Richard had been planning to join us near Bangor, Maine, but at the last moment decided not to make the trip—a tough decision because he wanted to visit our many friends in Newfoundland and Quebec along the way. WF, Michael, Ann, and Lynne, and travelers only, upon our Fairlee departure. 7 July, Friday—Fairlee VT to Sussex, New Brunswick. We left Fairlee at 8am with threatening skies, Mike serving as navigator and Ann as back-seat raconteur. During the drive lots of stories were exchanged about early days growing up in Chatham and my northern experiences. The usual stop at the ice cream parlor on Rt. 2 in Mexico, Maine, filled us in on the status of the big paper plant now owned by the Chinese, which was producing high-grade paper from one of the four production lines still operating. The owner of the shop recognized us as the “Smithsonian group” from previous years and engaged us for quite a while, interrupted occasionally by questions from his young grandson who was filling orders from clients. Highway 2 has been mostly fixed up now, so there were none of the detours of recent years. We reached Calais border crossing and passed through into Canada in record time—barely more than two 3 minutes—since we did not have to declare an archaeological purpose. Michael had wanted to visit St. John, NB, where his father and grandfather entered Canada. Fog kept us from touring the waterfront, so we proceeded directly to the seafood restaurant on the main town square. From there it was a 40- minute drive to the Fairway Inn Motel where we usually put up for the night. No pool swimming for our group this year. 8 July, Sunday—Sussex NB to North Sydney NS After breakfast in the motel restaurant, decorated with car license plates from all over North America, and Elvis-themed jukebox music, we hit the nearly empty highway, passed into Nova Scotia, lunched at the Canso Causeway Subway shop, and arrived at Louisbourg Fortress Historic Site about 3pm. I had not contacted Eddie Kennedy, Visitor experience manager, in advance this year, but the weekend boss let us in through the staff gate after hearing about my connection with Xabi Otero, who was at the site last year with two young Basque ladies giving park visitors information about Basque culture and music. Xabi was not here this year, but two new Basque ladies just arrived and were available. Luna Sola Goienetxe was from the coast, and Tao Perez-Ihidoy was from a small town in the interior. I had a feeling Lynne and I may have met her and her family when we were touring the Pyrenees with Xabi several years ago. We met the new arrivals, costumed in traditional Basque garb, and two musicians they were programmed with, in one of the tavern reconstructions. Another presenter was a young lady named Emma Goyetcha who grew up in a Basque community in Cape Breton and is studying physical anthropology in Fredericton, NB. She seemed quite interested in keeping in touch with me. Xabi and his wife Beatrice are fine, according to reports from the girls, but could not come this year. Mike and Ann toured the fortress and engaged with many of its presenters, one of whom was demonstrating a Basque taffrail log (a kind of nautical speedometer). I invited the Basque girls to join us for dinner in town, as we did last year with Xabi. We were not able to meet Kennedy since it was Sunday, and he was on holiday. The site is having great attendance this year, mostly from the Canadian Maritimes. The archaeological team from University of New Brunswick we met excavating burials last year was not in the field this summer. We said our goodbyes to the ladies and drove the 40 minutes to the Marine Atlantic ferry terminal in North Sydney, arriving about an hour before our departure on the Blue Puttees at 10:45p. Ann and Mike had a standby reservation for a room, but by the time one was announced for them, they had already tucked themselves into the reserved section with reclinable seats on Deck 9 and did not want to move. I remained in the plebeian lounge and had an ok night until our 3:30am arrival at Port Aux Basques. 4 Luna Sola Goienetxe and Tao Perez-Ihidoy, Basque presenters at Louisbourg Fortress, there courtesy of Xabi Otero; and with a musician group at one of the ‘taverns’. Louisbourg herb garden; and a presenter displaying an 18th century taffrail log, a nautical speedometer’. 8 July, Monday—Port-aux-Basques to Lushes Bight 3:30am, in fog, is not a great time to be dumped on land by a ferry, but that’s what happened. Instead of being prudent like the many truck drivers who pulled over along the highway to wait for first light, I plunged ahead with low beams, following the line of cars ahead of me who would likely meet the wandering moose before I did. Fog and sun lifted by the time we arrived in Corner Brook, which looked spectacular in the morning light. We landed in the Jungle Jim Restaurant near the highway and, while we waited for it to open, we discovered Boston early morning news on the telly. Here we also met an elderly couple with Boston and St. John’s backgrounds. We reached Deer Lake for gas and bought food for the next few days and got to the Long Island ferry in time to catch the afternoon run to Long Island. Perry was busy putting up a tent for the arrival of Christy Leece’s and Lena Sharp’s families. We learned of their arrival in Deer Lake that evening and their plan to meet the Long Island ferry for the midday run. Perry, Michael, and I spent a couple hours fishing in the waters around Lushes Bight, catching a few small cod, but most fish were out around Gull Rock, where Dennis has been having good success. The regulations are soon to change, ending the weekend subsistence fishery that has been in place for many years. This will allow a permanent open season all around this region of Newfoundland. Although there seem to be lots of codfish, and large ones at that, Perry predicts the new regs will probably lead to another crash. Michael and Ann are staying in ‘Nan’s house’ with Kay and I in Perry’s and Louise’s place. Last year our arrival was palled by the recent death of their daughter, Jill, who died at age 35 from a sudden bout of cancer; this spring it was Perry’s mother, Nan, who had been ‘lost ’to Alzheimers for the past few years in a Springdale retirement home. The rest of the Colbourne clan in Lushes Bight—Perry, Dennis, Stephen, Melvin, and Kay—are doing well. 5 The Long Island ferry, Hazel McIsaac, approaches Pilley’s Island wharf; Louise and Perry demonstrating Perry’s potted garden. 9 July, Tuesday—Lushes Bight Hot and humid all day, but not as bad as Lynne is enduring in Fairlee. We spent the morning getting ready for Christie’s and Lena’s arrival. They came on the 1pm ferry, and we met them at the landing. I had not seen Christie or Lena since 2008; both looked and sounded exactly the same as back then. Christie, living in Shaker Heights, Cleveland, had married Phil, who I met earlier in DC; he continues work in the computer programming field. They have three kids, Minke (8), Eider (6), and Pika Hughes (2). Lena lives near Burlington VT, married Matt Gordon, and has two children: Cyrus (7), and Arcadia (4). The kids erupted from the confinement of their rental cars and were soon exploring and getting into everything. Perry’s workshop was an immediate attraction for the boys, who delighted in exploring its trove of gear, equipment, tools, and spare parts. Dinner was a lobster feast for fourteen, ten adults around the table, and five kids on the sofa eating and watching TV. In addition, Kay, Jane, her husband Lee, and Cassie and Cami were all present. The latter arrivals added another level of activity to the huge gang. It’s light here until 10pm, so there was plenty to do in the evening, deciding who would sleep in the big Colbourne tent with its machine-inflatable mattresses. Christie set up a tent for her crowd. 6 Dennis Colbourne, skipper of Hazel McIsaac ferry train young midshipmen; Matt, Lena, and Cyrus Gordon enroute to Lushes Bight. (photos: C. Leece, L. Gordon) 10 July, Wednesday—Lushes Bight More dry, hot, southwest weather. After lots of breakfast-eating, a big safari was organized to visit Pitsiulak at the Mid-Coast Marine center in Triton. Other than visiting Perry and Louise, this was the highlight of the reunion—seeing the boat that Christie and Lena had spent several summers aboard. The kids scrambled up the ladders and immediately dove into the chart table drawers and the bank of spare and not-so-spare parts drawers down below. It was all I could do to monitor the grabbing and stashing of all sorts of stuff into the boys ’tote bags. Unbeknownst to me, they had a plan—to get lots of stuff to build robots when they got back to Perry’s. Lena’s and Christie’s families aboard the retired Pitsiulak at the Triton Mid-Coast Marine Center: (l-r) Arcadia, Lena, Christie, Pika, Minke, Phil, Cyrus, Eider, and Matt. 7 Christie, Lena, and Arcadia; ‘prop-art with Pika’; Arcadia and Camie explore wharf creatures. (photos: L. Gordon, C. Leece, L. Gordon) Crews old and new; Captain Perry and his First Mate. (photos: M. Westgate) Raiders of the Lost Ark approach their quarry; and mad scientists Minke and Cyrus build a robot from Pitsiulak guts. (photos: C. Leece) 8 “It happens around here:” Bumping heads in Perry’s fancy foc’sle. (photos: C. Leece) Lushes Bight excursion with Perry in the old speedboat; and kids glued to the tube with film-star Cami in the middle. (photos: C. Leece) Everything was grist for the robot mill—bolts, wire, electronic gadgets, Frobisher tile, soapstone and Ramah chert, and more. They were like kids in a candy-shop, and their net bags got heavier and heavier. They had been told everything on board was ‘junk’—even an old foghorn was captured. It was all we could do to get everyone assembled on deck in front of the pilothouse for a picture by Michael who got some good pictures of the tempest. After everyone had cleared out, Michael and Ann and I paid a visit to Pete Winsor, the center’s owner, and saw his ‘memorial room’ with photos of the boats they had built and the ‘old salts’ of Triton whose wisdom had brought things marine to where they are today. I promised to send them a picture of Pitsiulak underway to add to his wall of boats. In turn, he gave me a pen made by one of the retired metalsmiths who worked in the center’s shop. While we were talking with Pete, the others visited the Triton Whale Museum and its small sperm whale exhibit. When the kids grew tired of this, the boys spent a hour trying to fill the bay with rocks from a gravel pile, and the girls fed Matt and me ‘edible ’ clover and other flowers. Back at Lushes Bight, Perry organized a boat tour but was frustrated by motor problems. Kay took Ann and Michael for a driving tour of Long Island. Diner was a huge feast of lobster whose shells piled so high they began to block the view 9 across the table. After dinner I presented Perry with an album of my annual field report covers from 2001 to present. This was a preview of my plan for a leather-bound volume of all the field reports documenting his Smithsonian years, a legacy gift for him and his family in future years. Everyone had to be mindful of the mosquitos that began their rampage at dusk. In the end Christie’s family moved into Kay’s house, sleeping on the floor to be free of the bugs. Birds-eye view of the lobster feast at the Colbournes. (photo: C. Leece) 10 Presenting Perry with a preview of an album of Perry’s work with Smithsonian (photos: M. Westgate) Matt, Lena, Cyrus, and Arcadia; Christie, Pika, and Phil. (photos: L. Gordon, C. Leece) 11 July, Thursday—Lushes Bight to Port au Choix We had a big send-off from the Colbourne parking lot this morning—cars packed, kids rounded up, kisses and hugs of goodbye all around—as we ran for the 11am ferry, on our way to various destinations on the Great Northern Peninsula. Christie and Lena had reservations at the Mountain Water Resort north of St. Paul River, a fancy salmon fisherman’s place with an amazing view of the Gros Morne Mountains and Western Brook Pond. They had reserved a tent spots, but as it turned out, they were able to get a cabin. Michael, Ann, and I pushed further north to Port au Choix, and the downtown Sea Echo Motel. We had a brief driving tour of the town, met a caribou munching spruce shoots outside the Parks Canada Museum, and tried to find our old machinist friend, Frank Noseworthy, who rebuilt the old snow machine left by Donald MacMillan in the bush south of 11 Nain. Frank was away, but the old longliner hauled up in his front yard was still being used as a huge flowerpot. A photographic memoire by Elmer Harp, Jr. of his years doing Dorset archaeology in Port-au- Choix, at the down-town visitor center; view of Frank Noseworthy’s home in Port-au-Choix. 12 July, Friday—Port au Choix to Quirpon Last year when Ben Fitzhugh and I were surveying for Labrador Inuit sites along the northwest coast of Newfoundland, I found a depression on the Barbace Cove trail a few hundred meters north of the Basque bakery. The depression was ringed by a low mound and had a gap in the shore side of the wall. The site resembled a small Inuit single family winter dwelling. Although last year we found no Inuit sites on this coast, historic records tell of Inuit and French trading at the mouth of Barbace Cove. This small feature was our best bet for an Inuit site, but I had no time or tools to investigate it. What I needed was a thin iron probe rod to test for stone paving, which is almost always present in traditional Inuit winter houses. When I mentioned my frustration to our Sea Echo breakfast waitress, Josée Fleury, she appeared a moment later with a broken kitchen utensil that would serve as a probe. However, my hopes were dashed when probing yielded only beach gravel. Next time, a trowel and official Parks permission might provide a definitive answer. In addition to kitchen ingenuity, Josée, originally from Quebec, spent years working as a hairdresser and waitress in Iqaluit, NWT and had 12 amusing stories to tell about European royalty who passed through. The‘Inuit-like’ sod house depression near shore on the Parks Canada Barbace Cove Trail, first found in 2022 and tested this year with a probe rod—no paving stones were found;. the Port au Choix home of the welder/mechanic, Frank Noseworthy, who rebuilt the 1927 McMillan snow machine discovered in Anaktalak south of Nain. A couple hours later we arrived at Quirpon, where we had reserved a couple rooms at Robert’s Rooms, the old fishing family home run by our long-time friend Boyce Roberts. En route, we stopped for a look at Cow Head, a peninsula jutting out into the Gulf which has been the location of lots of archaeological investigations by Jim Tuck, Reginald Auger, and others. The dark grey Cow Head chert was used by Indian and Dorset cultures on the Newfoundland west coast. We arrived at Quirpon and found Boyce, but it felt strange arriving by car and needing a room on shore instead on Pitsiulak at the Quirpon dock. The fancy lighthouse hotel at Cape Bauld was still hauling in tourist dollars, and is now, because of the calm seas, able to provide direct ferrying service to the Cape instead of to their more protected Quirpon Harbor dock. Dinner for three was the usual fine seafood at the Northern Delight restaurant. Viking explorers seeking new lands, a sculpture at the Parks Canada L’Anse aux Meadows site, recruiting new explorers; and one of the boat-shaped plastic display cases from the 2000 Canadian Viking exhibition-- repurposed as a planter outside the LAM Norseman Restaurant. 13 12 July, Friday—Quirpon We met Lena and Christie’s gang at the Parks Canada L’Anse aux Meadows Visitor Center at midday and toured the museum (which was a bit too esoteric for the kids) and the reconstructed site (which they enjoyed more), because of its recreators, weapons, and ambience. The staff generously gave us free admission, having remembered our yearly Pitsiulak visits. Boyce’s daughter, Jamie Roberts, is now a regular Parks staffer and gives a great guided tour, which I attended last year. This year our guide was the Parks ’blacksmith, Mark, who rotates with Jamie. Both have interesting but different stories to tell. We spent most of the afternoon at the site and rendezvoused at Northern Delight for a massive dinner for 18, including Boyce, Jamie and her sons Nick and Nash, Ann and Michael, Gabriel Bartlett (a Parks staffer studying anthropology in New Brunswick), and Lena’s and Christie’s families. We spent the rest of the evening at Boyce’s sharing stories and watching a 2007 video I made of the crew fixing up the Pits for the summer, some funny takes of the gang being ‘screeched in ’ at Skipper Hot’s bar, scenes entering Hare Harbor, and work at the Mécatina site. Wanda Decker, a Norstead re-enactor, presenting woven wares; a view of Norstead’s well-stocked Viking trade center getting ‘screeched in’ at Skipper Hot’s bar. 13 July, Saturday, Quirpon to Brador We did not have to leave for the St. Barbe ferry until 1pm, so I spent an hour at the LAM Norstead Viking Trade Village site—quite impressive, I found it—with lots of re-enactors and buildings and stalls full of Viking era goods and activities. Wanda Decker was running the weaving shop and had lots of technology and bright woolens on display. Christie and Lena’s families had a great time exploring the ‘village ’and shore. The blacksmith working the forge discovered an assistant who donated an old iron stove door he found on the beach—budding archaeologists and metallurgists, they are! The site was crawling with bus and tourist ship visitors who were given only an hour to soak up the scene before being called in. I tried to find Gina and Adrian Nordhof at home and the Norseman Restaurant, but they were off somewhere. We parted company with Lena and Christie et al. at noon just as they were about to go whale-watching and cod-fishing with Boyce around Quirpon. Christie gave me the following report on that escapade: We went over to Boyce’s place thinking it was maybe a bit windy for a ride, but he assured us we’d get out. He hadn’t seen any whales that morning when he was out fishing, so he asked the kids if they’d like to do a bit of jigging for cod. Of course that was met with enthusiasm. Minke and Cyrus couldn’t wait to do some fishing. We let out what seemed like a hundred feet of line straight down and the kids did maybe three jigs before Boyce told them they’d caught something. They hauled in the line, and we had a nice codfish. Everyone was hollering and so excited to catch something. We plunked the line back in the water and sure enough, another. 14 And another…. We caught seven codfish and one unlucky sculpin in probably a half an hour. The longest part was hauling the line back in. It reminded me of some of the old references to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from early whalers and fishermen where men spoke of dropping a bucket in the water and hauling up a pail of fish like it was nothing. It was really incredible to see Boyce’s mastery of fishing too--he knew exactly where to drop the line and could tell just by the faintest vibration whether they had caught a fish, or when it got loose. I’ve been jigging for squid before, but never codfish, so that was exciting for all of us. We were thinking this was a great success and Boyce was passing around a bottle of moonshine when Lena spotted something in the distance. It was hard to see, but she thought it was a dorsal fin. Boyce took off in that direction and then slowed down as we realized what we were approaching: an entire pod of orcas! As we slowed a bit, the orcas decided to check us out up- close and personal. It was thrilling, and also terrifying to some (namely, Eider). One was swimming upside down under the boat, while two flanked us and more were behind us. It was wild--the shaky video can attest that we were all barely able to contain ourselves and our kids in the boat. The orcas followed us around for a good while-you could smell their breath and probably could have touched them had anyone dared. After a few minutes the whales took off, and while we sat grinning, thinking we had seen it all, a huge group of porpoises came to play! When the ocean delivers, it delivers big! There were probably twenty of them cruising up alongside the boat and in the near distance. We tootled around a minute more, and then made our way back to Boyce’s place. He made quick work of a few of the codfish we had caught so we could cook them for supper. Again, he knows what he’s doing. No of us could look away as he filleted them in seconds a-piece. I heard Eider describing his trip to someone, “first we were chased by an entire pod of orcas and then my mom’s fisherman friend cut up the fish we caught, and we got to use a huge hose to blow the guts through a hole in the floor.” All true! Suffice to say, it was one hell of a boat ride! Boyce was saying the orcas only come through a few days a year, so we were just very lucky. Quirpon excursion group with Boyce Roberts. No still pictures of orcas, unfortunately. (photos: C. Leece) Sounds like we missed an exciting adventure! At the St. Barbe ferry, we found Perry and crossed with him to Blanc Sablon, where we bought groceries and reached Florence Hart’s home where Perry cooked fish he had given to Florence who was still in Trois-Rivieres fog-bound after a medical appointment. 15 S A young apprentice at the Norstead forge; and Qayaq W, the Newfoundland Labrador ferry, at the St. Barbe pier. 14 July, Saturday: Brador to Red Bay and Return Michael and Ann wanted to see Red Bay, so we did another of my yearly pilgrimages to “The 16th Century Whaling Capitol of the World,” as described by Robert Grenier and Jim Tuck in their popular book. The ride north provided spectacular scenery: the huge electric towers at Forteau before they dive under the Strait of Belle Isle, the L’Anse Amour burial mound ca 8,000 BP, the Pinware embayment with its large salmon run, and the vistas looking west over the river from the Pinware highlands. Red Bay had its usual tourist busses, and the museum displays provide an excellent overview of the land and underwater excavations illustrating many of the finds we made at the Hare Harbor site on Petit Mécatina. Red Bay Museum illustration of a Basque cooking pot; and an illustration of producing the decorative applique strip. (credit: Parks Canada) 16 Principal Basque whaling sites in Labrador and the Quebec Lower North Shore. (Parks Canada graphic) We had a great tour of the Saddle Island sites with Parks guide Chris Bridle, one of Tuck’s original crew members, and a fine raconteur who listens closely to the interests and questions of his visitors. Parks Canada is almost finished renewing the boardwalks around the island. I do hope someday they add information on the indigenous settlement sites near the landing dock. Our group included Quebec visitors Marissa Homosits and Vincent Bourgeois, with whom Michael kept up a running translation in French. At the front desk we met Karen Pye, daughter of Frank and Joyce Pye, whom we knew when Frank was a United Church minister in Goose Bay before he and Joyce started an experimental boreal forest farm. On the way back to Brador, we visited the L’Anse Amour mound in Forteau to check out its signage as a model for the Brador mound project. Building a reconstruction of the San Juan in Passaia, Basque Country, Spain, for voyaging to Red Bay ca. 2026; and Karen Pye, Chris Bridle, and WF at the Parks Canada Red Bay Museum. (photo: M. Westgate) During our return to Brador we stopped for view of the 7,500 year old L’Anse Amour burial mound excavated by Bob McGhee and James Tuck in 1974 during their survey of the Labrador Strait of Belle Isle shore. I was interested to check out the signage text for ideas about how to present René Lévesque’s 17 Brador mounds to the public. Michael and Ann were impressed with the display and the amount of information conveyed in a series of bronze plaques and weather-proof illustrations on a viewing stand overlooking the mound. While we were gone, Perry picked up Florence at the airport. Within an hour, Perry and Florence, who worked for years as a cook at the Blanc Sablon Hospital had a fine dinner prepared. Cooking is old hat for her, so we felt quite at home, as we have for years past lodging at her home. Michael and I visited the Brador mound as a pre-check for the meeting with the town on Monday. He and Ann had revised their departure plans to leave Blank Sablon as ‘walk-ons ’on the ferry on the 15th, spending a night at the St. Barbe Motel and catching the St. Anthony to Deer Lake bus on the morning of the 16th, to make their flights home to Chatham on the 17th. They had a great trip and a good taste of our work and our northern friends. As far as I know, Ann—who is highly sensitive to fly-bites—escaped south without getting a single fly-bite. That may be the best record of any visitor the blackfly capitol of the world has ever had. W The 7500-year old L’Anse Amour Maritime Archaic Indian burial mound on the northern side of Forteau Bay; information displays at the L’Anse Amour burial mound. 18 15 July, Monday: Brador A 10am meeting at the Blanc Sablon Town Office introduced Perry and me to Mayor Colin Shattler, Treena Beaudoin, and Karine Benoit who were managing the Lévesque mound reconstruction project. According to the memory of some of Lévesque’s crew, one day when the excavation was finished, the crew went off to lunch, and when they returned Lévesque had vanished with the collections, and the crew dispersed without restoring the mound (in this case what RL called “Tumulus II”) to its original state. One of the crew who had worked with RL during his Blanc Sablon-Brador years ca. 1968-1974 was a local Brador fisherman named Clifford Hart. After Clifford’s death, his wife Florence looked after his archaeological and heritage legacy by lobbying local authorities, urging them to repair the ugly scar so the site could be promoted as an historic landmark. After several years, Florence’ s efforts were rewarded when Vicky Driscoll raised the issue to the Lower North Shore MRC (Municipality Resource Council) which agreed to support restoration. This is not a Ford truck ad; it’s the remains of René Lévesque’s excavation of an Early Archaic Indian burial that was left open in 1971 and needed reconstruction. Treena, excavating a test pit in the burial chamber area, checks for unrecovered materials. Possible dating samples were found. Our meeting with the town authorities was short and sweet. Treena Beaudoin, who had archaeological experience at Innu historical sites at the mouth of the Blanc Sablon River directed by François Guindon, volunteered to help Perry and I. Carine—also a history buff—provided information about people like Antonio Cormier with local knowledge of early days in Blanc Sablon. Mayor Shattler agreed to provide a truckload of sand and, when he learned that Perry could operate an excavator, he offered us one of the town’s machines. As the town saw it, the project was to be conducted in two phases: Phase 1, physical restoration of the mound; and Phase 2, providing information and on-site signage suitable for an historical marker. We agreed that the L’Anse Amour mound installation was the model we wanted to achieve. That afternoon Perry, Treena, and I began exploring Mound 2 (RL’s “Tumulus II) by excavating a test square at the bottom of the open pit alongside the standing slabs that bordered the east side of the grave chamber. RL’s notes and illustrations in his unpublished mss of ca. 2006 were guides, as they included top-plans and vertical section displays of the Mound 2 structure showing where artifacts and a 19 single possible human cranium fragment were found. Our test pit encountered mixed soils with dark patches that may be organic matter, and we saved a few potential charcoal samples. Otherwise, the test reached sterile in situ beach sand about 1.2m below the original ground surface without finding a trace of red ocher or other burial materials. It seems that RL had recovered everything that had been placed in the mound’s upper and lower burial pits. 16 July, Tuesday—Brador Promptly at 8am, a dump truck appeared at the dirt track leading to the site, and within a few minutes backed up to the pit and dumped in its load of sand. It was remarkable to see how much sand was required to fill the pit and create the mound seen in RL’s photos. There was not much we could do without an excavator to start moving rocks, so Treena gave me a tour of some of the high terrace sites where she had collected flakes and a few Archaic artifacts—some from locations RL had visited years ago. Little more can be learned from these sites without opening up large excavations. The most interesting site south of the airport where Treena had found a set of parallel lines of beach cobbles placed about 5-6 meters apart; these two lines stretched across the open landscape for nearly a kilometer, beginning near the beach and trending east for nearly a kilometer. The lines could not be ancient because they start at the modern shore, whereas an ancient feature would have been uplifted away from the shore. Are they a roadway? a boundary marker? a field border? or for some other purpose? Treena will make some inquiries with local historian, Antonio Cormier. Perry Colbourne clears the pit for a truckload of sand; and Treena guides mound-grooming. 17 July, Wednesday—Brador We had been promised an excavator machine, and it appeared as promised at the beginning of the dirt track at 8am this morning. Perry got control of the thing after a few jerks and wiggles and marched its rubber belt treads up to the site. There followed some further exploration of the controls before Perry was able to begin leveling the sand with the plow blade, and after that, moving rocks from RL’s ring- mound back into the center of the mound. Using the backside of the scoop he was able to pound rocks of all sizes and shapes into a semblance of a dome-shaped mound cap approximating RL’s pre-excavation photo. Treena and I did hand-work placing flat slabs around the edges and moving rocks Perry could not reach. The end result looked ok, and we cleaned up the excavator track marks and dusted off the mound rocks. We shall now see what happens over the coming year as rain, wind, and frost work their magic— hopefully not reducing the mound to a depression as the new earth settles. We also checked out Mound 20 I, which RL had back-filled but that now looked like a depression with a few rock clusters around the edges. We decided there was little we could do to bring this mound back to its original form. A dump of new sand could fill the depression, but there were too few rocks to use as surface capstones. RL must have dumped them into the bottom of the pit before back-filling the sand. Perry replacing surface rocks with the excavator; and he and Treena repair track marks in the surrounding ground. In the afternoon Perry took us on a survey of bakeapple bogs at the end of the dirt road beyond Florence and Clifford’s ‘chalet ’west of the Brador River where Treena’a parents have a cottage. Perry may return for some bakeapple picking here later in the summer, in part to provide Florence with a winter stash now that she can no longer forage on her own. 18 July, Thursday—Brador This was our last working day in Brador, so I paid a visit to Blanc Sablon town manager Karine Benoit, who was following our work. She arranged for a check on the spot and had some suggestions about town historians who might know about the mysterious boulder lines. I promised her a report on our work with more to come on information messaging. While we were in the area, I wanted to get together with our friends from St. Paul River, Garland Nadeau and Eileen Schofield. We arranged to have an early dinner at the Whiteley Museum, and Perry, Treena, Florence, and I met them at 5pm. This was an interesting dinner (crabcake sandwiches!) and discussion in which we discussed ways to energize LNS tourism using archaeological resources. One idea was to make a series of short films in the Quebec MCC collections, where we could demonstrate our artifacts. Interviewed by a smart host, Perry, Brad Loewen, Erik Phaneuf, Anja Herzog, I, and others could produce a series of presentations about Basque and Inuit archaeology for use in a variety of media and venues. The Whiteley Museum is already engaging Eric with some programming related to the Latitude 51 concept—or its new and better-funded replacement. Garland did not let us get away without gifts from his freezer—frozen halibut and packages of bakeapples and red berries. 21 Perry operating the excavator; and he and Florence Hart presiding over one of her lunch specials. 19 July, Friday—Brador to Lushes Bight Like last year, we were up at 3:30am to wait in line for standby numbers for the St. Barbe ferry, and there were already lots of cars and trucks ahead of us at 4:30. Perry’s number was 22 and mine, 23. It seemed unlikely the Qayaq W could take that many unreserved vehicles. However, we made it aboard with plenty of room for others behind us. During the 90-minute crossing we found ourselves across the table from a family that runs H&F Designs, a printing business in Forteau. Their shop can produce weather- proof signs and might be a candidate for manufacturing panels for the Brador mound display. It turns out that one of the family members, JoAnn Flynn, is on Blanc Sablon tourism board. Perry and I stopped for lunch at the Rocky Harbor Fisherman’s Restaurant, gassed up in Deer Lake, and made the afternoon ferry to Long Island. A huge line of vehicles queued up behind me as tomorrow is Long Island Day, the annual home-coming festival that attracts relatives and friends from the growing Long Island diaspora, coming home to visit and renew memories and family ties. A Colbourne tragedy occurred while we were away: the passing of Ginger-The-Cat, who had always been rather shy about me, until I showed up this summer, when she almost got cuddly—was she saying goodbye? 22 Colbourne family graves at the United Church cemetery at Lushes Bight, including grandparents and uncles to the present; the recent marker for daughter Jill’s passing in 2023, and names anticipating Perry marked with a Pitsiulak image (re-named ‘Daughter Jill’), and Louise with a dart board—her favorite game. 20 July, Saturday (Long Island Day) Lushes Bight This morning I reoccupied my ‘ office ’in Perry’s garage/shop and worked on a completion report on the mound reconstruction and edited the translation Treena did on Levesque’s description of the Brador mound sites from his unpublished manuscript. She and I will do a similar report for the NF Provincial Archaeology Annual Review later this year. I had a discussion with Perry and his brother Melvin about a possibly survey of Belle Isle next summer. Melvin remembered more than Perry about their father’s fishing ventures there, and Perry pulled up Google Earth images of the landing sites, the roads around the lighthouses at the north and southern end of the island, and the still-standing cabins near Black Joke at the northeastern end. Melvin thought the best approach would be by helicopter from St. Anthony— certainly the safest, as that would allow more time (days?) on the ground without the worry of harboring a boat. The problem would then be the restriction to one location, and a 2K$ per hour the trip would run to $15K or more. Perhaps what would be needed is an initial recon via helicopter to check the three most likely site locations. A 1500-year-old Dorset cooking pot preform (never completed) found in Seal Cove, Long Island, NL, by Carlo Mauti, loaned to the Long Island Heritage Center by Mildred Oak and probably quarried at Fleur de Lys. Long Island Day festivities claimed the attention of most of the Colbournes except Perry and me. But we did a bit of work documenting the soapstone bowl that had been found in Seal Cove, the next cove north 23 of Lushes Bight. For years, I have been wondering where the Dorset sites were on Long Island, ever since finding chert flakes and boulder pit-houses on the neighboring islands. Inquiries about the bowl led us to Mildred (Milly) Oak, a relative of Louise Colbourne’s who led a colorful life in Canada before returning to Long Island. We found her sunning at her cottage and got the details and a picture of the bowl, which was found by Carlo Mauti (who now lives in Ontario) and Vince Rice (Jim Rice’s brother) while berry- picking in Seal Cove. Carlo took the bowl to Ontario for three years before giving it to Milly, who sent it (or pictures) to The Rooms, where one of the archaeologists pronounced it a Dorset pot preform based on its rectangular shape. The Rooms folks were not interested in having it donated and suggested she keep it or donate it to a local museum, which she did, and it’s now on display in the heritage center, where we found it on Sunday. The pot is definitely Dorset and is in a semi-finished state, with roughly cut, square out-sloping walls, and quite small, probably 15 cm high and 13cm square at the top. The walls are ca. 2.5 cm thick. A finished Dorset pot of this size would have walls about 1 cm thick. The label with the pot in the museum reads: This is a qilliq traditionally used by Inuit people of the Arctic as well as Dorset and Thule people going back some 3000 years. It was made of soapstone, a fueled by seal or whale oil (blubber). The qilliq had to be tended constantly by trimming the wick which was made of moss or arctic cotton grass so it would not produce smoke. It is primarily used today in ceremonial events. The material probably came from a soapstone quarry located in Fleur de Lys, on the Baie Verte Peninsula. Another lamp similar to this one is on display at the Provincial Archaeology Office. This lamp was found on a beach in the town of Lushes Bight, NL. It is on loan from Mildred Oaks, a local resident. I agree with most of this information. But since it is Dorset and not Thule (or the descendant Labrador Inuit) it would be more accurate to describe it as “like a qilliq”. A qilliq is a lamp, not a pot, and this piece is not a Dorset lamp, which has a low oval bowl shape. Dorset sites in Newfoundland date to 0-600 C.E (i.e. A.D.). No Dorsets or their Pre-Dorset or Groswater ancestors were in Newfoundland 3000 years ago. Mostly likely this object was quarried at Fleur de Lys and was lost or abandoned on Long Island about 400 C.E. in its present rough, semi-finished condition. It would have taken hours of work with Dorset end-scrapers to produce a finished Dorset cooking pot. Long Island Day activities finished with a Saturday evening dance in the community hall, formerly the Long Island Academy public school. There are many fine dancers in this community, and my stumbling about I hope was not recorded. 21 July, Sunday—Lushes Bight Sunday was a quiet day as people recovered their senses (and muscles) because the dance continued well into the early morning hours. I bailed at midnight. After a left-over brunch, Perry and I rode his quad to Seal Cove and poked around for some Dorset signs. The cove is tiny, with a pebble beach and small stream, and is heavily bushed in except for a modern house and lawn. There once was a small cottage on the ledge on the northeast side, and here were found a midden of decayed battery parts. Not much chance of looking for Dorset sites here. However, Perry will make enquiries and will find out where Carlo found the pot. I spent the rest of the day finishing edits to Treena’s Levesque notes and the mound restoration report to the town. I decided to leave my stash of field gear in Perry’s “Smithsonian shed” until we see what comes of the Belle Isle project. 22-3 July, Monday-Tuesday—Lushes Bight to Port aux Basques 24 Departure day. I took the 1pm ferry and drove to Port aux Basques for the midnight ferry to North Sydney, arriving there at 7am. Then a full day’s drive, broken up with a lunch at Aida’s coffee shop in Sackville, New Brunswick, and then on to Georgetown, Me, where I visited with Will Richard and had dinner at an old inn in Bath which has some of the best fish and chips I’ve ever tasted. On the morning of the 14th, we loaded Will’s photography archive into my car, and I headed home to Fairlee, Vt., arriving about 5pm. The next day I spent several hours making a rough inventory of Will’s photos and packing the folders/albums into ten corrugated ‘book boxes ’for transport to DC and the Smithsonian as documentation for our joint expeditions and publication projects. Will is looking well and managing his independent life in his home in the Georgetown woods, assisted occasionally by his partner, Donna, who runs a B&B about a half-hour’s drive south of Bath. This year I did not see her as it is her busy season with clients. Appendix 1 Report on the Reconstruction of René Lévesque’s Brador “Tumulus II” Mound By William W. Fitzhugh (29 Aug. 2024) In 1971 René Lévesque and a group of students and volunteers excavated two stone-capped burial mounds on an elevated beach terrace in the town of Brador, about one kilometer southeast of the mouth of the Brador River. At the time, Lévesque was surveying archaeological sites in the Brador-Blanc Sablon area. Most of his work involved collecting artifacts from surface exposures of ancient shoreside habitation sites. However, two mounds known to Clifford and Florence Hart offered more interesting prospects and became full-scale excavations. Lévesque organized the project, photographed the dig, and described the excavation and finds as part of an unpublished manuscript on his research in Brador and nearby Blanc Sablon. After completing the excavation and back-filling Tumulus I, the group excavated Tumulus II (hereafter called “Mounds 1 and 2”), a similar but larger mound 112 m further east. When Mound 2 was completed, for some unknown reason, he left without filling the Mound 2 excavation pit or replacing its cap-rocks. Both mounds produced similar tools—triangular and nipple-base points, full- channel gouges, and other implements that resemble finds from the L’Anse Amour Mound in Forteau Bay, which is radiocarbon-dated 7,600 B.P. (McGhee 1976; McGhee and Tuck 1976). Although the Brador mounds produced younger radiocarbon dates (on samples Lévesque provided to Fitzhugh, who had them run by the Smithsonian’s Radiocarbon Laboratory), the artifacts left little doubt that they belong to a similar Early Archaic culture, people, and period. Around 2000 when Lévesque’s health began to fail (he died in 2007; Loewen 2023), I (Fitzhugh) urged him to prepare a manuscript laying out all the data he had collected from the Brador/Blanc Sablon region. A few years later, in his last year, he presented a large manuscript synthesizing data from hundreds of sites studied between 1968-1971, which he tied to relative geological uplift chronology and compared with other sites and publications. While a tour-de-force of data, to be publishable it needed more work, which he was not able to accomplish. Perhaps its best section was the description of the Brador mounds. When the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center began surveys on the Quebec Lower North shore in 2001, Lévesque introduced Fitzhugh to Clifford Hart, a Brador fisherman who had been part of Lévesque’s field 25 crew. Hart worked with Lévesque for several years around 1970 and developed a ‘green thumb ’for archaeology. At one point Hart discovered a cache of 4000-year old Maritime Archaic tools for making dugout canoes while excavating the basement of his Brador house. Another time, he found earth mounds behind a cottage he and his wife Florence were building west of the mouth of the Brador River. Later we identified the site as a 17th century Inuit winter village. After Clifford’s death, Florence Hart continued Clifford’s work by allowing the Smithsonian to excavate the Hart Chalet Inuit site and provided lodging and hospitality for our crews in her Brador home. Although our research was focused on historical Basque and Inuit cultures rather than the Archaic period, we were constantly reminded that the open scar on the hill behind the Hart residence needed attention. Opportunity came when LNS MRC offered to provide funds to return the open mound to its original appearance as part of a tourism and historical trail development plan. The reconstruction of the L’Anse Amour Amerindian burial on the north side of Forteau Bay has been a popular tourist destination, and with signage and publicity, the Brador mounds could make a similar contribution that could also acknowledge community participation in the original excavation and continued local interest in the site for the past fifty years. Documentation of the Lévesque Excavations Lévesque left a detailed account of the excavations of Mounds 1 and 2. He described the mounds, their geographical location, the excavation process, internal mound stratigraphy, find locations, and the artifacts and materials encountered (see attached illustrations and transcription of the original French language report translated by Treena Beaudoin). The maps and plans he prepared are schematic but present a clear picture of the internal structure of the mounds and the locations of artifacts. Unlike L’Anse Amour, no skeletal remains were preserved, although a fragment of what may have been a cranium (deleted word) was recovered in Mound 2. The present location of the collection is uncertain. In the early 1970s Lévesque sent the collection to the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, where it was inspected by James Wright, an expert in boreal forest Archaic cultures. Wright, and Robert McGhee and James A. Tuck (who excavated the L’Anse mound in 1974) confirmed that the Brador sites ’nipple base points and full-channel gouges were among the earliest artifacts known from Northeastern North America. Lévesque had preserved samples of soil and charcoal, and some of these remains were sent to Fitzhugh at the Smithsonian for radiocarbon analysis. Two of the sample produced c14 dates between 3600 and 4136 years B.P. (before present) but were problematic because the dates are three thousand years later than the artifact typology and the L’Anse Amour C14 date. (Perhaps the charcoal was contaminated with recent material or came from a higher location in Mound 2.) Further confusion resulted from an in situ photograph showing Dorset artifacts dating ca. A.D 500. (As this photo is not labelled, it may not from the Brador mounds.) Other photos of the excavations provided to Florence Hart by Jocelyn Cormier, a local Blanc Sablon woman who was a member of the excavation team, provide context for the Lévesque project and document their work on the mounds and surveys around Blanc Sablon. Mound 2 Reconstruction The mound 2 reconstruction project was conducted by William Fitzhugh, Perry Colbourne, and Treena Beaudoin between 15-18 July and was supported by a grant from the Quebec Lower North Shore MRC facilitated by MRC board member Vicky Driscoll. The project began with a meeting between Mayor Colin 26 Shattler, Karine Benoit, Treena Beaudoin, Perry Colbourne, and William Fitzhugh on 15 July. We began archaeological work that afternoon, re-excavating the central portion of the burial pit to make sure Lévesque recovered all the burial remains. Standing rock slabs that bordered the east side of the burial chamber, still in place, guided the location of our test pit (see illustration). The soil in the upper part of the test pit was a homogeneous charcoal-stained sand that probably had been returned to the burial pit by the Lévesque team when they partially filled the excavation. Ninety-five cm below the top of the vertical slabs and 1.5m below the original ground surface we reached undisturbed water-laid sands below the burial chamber. No tools, red ocher stains, or other cultural evidence were found except a few small organic lumps that we saved for a possible re-attempt at c14 dating. Mayor Shattler arranged for truckload of sand, and on 16 July the sand arrived and was dumped into the open pit, filling it and creating a low mound. On 17 July the town provided an excavator which Perry Colbourne used to move the rocks that Lévesque had removed from the mound surface and its interior back onto the surface of the mound and edged the outer perimeter with flat slabs. Lévesque had painted numbers on the Mound 1 surface rocks but not on Mound 2. We considered trying to return Mound I to its original state but decided to leave it in its present condition—partially re-filled and partially eroded— because there were not enough sand or rocks available to fill the depression and make a new cover pavement. This could be done in the future, if requested. The work described above completes Phase 1 of the Brador Mound Project--the physical reconstruction of Lévesque’s Brador “Tumulus II”. Phase 2 would develop signage information, maps, artifacts and illustrations to illustrate one of the oldest Amerindian mortuary monuments in Eastern Canada and North America. Credits: We thank René Lévesque (excavator/recorder); Clifford and Florence Hart (excavation; heritage preservation); Perry Colbourne, William Fitzhugh, and Treena Beaudoin (site reconstruction and information); MRC (for financial support), and the Municipality of Blanc Sablon (coordination and logistic support). The Town of Blanc Sablon/Brador might consider naming the site: “The Brador Mounds” Mound 1 Statistics Borden Site designation: EiBg-40.1 Location: N51 28 ’21”, W57 14 ’ 03” (pre-GPS measurement) Dimensions: 9.1m N-S; 8.2m E-W Elevation above sea level: 24.3m Mound 1 surface: 1.2m above surrounding ground Radiocarbon dates: 3600-4136 B.P. (unacceptable considering tool assemblage) Culture: Early Maritime Archaic Mound 2 Statistics Borden Site Designation: EiBg-40.2 27 Location: N51 18 ’21”, W57 13 ’ 59” (pre-GPS measurement), 112m east of Mound 1 Elevation above sea level: 22.5 m Dimensions: 9.1m N-S; 8.3m E-W Culture: Early Maritime Archaic Attachments: Transcription of Levèsque’s Mounds I and II report (Treena Beaudoin) List of Levèsque 1971 team members References: Brad Loewen. 2023. René Lévesque, archéologue de vocation (1925-2007). Archeologiques 36: 1-10. Elmer Harp, Jr. 1951. An Archaeological Survey in the Strait of Belle Isle Area. American Antiquity 16- 3:203-220. Elmer Harp. 1963. Evidence of Boreal Archaic Culture in Southern Labrador and Newfoundland. National Museum of Canada, Bulletin 193: 184-26l. Ottawa. Robert J. McGhee and James A. Tuck. 1975. An Archaic Sequence from the Strait of Belle Isle, Labrador, Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 34, published by the National Museum of Man, Ottawa, 1975, 254 pages. Robert J. McGhee. 1976. The Burial at l'Anse-Amour. 24 pp. National Museum of Man. Ottawa. “Archaeology in the Strait of Belle Isle Labrador: The L’ Anse Amour Burial Mound”. INSIDE NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR ARCHAEOLOGY. St. John’s, Newfoundland, October 2014. Photographs (W. Fitzhugh) 1. Brador Mound 2 as found 15 July 2024 28 2. Test pit in the center of the burial chamber, 15 July, with Treena Beaudoin and Perry Colbourne. Standing slabs still in place in their original position along the east (right) side of the pit. 3. Test pit in the central burial feature, Mound 2, excavated to sterile beach sand 1.5m from the original ground surface. No traces of cultural remains were present in any of the pit fill soil. Standing slabs along the east (top) side of the burial pit remain in place as found by Lévesque. 29 4. A full dump-truck load of sand being emptied into the mound pit, 16 July. 5. Leveling the sand dump, with Treena Beaudoin assisting, 17 July. 30 6. Cap-rocks mostly in place on mound surface. 7. Mound 2 with cap-rocks in place and surrounding ground smoothed up, July 18. 31 8. L’Anse Amour Mound and viewing station with information panels, 14 July 2024. Appendix 2 Lévesque’s Brador Mound Excavation Description from his Unpublished Brador Manuscript (translated by Treena Beaudoin 21 July 2024, edited by W. Fitzhugh 25 July 2024 Mound 1 (EiBh-40.1) Mound 1 is a dome-shaped structure. The contour of its base is not always obvious as it gradually follows the surrounding environment. But along one axis, it measures 9.1 meters in length north-south, and 8.2 meters east-west. As for the top of the mound, it rises 1.2 meters above the surrounding ground. The surface of the dome is perfect, made up of blocks laid flat and covered sporadically with spots of lichen. There was only one damaged section attributable to disturbance by a local resident. On the surface, flat rocks were found side by side, constituting the domed mound surface, which was sporadically covered with lichen or aeolian sand. We began by clearing all the stones from these superficial deposits, making a precise sketch of the surface rocks, faithfully recording all shapes and sizes, accompanied by photos. Each of the stones was numbered. We noted some burnt marks under the lichen and found a fragment of a pink quartzite tool. Approaching the mound, what method of excavation should be used? For fear of missing any structural arrangement, we chose to open a trench 60 cm. wide, from the northern base of the mound in a southern direction towards the center. After having removed the surface stones, we removed 12 to 17 cm of sterile sand below the rocks, finding no archaeological remains. Continuing the excavation, we found a second stone dome with a diameter of 8.0 m, smaller than the first, like two superimposed igloos. This required making a second grid. Below that, as we approached the center, we found disturbed soil layers of black and oily sand, with some organic matter that we presumed to be food offerings (seal flesh?). The deeper we went, sand appeared in different colors, like interspersed gray or pink spots leading in the same direction, which suggests that these are loads of fill transported by the makers of the mound. Near the south wall, we once again found in situ undisturbed stratified sand. Very close to the center where the layers were increasingly thick and consistent, we found stone slabs set in place. Seeing that most of the stones were in the center, we decided to open a 3.0 square meter unit (a) to the west and excavated its western half, proceeding from south to north. As it is the center that matters, we decided to open another square (b), measuring 2.1 meters by 3.0 meters, adjacent to the trench, but on the west side of the mound. In this new quadrant, a first level of stones was removed with the same precautions. Some of the stones rested directly on others. There followed a layer of sand identical to the one below the surface rocks in the square we had just excavated. This layer was also disturbed, but contained fragments of shattered slate, probably from an ax or a gouge, made of a material that seemed intrusive to our location. Then came the second level of stones complementing the neighboring square. Below this level, the sand takes on an increasingly dark color, with lenses/layers of sand cemented into a black, hardened material of organic origin. Here we found more fragments of slate and pink quartzite, some of which are blackened 32 and may have been burned by a ceremonial fire or by a layer of material used in the construction of the inner-dome. Under one of these lenses/layers, the sand had a reddish tint, suggesting the presence of a red ocher burial. A return to the initial trench showed the same stratigraphy, especially towards the center of the mound. Inspection of this new layer revealed a paving of flat stones. An interesting detail was a stain of brown-red ocher at a depth of 40 cm. To understand this set of rocks, we extended our second unit (b) 60 centimeters toward the north. Under this second level, near the center of the mound, there emerged a lump of very bright red ocher and some ocher-stained stones and a layer of flat stones. These stones formed a group suggested by the previous excavation (unit a) that had a roughly circular appearance in the center of the mound, 75 cm. below the surface rocks. Under these flat stones we found a second row of rocks, smaller than the first. At 85 cm there was a 7.5 cm layer of sand. When we widened the trench above the paving, burnt spots, oily matter, and ocher increased. So far, however, the only cultural material in this unit was a small shard of vein quartz. In the center of the mound under the paving, at a depth of 1.0 m, we observed a 96 cm diameter pit intruding into the natural strata of coarse sterile sand. The walls of this pit descended at a steep slope toward another smaller pit with a diameter of 40 cm and a depth of 28.5 cm, filled with bright red ocher. Within this ocher were layers of ash, wood charcoal, and bone fragments. At a depth of 5 cm in the ocher layer, 1.49 . from the top of the mound, were two quartz crystal tools [points?] with their tips pointing toward each other like the hands of a clock. They were oriented respectively 10 ̊NE/SW., and 20 ̊ SW. Below this we found sterile ground at a depth of 1.7 m. Based on this information, we may attempt a reconstruction of events. A central question: is this a cremation? Some evidence militates against it. A cremation usually contains some preserved burned bone elements. However, the burial revealed only a small quantity of very fragmentary bones which we could not confirm as human. The facts could be interpreted in the following way. The authors of the mound first cleared the chosen location of scattered rocks and excavated a burial pit. In its center, at a depth of 1.7 m in sterile sand, they dug a 96 cm pit and then a second smaller pit at the bottom of the latter. They performed some ritual ceremony near these pits and filled them with ashes and ocher. They then added ocher-covered tools and covered them with a layer of sand, and above that placed two layers of rock slabs laid flat, covering the outline of the funerary niche. Above this, they built a mound of sand protected by a layer of flat rocks. This mound was then covered with sand that was then protected by a second layer of surface rocks. Type of deposit: funerary mound Cultural tradition: Maritime Archaic Mound 2 (EiBh-40.2) Location: N512̊8'21", W57 ̊13'59" Brador Height Above Sea Level: 22.5 meters. This mound is 112 m northeast of Mound 1 and is a perfect circle 9.1 m in diameter and 1.29 m high. The same person who dug into Mound 1 must have been the one who dug a pit 60 cm deep and 1.37 m wide 33 pit in the center of Mound 2, leaving the rocks uncovered and scattered about. Near the mound we found a small concentration of pink and blue quartzite flakes. Our experience digging Mound 1 was useful for the Mound 2 excavation. To fully understand its structure, we proceed with a direct vertical approach, laying out a 4.5 m square in the center of the mound. As at Mound 1, we removed the lichen and sand from the surface rocks. The vegetation was thicker on the mound’s east side, reaching 10 to 15 cm. We then removed the surface stones that had been placed together side-by side. These blocks were larger than those covering Mound 1, on average 90 cm long and 15 to 30 cm thick. To avoid damage to the internal structure, we excavated a 60 cm wide E-W trench across the south side of the mound. The first few centimeters revealed stratigraphy similar to Mound 1: a superposition of two stone dome caps separated by a layer of sand. We sieved the sand but found few archaeological remains other than a weathered gouge 1 m below the surface. As we dig deeper, particularly towards the center, we detected more and more of the oily, hardened sand found in Mound 1. The burial itself was announced by a bright red ocher stain at 1.02 m depth. As excavation progressed, a completely different structure than found in Mound 1 appeared. Widening the trench towards the north revealed several large slabs placed vertically, while others were horizontal. We exposed this feature by excavating a trench behind it following the contour of the vertical slabs, which had a rough circular arrangement. Since the slabs certainly delineated the central burial feature, we began excavating at its center and removed three large slabs deeply embedded in underlying sand and were part of niche border wall. We then came across a disordered set of slabs, the majority of which were vertical, some of which were covered by horizontal slabs. These slabs were removed as well as the underlying sand. At 1.1 m we came upon a feature of special interest: a layer of flat stones covering the bottom of the niche. Testing beneath one of the stones revealed a layer of sand 12.5 to 17.5 cm thick, increasingly ocher-stained with depth, which was 1.35 m below the surface. At this depth there was a 1.75 cm diameter circular concentration of 15-20 cm thick round stones on the south side of the niche. Below this was a layer of ocher following the concave base of a pit 1.4 m below the surface. In the sand covering the ocher layer was a fragment of animal tissue. The upper part of the ocher layer was almost pure pigment while that below was a mixture of ocher and ash. At the bottom of the ocher pocket was a concentrated layer of ash and charcoal that retained its original cylindrical shape. Beneath, the ocher sand gave way to reddish stained sand 5 to 10 cm thick. From these layers of ocher, ash, and charcoal we collected 39 artifacts. After the last layer of reddish sand had been removed, we discovered another layer of ocher 1.58 m below ground with a diameter of 1 m and a thickness of 20 cm. In this feature we found five artifacts. A flat rock lay at the bottom of the feature. As with Mound 1, we attempt a reconstruction. The builders first dug a pit measuring approximately 1.52 m by 3.04 m, with a smaller and deeper one in the northwest sector of the upper pit. Against the wall of the upper pit, they erected a series of vertical slabs whose tops were level with the surrounding ground and placed a flat stone at the bottom of the deeper pit. An initial ceremony deposited ocher and five artifacts in this pit. A second phase of the ceremony involved more fire, ocher, and many artifacts. This new layer was covered with a crown of rounded rocks placed at the bottom of the standing slabs. Everything was then covered with sand, and several large horizontal slabs were placed over the standing slabs. This was covered with a layer of sand, a lower layer of mound capstones, another layer of sand, and the final layer of capstones to finish and stabilize the mound. 34 We collected a total of 43 worked objects, 39 from the upper ocher layer, and 5 in the lower layer. In the upper ocher layer, objects were found at various depths between layers of ash and oche but were concentrated in the northeast part of the burial pit. This level also contained what may have been a possible cranium fragment. These artifacts included several nipple base bifaces and two full groove gouges. Most of the points and one of the gouges in the upper layer were oriented northeast, and some tools were ‘soaked’ in ocher. The tools in the lower pit included two nipple base points and two full groove gouges; all were found at the same depth, but without any obvious orientation. Type of feature: funeral dome Cultural tradition: Maritime Archaic. [Editor’s note: The present location of the Brador mound artifact collections is unknown. After inspection at the Canadian National Museum in the early 1970s they were returned to RL. It is rumored that he gave them to a friend for safe-keeping before his death, but the name of that person is not known.]