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Across the Tickle: The Gould Site, Port au Choix-3 and the Maritime Archaic Indian Mortuary Landscape

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The Cultural Landscapes of Port au Choix

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology ((IDCA))

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Abstract

This chapter links two Maritime Archaic Indian (MAI) sites in Port au Choix, the extensive mortuary site of Port au Choix-3 (EeBi-2) and the younger Maritime Archaic component of the Gould site (EeBi-42) (Fig. 3.1). This is the first detailed description of the latter site and we argue that it was an intermittently used field camp connected directly to Port au Choix-3. Understanding the 5,000 year-old coastal topography is fundamental to establishing this connection. We argue that the importance of Port au Choix-3 lay in its key position on the coastal travel route along the Northern Peninsula and that it was an important landmark for Maritime Archaic not just at Port au Choix, but throughout the larger region.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although “cemetery” is in common usage when referring to hunter-gatherer mortuary sites, we prefer to use the term “burial ground” which is without assumptions about size, delineation or formalization and which instead focuses attention on location and landscape.

  2. 2.

    In Tuck (1976:162) the radiocarbon dates Y-2608 and I-4380 are misreported, the first as 3,770  ±  80 BP instead of 3,370  ±  80 BP and the second as 4,230  ±  220 BP instead of 3,230  ±  220 BP; we use the dates reported in the CAA radiocarbon website which are based on Wilmeth (1978).

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Acknowledgements

Gould site excavations were initially and generously funded by a Memorial University New Initiatives Research Grant from the Office of the Vice-President (Research). Subsequent funding was provided by: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University; the J.R. Smallwood Foundation for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Memorial University; Parks Canada; the Provincial Archaeology Office of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador; and the Town of Port au Choix. Facilities for analysis were funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs Program and Memorial University. We would like to thank: Peter Scott for tree species identification, Larry Nolan for developing our GIS software and assisting in its application, Charles Conway for drafting the figures, Chris Hammond, Dominique Lavers and Patty Wells for artefact photographs, and the many crew members who spent several summers working on our Gould site excavations. I would like to thank Fred Schwarz for providing unpublished data on the Woody Point-2 site, Elaine Anton of The Rooms Provincial Museum for granting me access to the Port au Choix-3 collection, and the Provincial Archaeology Office for answering endless queries about Maritime Archaic sites. Thanks also to David Sanger and Brian Robinson for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. Department of Archaeology, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, Canada, A1C 5S7

    M. A. P. Renouf

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  1. M. A. P. Renouf
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Correspondence to M. A. P. Renouf .

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  1. Archaeology Unit, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, A1C 5S7, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

    M. A. P. Renouf

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Renouf, M.A.P., Bell, T. (2011). Across the Tickle: The Gould Site, Port au Choix-3 and the Maritime Archaic Indian Mortuary Landscape. In: Renouf, M. (eds) The Cultural Landscapes of Port au Choix. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8324-4_3

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