An Archaeological Survey in the Strait of Belle Isle Area

• Published in: American Antiquity
• Main Author: Harp, Elmer
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1951
• Subjects: Museology; Archeology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); History; Newfoundland; Belle Isle; Strait of Belle Isle; Cape Dorset; Beothuck; eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/276781; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0002731600008131

This paper is a preliminary descriptive report of an archaeological reconnaissance undertaken during the summer of 1949 in southern Labrador and northern Newfoundland. The project will be continued in the summer of 1950, but since the prehistory of the area is both interesting and relatively unknown, I have thought it worth-while to write a brief account of the work as far as it has progressed. The general purposes of the investigation are to delineate the culture of the Beothuck, or Red Indians, who once inhabited Newfoundland, and to trace their derivation; to clarify the manifestations of Cape Dorset Eskimo culture first noted in Newfoundland by Jenness (1929) and Wintemberg (1939, 1940); and to check on the possibilities of contact between the Beothuck and Dorset Eskimo with a view to tracking the diffusion of certain traits which, it is believed, occurred during the Archaic period.