Ship to Shore: Inuit, Early Europeans, and Maritime Landscapes in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence

• Main Authors: Fitzhugh, William W., Herzog, Anja, Perdikaris, Sophia, McLeod, Brenna
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2011
• Subjects: Anthropology; Archaeological Anthropology; Geography; International and Area Studies; Nature and Society Relations; Belle Isle; Strait of Belle Isle; Petit-Mécatina; inuit; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/global/32; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/global/article/1031/viewcontent/Perdikaris_2011_BK_CHPTR_Ship_to_shore__DC_VERSION.pdf

Recent research at Hare Harbor on the Quebec Lower North Shore in the northeastern Gulf of St. Lawrence reveals great potential for archaeological and historical research on Basque and other early European activities in the northwestern North Atlantic. Although considerable data have been retrieved from Red Bay, Labrador, and a few other sixteenth-century sites in the Strait of Belle Isle and Gulf of St. Lawrence, archaeological knowledge of the early European phase of North American history in this region is limited, and information about post-sixteenth-century Basque occupations is nearly nonexistent. This chapter reports on a multicomponent site with late sixteenth-century Basque and late seventeenth/ early eighteenth–century European (possibly Basque) and Inuit occupations at Hare Harbor, Petit Mécatina Island, 200 km west of the Strait of Belle Isle. The later historic occupation includes hearths, middens, and ballast piles from adjacent land and underwater sites. In addition to domestic cooking hearths and ballast piles associated with the sixteenth-century Basque occupation, the site’s later component contains two structures with paved stone floors, one interpreted as a cookhouse and the other as a blacksmith shop. The ethnic/national origin of these structures, which in earlier reports was designated as Basque on the basis of coarse earthenwares and large amounts of roof tiles, is now equivocal. Excavations in 2009 revealed a sixteenth-century Basque component adjacent to and deeper than the cookhouse (Structure 1) paved floor, raising the possibility that the cookhouse and blacksmith deposits may have a north Biscayan or Channel origin. Excavation also revealed a Labrador Inuit settlement that may be contemporary with the later European occupation. Information recovered from the European and Inuit contexts documents changing economic, social, and political conditions, including the appearance of Inuit in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and their participation in a European cod fishery at Hare Harbor. Given the ...