In 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier arrived in Gaspé, Québec and claimed Canada for France. Gaspé, located in Eastern Québec on the North Atlantic, has been a hub of maritime culture in North America for centuries, and continues to be an important fishing and commerce port today. At different points in history, Gaspé has been home to indigenous fishermen, Basque whalers, and robust French and British cod fishing communities, each with their own unique shipbuilding heritage. In the summer of 2019, Institute of Nautical Archaeology researchers from Texas A&M University initiated a long-term study of shipbuilding in the area, starting with a survey of the Gaspé Bay for shipwrecks and other submerged cultural heritage. This paper discusses the results of that survey, and the long-term goal of the study, including the public outreach efforts taken by the principal investigators and the resulting success in locating cultural heritage materials based on local knowledge.

Representations of Black and Indigenous people are frequently seen on 17^th- and 18^th-century European tobacco advertisements as well as on other printed or visual matter. The iconography presented in these representations often portrays hybrid elements of Indigenous and African ethnicity. Evocations of exoticism and passivity are also commonplace.  

Borrowing ideas from Catherine Molineux’s (2007) article “Black Virginians”, this paper traces the context and provenance of a late 17th-century clay tobacco pipe embellished with a relief-moulded representation of an African or Indigenous individual smoking a pipe and holding a bundle of tobacco. Unearthed during the excavation of a colonial fishing village in Ferryland, Newfoundland, this object highlights the trade in Newfoundland codfish for tobacco produced by enslaved peoples, the connection between decorated pipes and the socio-economic status of the smoker, and the intersection of imperialistic plans, early modern tobacco cultivation and political economy.