Abstract

Martin Frobisher's expeditions (1576-1578) to the Eastern Arctic sought initially to find a route to Cathay and when that proved to be less lucrative than the gold the English could bring back, the Company of Cathay was funded in order to mine tons of supposedly gold-bearing black ores. The enterprise resulted in the implantation of the earliest, though short-lived, industrial English establishment in the New World. This presentation highlights The archaeological potential of Frobisher's base camp on Kodlunarn Island, and discusses the results and preliminary analysis of the data from the 1990-1991 limited testing on the island. The overview of the limited archaeological research carried out so far provides us with architectural, artifactual and archaeometric data which will help in answering a host of anthropological and historical questions related to technological aspects of the Frobisher endeavour.