In early 2021, I had the opportunity to analyze an interesting assemblage of faunal remains recovered from a Middle Dorset site on the west coast of Newfoundland. Most of the interesting things are either taxonomic or taphonomic, and would likely bore (taphonomy pun) audience members out of their seats. But out of nearly 7000 fragments of bone, I identified six as walrus – and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. Walrus seem never to have been particularly abundant, or at least abundantly accessed, on the island of Newfoundland, where Dorset sites are the most numerous of all Indigenous sites known to date. Join me as I, despite having little supporting evidence, explore the concept of longing in the archaeological record of the Dorset in Newfoundland, and in a discussion of some of the possible causes, implications, and parallels elsewhere.

Debate about whether the Beothuk spoke an Algonkian language goes back to the nineteenth century and largely ended in 1978 with the publication of John Hewson’s Beothuk Vocabularies.  He concluded that their language must have been part of the Algonkian family, however, some researchers have recently raised doubts about this.  Clear archaeological evidence for an ancestral Beothuk presence in the region for approximately 2000 years appears to rule out the possibility of them speaking a Central Algonkian language.  In other words, if it was an Algonkian language, it could only have been an Eastern Algonkian language.  Furthermore, Hewson’s understanding of the position of the Beothuk language began with the idea that all of the recent historical neighbours of the Beothuk were speakers of Algonkian languages, and therefore this family was the best source of comparative data for his study.  However, currently available evidence suggests that the late precontact period next-door neighbours of the Beothuk were Iroquoians and Dorset.  They may not have had any Algonkian neighbours in precontact times at all, which suggests that we may need to go back to the drawing board for comparative linguistic data.   

Ever since J.C. Harrington (1954) and Lewis Binford (1962) first postulated methods for dating colonial-era archaeological sites using the stem bore holes from broken clay tobacco pipes, archaeologists in North America have been hunching over their desks busily measuring these fragments with slavish enthusiasm. I was among these naïve acolytes. Tens of thousands of pipestems later, I had nothing to show for it other than bad posture, poor eyesight, a bunch of worn-down drill bits, and a long list of excuses as to why these dating techniques were not reliable. This paper is a tongue-in-cheek account of a journey through pipe bore measuring madness, culminating in an intervention by my mentor and dear friend Jim Tuck, whose threat to pave his driveway with my coveted pipe stems finally released me from interpretative purgatory.

The cultural resource management industry in Ontario is witnessing some bewildering times. Never in the course of their careers could archaeologists envision a scenario where they would be conducting test pit survey and excavation smack dab in the middle of a very active, contemporary cemetery, amongst standing stones, intact graves, personal commemorations, and active mourners. Yet here we are, on a regular basis, undertaking such work as a result of legislative knitting of two disparate pieces of legislation and regulatory oversight. This paper outlines the situation in an effort to seek input from others on how to unravel this untenable situation.