Prehistoric People of
Newfoundland and Labrador

he Prehistory of Newfoundland and Labrador is long and fascinating. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation of the Province stretching back more than 9,000 years. Long before the coming of Europeans in the late 1400s there were Indian and Eskimo (Inuit) people living here, learning to use the resources of the land and the sea and developing the tools that they needed to survive. The earliest evidence of human habitation in the province comes from small campsites along the Strait of Belle Isle in southern Labrador. Only stone tools - spear or dart point, knives and small scrapers - have been preserved but, from the locations of the sites, archaeologists believe that these early people were hunting seals, caribou, sea birds and fishing for salmon. Charcoal from campfires has been dated to almost 9,000 years ago. These people spread gradually northward along the Labrador Coast where they became more familiar with the resources of the area and how to use them. They eventually came to depend so heavily on the sea that their culture is known as the Maritime Archaic tradition.

Descendants of the early hunters of the Strait of Belle Isle may have reached northern Labrador as long as 6,000 years ago. By 5,000 years ago they had also moved south to colonize parts of the Island of Newfoundland. Archaeologists have found remains of their villages, campsites and burial places throughout the province. At L'Anse-Amour, Labrador, a child about 12 years old was buried under a large pile of rocks about 7,500 years ago. This may be the oldest burial mound in the world. It has been restored as a provincial historic site and can be seen along the road to the community. Another fascinating burial site is the cemetery at Port au Choix, in western Newfoundland, where more than 100 people were buried between about 4,000 and 3,500 years ago. With the skeletons was a remarkable collection of weapons and tools as well as decorative and magical objects made from stone, bone, antler and ivory. The most impressive village site of these people is located in the far north of Labrador. Houses more than 50m long have been discovered at this site, as well as food caches, burials and a system of cairns designed to drive caribou toward the village where they could be killed for food and raw materials.

rom these, and many other sites, archaeologists have reconstructed the culture of the Maritime Archaic people and have come to appreciate their inventiveness in coping with the sometimes harsh environment of Newfoundland and Labrador. They appear to have spent most of the year near the coast where they hunted seals, walrus and perhaps other sea mammals. They also fished for salmon and hunted all species of sea birds, including the now-extinct Great Auk. Caribou, beaver and other land animals were also important to these people, both for food and as a source of furs and raw materials for tools and weapons.

The sea and its resources seem to have been of paramount importance to the Maritime Archaic people. This is known from their choice of campsites and from the foods they ate. It is also reflected in their art, which includes representations of whales and many types of sea birds. It is also seen in the magical charms and amulets which they carried, in some cases to their graves, which included the claws of seals, whales' teeth, and the heads, feet and skins of many species of sea birds. Many of these objects can be seen at the interpretation centre at Port au Choix and at the Newfoundland Museum.

bout 4,000 years ago a people with a language, culture and history distinct from the Maritime Archaic tradition appeared on the northern Labrador coast. They were people from the Canadian Arctic to whom archaeologists refer as Palaeo-Eskimos. The first Palaeo-Eskimo people used tools and weapons of wood, antler, bone, ivory stone and other materials, but in most cases only the stone tools and weapons have been preserved. The minute stone tools and weapons made by these people are among the finest ever made. They are flaked from colourful fine-grained stone and are so exquisitely crafted that they have an almost jewel-like quality. Although the tools and weapons were used for many of the same purposes as those of the Maritime Archaic people, they are very different in almost every respect.

These early Palaeo-Eskimos eventually travelled as far south as the Island of Newfoundland and their sites have been recorded from virtually every region of the coast. Then, slightly before 2,000 years ago, they just disappear from the archaeological record, perhaps victims of changing environmental conditions.

About 2,500 years ago a new group of Palaeo-Eskimos, usually called Dorset Eskimos, appeared in northern Labrador. Just as their earlier cousins had done some 1,500 years previously they, too, spread throughout the Province. Their campsites and villages have been discovered on almost every part of the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts. Their tools and weapons of chipped stone exhibit many of the same characteristics as those of their predecessors. In some places, bone, antler and ivory have been found made into harpoons, sled shoes, stylized carvings of seals and bears and other useful and decorative objects. In northern Labrador soapstone carvings of miniature bears, shells, human figures and other objects have been recovered. By about A.D. 1,000 the Dorset people appear to have followed the Palaeo-Eskimos into extinction. Only in northern Labrador did Dorset people persist for a few hundred more years.

While these people subsisted on many of the same species as had the Maritime Archaic Indians, many of their tools and weapons were markedly different. Their houses, too, were distinctive. A large Dorset Eskimo village near Port au Choix had more than 40 houses walled with sod and probably covered with a wood frame and hide roof. Remains of this large village, perhaps occupied for as many as 500 years, are still visible today. Artifacts from all Palaeo-Eskimo cultures are on display at the Newfoundland Museum in St. John's.

The Palaeo-Eskimo migration into Newfoundland and Labrador displaced many Indian peoples. In northern Labrador and on the Island of Newfoundland archaeologists have been unable to find any traces of the Maritime Archaic after about 3,500 years ago. In southern Labrador, however, and on parts of the central Labrador coast, some Maritime Archaic people seem to have survived throughout the Palaeo-Eskimo period. What remains of their culture is much changed. The elaborate polished stone tools and weapons and the lavish ochre-covered burials of earlier times are no longer found. Instead, simple stone tools - projectile points, knives, scrapers and so forth - are all that remain. These are found scattered around small hearths in coastal locations, so it is believed that marine hunting and fishing remained important subsistence activities. Archaeologists have been able to trace these people forward in time until the arrival of the first Europeans. Some scholars believe that these coastally-adapted people may have been the ancestors of the Montagnais-Naskapi people who inhabit parts of the Labrador Peninsula today.

Around 2,000 years ago Indian people again appear in the archaeological record on the Island of Newfoundland. Whether these people migrated to the island at this time or were actually present since the Maritime Archaic demise remains a mystery. They do seem to have lived on the island throughout the Dorset Eskimo period and must have had some contact with those people. After the disappearance of the Dorset Eskimos, Indian cultures become much more evident and it is probably safe to say that by A.D. 1,000 the ancestors of the Beothuk Indians had emerged.

vidence from a series of sites indicates that the ancestors of the Beothuk lived along the coast just as their Archaic predecessors had. Their projectile points, probably arrowheads, knives, small scrapers and other stone tools and weapons show gradual changes through time until the historic period when they begin to be replaced by corresponding tools made from iron and other European materials. In the face of European pressure, their coastal pit-house villages were eventually abandoned and the Beothuk of the later historic period attempted to exist in the interior of Newfoundland, particularly along the Exploits River where their most recent campsites date to the early nineteenth century.

The last prehistoric people to arrive in the Province were the so-called Thule Eskimos, ancestors of the present- day Inuit of the Labrador coast. Before contact with Europeans they lived in sod-covered winter houses, dug partly into the ground and framed with the bones of right and bowhead whales, which they were able to kill offshore. Besides whale meat, their diet consisted of a variety of seals, walrus, fish, birds and land mammals which they hunted with harpoons, spears, bows and arrows or captured with snares and traps. Their other equipment included most of that generally found among prehistoric Canadian Inuit - dog sleds and harnesses, "kayaks" and "umiaks", the snow knife, and objects which indicate their ingenious adaptation to northern conditions. Although the Labrador Inuit have been in contact with Europeans for more than 400 years and many aspects of their culture are greatly changed, a surprising amount of the native way of life remains and can be seen by travellers to the Labrador coast.

This summary of Newfoundland and Labrador's prehistory is far from complete. This is not only because of it's brevity, but also because there are a great number of questions for which answers have not yet been found. Archaeological investigations take place each summer and piece by piece the puzzle of our prehistory is taking shape. Many of these excavations are open to the public and visitors are invited to stop by and watch as the past is revealed.