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Science Forum Index » Archaeology Forum » Archaeologists hope tests will determine age of...
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| Jack Linthicum... |
 Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:11 am |
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Five meter long canoe may have been a product of pre-Columbian
workmanship. Carbon 14 tests will be conducted this fall in Toronto.
Earlier C14 indicated the 1400 date.
Paddling through history
Archaeologists hope tests will determine age of Amerindian dugout
canoe found at bottom of Quebec lake in 1986
The Gazette
Friday, August 01, 2008
Since its discovery on the bottom of a lake north of Montreal more
than 20 years ago, an amazingly well-preserved and possibly
prehistoric dugout canoe has sparked debate among archaeologists.
The debate has focused on whether the vessel was hollowed out of a
massive white pine by Amerindians using stone tools and fire in the
1400s, making it a rare example of dugout technology in the St.
Lawrence River valley before the European conquest.
Or whether the five-metre-long vessel was made later, in the 1500s to
1600s by Amerindians, perhaps using technology and metal tools
belonging to French colonists who had a history with dugouts in
Europe.
To date, more than 3,500 dugouts have been recovered in France.
Now two Montreal archaeologists are banking on carbon-14 dating at a
laboratory in Toronto this fall to settle the debate about the Lac
Gour dugout.
Named after Lac Gour, the Lanaudière lake 50 kilometres north of
Montreal where it was found by an amateur diver in 1986, it is one of
only 11 dugouts ever recovered in Quebec and the one that is
potentially prehistoric.
"The goal is to get some answers," said Brad Loewen, a professor of
archaeology at the Université de Montréal.
"The whole issue is whether it is of European inspiration or an
indigenous technology," explained Loewen, one of two archaeologists
involved in the project.
The other is Amélie Sénécal, the chief archaeologist of the Pointe du
Buisson Archaeological Park in Melocheville, where the dugout is on
permanent display.
"We want the dugout to be the oldest (ever found in Quebec) but we do
not have the archaeological proof yet," Sénécal said.
The Pointe du Buisson archaeological complex is located on a peninsula
jutting into the St. Lawrence River that served as a prehistoric
Amerindien portage and fishing site for 5,000 years before European
contact.
Since 1949, carbon-14 dating has been used to date archaeological
treasures ranging from cave drawings in southern France to bog bodies
in Scandinavia and prehistoric skeletal remains around the world.
"It is a really, really accurate and useful tool," Loewen said.
While the birch bark canoe and its use for long trips is well
documented in Amerindien culture into antiquity, Loewen said, less is
know about the dugout canoe, a heavier, less agile craft more suited
for shorter trips.
There are some references to dugouts, including in the journals of
Samuel de Champlain who described dugout canoes being made with stone
tools and burning by the native peoples he met on his travels.
But a more detailed history of a prehistoric dugout in the St.
Lawrence valley remains a mystery without an artifact proven to belong
to the indigenous people who lived in this part of the world before
Europeans arrived.
In the late 1980s, Sénécal said, the Lac Gour dugout underwent a first
round of carbon-dating that pegged its age to the 1400s, making it the
oldest ever found in Quebec.
Carbon-dating in 1990 of a dugout canoe found submerged in Lake Ozonia
in the Adirondack Mountains and now on display at the Adirondack
Museum in Blue Mountain, N.Y., suggests it dates from between 1344 and
1504.
But the reliability of the 600-year-old date of the Lac Gour dugout
was questioned by some because the carbon-dating was done on a section
of the boat that was made with the oldest part of the tree, the core.
The criticism was that the carbon-dating results said more about the
tree's age than the dugout's.
The age of tree's core can differ from its outer bark by 200 years,
Loewen said.
Then, Loewen said, there's another issue with the Lac Gour dugout that
needs to be addressed.
Markings have been found on the inside walls of the dugout that appear
to be evidence of the use of an adze, an axe-like metal tool used to
sculpt wood and available only after the arrival of Europeans.
"The carbon-dating needs to be done again in light of the fact there
are so many issues," Loewen said.
A second round of dating done with different samples could confirm the
dugout dates from the 1400s, thereby, placing it in the pre-European
period.
Of course, there are the markings to explain, Loewen said. But
whatever the outcome, he said, he sees the carbon-14 dating exercise
as a win-win prospect.
If the canoe proves to be prehistoric, he said, then it is proof of a
clear transmission of native technology to Europeans.
It is known that dugout canoes were made by early French colonists and
others right up to the early 20th century, including cottagers and
others in need of an inexpensive watercraft.
On the other hand, if it dates from after the arrival of Europeans,
it's equally interesting how the indigenous dugout style managed to
migrate north to the St. Lawrence River valley.
Prehistoric dugout canoes made by indigenous peoples continue to be
found in North and South Carolina.
For these reasons, Jeremy Ward said is watching the carbon-dating of
the Lac Gour dugout closely.
Ward is a master canoe craftsman at the Canadian Canoe Museum in
Peterborough, Ont., the only museum of its type in the country. It has
more than 600 canoes and kayaks, 70 dugouts among them.
The museum's oldest birch bark canoe dates to only 1870 and many of
the dugout canoes are only fragments.
"There are major gaps in our understanding of these crafts," Ward
said.
"We don't know if the Algonquin and Huronia birch bark tradition co-
existed with the dugout tradition, whether they had the choice to make
one or the other and, if so, why they would build a dugout rather than
a bark canoe." |
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