"It’s a Bloom!"—Recollections on Martin Frobisher, Kodlunarn Island, and the Meta Incognita Project
Author(s): William W. Fitzhugh
Year: 2020
Summary
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Comparative Perspectives on European Colonization in the Americas: Papers in Honor of Réginald Auger" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
The 1861 discovery by Charles Francis Hall of Elizabethan relics on Kodlunarn
(White Man) Island in the outer reaches of Frobisher Bay, southeast Baffin
Island, and a peculiar Viking-age radiocarbon date on one of Hall’s iron
blooms, set in motion a multi-year international study of the Frobisher
expeditions and the archaeology of its basecamp, ‘gold mines’, and Inuit
neighbors. Meta Incognita Project excavations and surveys in 1991-93 and
subsequent analyses of the collections and historical documents produced a
treasure trove of data about the first English exploration of the Canadian
Arctic and its interactions with Inuit. This paper reviews MIP project history,
field operations, key outcomes, and the many research and management questions
that remain unanswered.
Cite this Record
"It’s a Bloom!"—Recollections on Martin Frobisher, Kodlunarn Island, and the Meta Incognita Project. William W. Fitzhugh. 2020 ( tDAR id: 456915)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
Frobisher
•
Inuit
•
iron bloom
Geographic Keywords
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
1570s
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 177