Assessing Impacts of European Contact on Beothuk Projectile Point Technology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The lithic technology of the Beothuk has seldom been the focus of diachronic or regional comparative studies. Recently excavated Beothuk materials from Stock Cove, a site located in southeastern Newfoundland that has significant time depth, provide an excellent dataset to assess change through time and regional technological variation. The research presented here focuses on potential variation through a systematic examination of Beothuk and ancestral Beothuk projectile points from Stock Cove and extant collections from other sites across the island. Through a comparison of these data, we will compare the morphology of pre-contact points to post-contact examples in an attempt to identify potential impacts that access to European materials and restricted access to traditional raw materials resulting from the presence of Europeans had on Beothuk tool production and use. This comparison will provide important new information concerning diachronic technological variation among the Beothuk that have broader implications regarding the impacts that European contact had on their economic strategies and social structure.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24489