Excavations at Inspector Island, Newfoundland, Canada

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Inspector Island is a large, multi-component site located in Notre Dame Bay, on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The site was first discovered and excavated by Ralph Pastore of Memorial University in the 1980s, and then revisited and re-excavated this past summer by the two lead authors. Excavations indicate a large Maritime Archaic habitation site across the lowest levels of the site, overlaid in turn by a thin lens of PaleoInuit material, an ancestral and historic Beothuk occupation, and recent European/settler activity. Despite coastal erosion, and the destructive effects of development and looting, remaining intact portions of the site offer an exquisite glimpse of a rare Maritime Archaic habitation site, as well as a window into changes to the Beothuk wrought by the arrival of European fishermen and settlers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36306.0