This paper describes a small collection of artifacts held by the McCord Museum, McGill University. The collection is accessioned as having come from Labrador, yet the artifacts are not clearly related to any known prehistoric or historic cultural tradition. It is hoped that the publication of this description will lead to the identification of the material.

Crooked knives or mocotagans have been important articles in the Algonkian tool kit since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century and probably earlier. Today, the manufacturing technique employed by the Native artisan is quite similar to the Puropean method of softening the metal by heating it to red hot, shaping, reheating and then quenching to harden the metal. However, in former times the temperatures and speeds of the heating and cooling processes were varied so as to circumvent the need for high temperatures while still producing metals whose properties suited the intended tasks. Such detailed technical knowledge may find some parallels in the prehistoric working of native copper, but more likely it was a method learned from Europeans and modified to suit the new and varied conditions of adaptation to the boreal forest. Although precursors have been proposed (especially modified rodent incisors), functional parallels are lacking. Rather, it would appear that it was the coalescing of the native technical knowledge and adaptive skills essential to life in the boreal forest, and the metallurgical knowledge of the Europeans trading into eastern North America which likely led to the innovation of the mocotagan.

This report summarizes data from Lawn Point and Kasta on the Queen Charlotte Islands, northern Pacific coast of British Columbia. These archaeological sites have yielded multiple stratified microblade components, radiocarbon dated between 7,400 and 5,500 years B.P.

The Bezya site (HhOv-73) is a wedge-shaped core, microblade and burin producing site located approximately 70 km north of Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta. The site was discovered in 1980 during an archaeological inventory of the former Alsands tar sands lease, an area characterized by a patchwork of muskeg, interspersed with various combinations of aspen, spruce and pine. An assemblage which includes microcores, microblades, a notched transverse burin, burin spalls, fluted and platform element preparation and rejuvenation ridge flakes, core tablets and edge modified and unmodified debitage was concentrated in a 16 square metre area at 10 to 60 cm below surface. Cross fitting suggests a high degree of assemblage coherence, despite the vertical and horizontal dispersion. A composite sample of charcoal from the main microblade producing zone yielded a date of 3900 B.P. Within Alberta, the assemblage exhibits technological and morphological similarities with surface finds of microcores from the Calgary area in southern Alberta. However, the collection has the most intriguing parallels in terms of methods of core production and core morphology with Campus = Denali microblade assemblages extending on a northwest axis through the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Alaska.

Carbon isotopic analysis of remnant protein in human bone has been used to examine the relative amounts of marine and terrestrial protein in the diets of prehistoric inhabitants of the interior of British Columbia. The results provide a test of the analytical method and indicate that marine protein was of great importance to these people.

Bone and antler industries from northern Yukon Kutchin sites are compared with recently excavated Inuit material from the Kugaluk site in the Mackenzie Delta area. A number of basic procedural similarities are noted, but specific differences seem more striking, and may reflect different technological traditions. Technological analysis seems to support the orthodox model of strong boundary maintenance between major ethnic groups is northwestern Canada.

The skeleton of a premature human infant was recovered from the Rocky Point site (QkHn-27), North Devon Island, Northwest Territories. The Early Palaeo-Eskimo affiliation of the associated artifact assemblage and a radiocarbon date of ca. 3800 B.P. make these the earliest skeletal remains known for the Canadian Arctic. Comparisons with Late Palaeo-Eskimo burials are limited by the uniqueness of this discovery.

This study constitutes an effort to standardize some French, English, Spanish and Portuguese terms related to the technical aspects of prehistoric ceramic decoration, the purpose being to facilitate understanding and comparison of data within the same language and from one language to another. First presented as a working document, this revised study now expresses the views of the Archaeology Work Group, Pan American Institute of Geography and History. The identification of problems, the will to find solutions and the objective contribution of each participant have enabled us to overcome linguistic barriers within the international community. This pooling of human and financial resources resulted in new perspectives on the skill, creativity and aesthetics of prehistoric potters.