A late paleo-Indian and early archaic sequence in southern Labrador

Abstract

The coast of Southern Labrador is an area ideal for archaeological research. With its abundant marine resources a constant attraction for man, both in prehistoric times and the more recent past, it is a region with the potential to have reconstructed for it an uninterrupted sequence of cultural development from the seventh millennium B.P. to the Christian era as had been demonstrated by the temporally continuous and stylistically related material found by McGhee and Tuck in their 1974-75 surveys. -- The excavation of the Cowpath site (EjBe-7) allows the amplification of the early part of this sequence as represented by the Paleo-Indian derived triangular projectile point and the succeeding projectile point forms and whole complexes which are seen to issue from this. At the site, four loci of intermittent and independent occupation were revealed, with four temporally discrete units subsumed within these occupations, as indicated by as many forms of projectile points which, found and dated elsewhere in Southern Labrador, disclose themselves to be culturally related and temporally successive. The Cowpath East (EjBe-22) and Cowpath West (EjBe-23) sites represent single occupations, refining and reinforcing the more than 2000 year temporal span of the Cowpath site.