Prehistoric Peoples The Thule The First Arrivals Maritime Archaic Tradition Palaeo-Eskimo Peoples Intermediate Indians Recent Indians Terminology

Not long after de-glaciation, the first people came to southern Labrador where we have evidence of their presence at the Pinware Hill site.

First Arrivals

Archaeologists use the term "Palaeo-Indians" to refer to the first human beings to arrive in the New World from Asia. Formerly, there was a consensus that the earliest people had come to the Americas about 12,500 years ago, but new evidence from the Monte Verde site in Chile indicates that that site itself was occupied at least by 12,500 years ago, and perhaps earlier, and it is probable that the ancestors of the site's occupants would have taken a thousand years or more to reach Chile. Similar, if more controversial, evidence from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania suggests that it was occupied about 19,000 BP (years before present). Some archaeologists now suggest that there may have been at least two or more early waves of migration from Asia to the Americas. In any case, it now appears likely that the peopling of the New World was earlier and more complex than previously thought.

In comparison to these early dates, the first settlers of what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador were relatively late arrivals. This is understandable, since during the last ice age the land mass of the province was largely covered with ice until around 10,000-11,000 BP when the glaciers began to recede. Not long after de-glaciation, the first people came to southern Labrador where we have evidence of their presence at the Pinware Hill site which is dated to about 8800 BP.

This site, near the present-day community of Pinware, now lies about 27 meters above sea level, although when occupied it was quite close to the beach. During the ice age the immense weight of the glaciers pressed the land down, but after the retreat of the ice, the land rebounded to its present height, high above the waters of the Strait of Belle Isle.

This small site, excavated in the early 1970s by Robert McGhee and James Tuck (1975), produced a number of small, triangular projectile points, some of which had been thinned by removing flakes from their base. This is significant, for this "basal thinning" is likely related to the process of "fluting" practised by earlier Palaeo-Indians. These people, some of whom made the famous Clovis projectile points (dated to about 11,500-11,000 BP) and the Folsom points (dated to about 11,000-10,200 BP), produced well-made stone points characterized by the removal of a long flake from each side of the base of the point. The result is a "fluted" point which could be fitted to the shaft of a spear or a dart. Clovis points from the American west have been associated with mammoth hunting, while Folsom points have been found with an extinct form of bison.

A series of Palaeo-Indian bands, perhaps distantly related to the Folsom people, appears to have camped at the Debert site in Nova Scotia between 11,000 and 10,000 BP. These people are assumed to have been caribou hunters (although it is difficult to imagine that they would have ignored the resources of the sea) and their projectile points bear a resemblance to the more westerly Folsom points. It seems likely that the descendants of these people who inhabited the Debert and other sites in the Maritimes gradually made their way to southern Labrador and the rich maritime resources of the Strait of Belle Isle.

Tuck (1976) believes that these first settlers lived in small bands which from late winter to early summer exploited the harp seals which even today funnel through the Strait of Belle Isle. During the summer, salmon would have been available as well as sea birds. If these earliest inhabitants of the province followed the pattern known from later Aboriginal peoples, they would have concentrated on hunting caribou during their fall migration.

Within a few centuries, the ancestors of these first settlers would come to develop a sophisticated technology and culture strongly oriented toward the sea. Archaeologists refer to these people as belonging to the Maritime Archaic tradition.

© 1998, Ralph T. Pastore
Archaeology Unit & History Department
Memorial University of Newfoundland