Category: Artifacts

A Cordova Bay Inland Indigenous Resource Site

In Greater Victoria, inland Indigenous resource sites have been recorded in the past as a result of people finding artifacts while digging in their yards or construction projects turning them up accidently. They general do not have the easier to distinguish features of fire altered rocks and shell layers that are common in ocean shoreline sites. Archaeological testing was generally not done in the past where there was no previous record of a site being at a specific location. Many individual artifacts have been found along creeks and around swamps in greater Victoria. This archaeological site, DdRu-82, is an uncommon exception in having a large number of artifacts found in a relatively small area. This Indigenous resource location was on … Continue reading “A Cordova Bay Inland Indigenous Resource Site”

Indigenous Use of Sling Stones in Warfare

By Grant Keddie Introduction Sling stones were used in warfare and for killing small mammals and birds throughout many parts of the world. Their use in warfare on the Northwest coast has been underemphasized. Figure 1, shows some of the many sling stones I collected at the base of an Indigenous defensive site, DcRu-123, at Lime Point in Victoria Harbour (Keddie 2023). Sling stones are often difficult to identify in Archaeological sites because they are not intentionally shaped by people and therefore not easy to identified as sling stones. The context in which they are found is important to provide clues that they were used as sling stones. In the case of Lime Point, they were highly concentrated just above … Continue reading “Indigenous Use of Sling Stones in Warfare”

Mat Creasers and Cattails

By Grant Keddie.   April 10, 2023. Introduction Cattail (Typha latifolia) mats were one of the most prolific artifacts found in traditional cultures in coastal areas of southern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State. They were used to construct the walls and roofs of temporary shelters at fishing camps, for insulating walls in winter houses, as covers to protect canoes and their contents, for light baskets, for bedding, sitting on and as mats for storing food and preparing food on. What are called mat creasers were important tools used in the production of a number of these cultural items. A mat creaser was an important tool that, used in conjunction with a needle, crimped the split cattail reeds in order to … Continue reading “Mat Creasers and Cattails”

Spindle Whorls in British Columbia Part 4. Thunderbird and Lightening Snake Iconography

By Grant Keddie. March 2023. Introduction The rigid distinction between culture and nature in historic western societies did not exist in Indigenous cultures. Animals were not just sources of food and raw materials but intelligent sentient beings as conscious and capable of understanding as humans and as capable in undertaking planned intentional activities. Symbolic presentations of animals or supernatural beings in both material artifacts and mythology, such as Thunderbird in his various transformations, are about relationships between what we see as the social world and natural world. In the indigenous cosmologies beings such as Thunderbird play a role as active participants in ecological relationships. Anthropologist Franz Boas felt that myth adjusts to the world and that it supports existing institutions … Continue reading “Spindle Whorls in British Columbia Part 4. Thunderbird and Lightening Snake Iconography”

Spindle Whorls of British Columbia Part 3. Large Historic Spindle Whorls in the Indigenous Collection of the Royal B.C. Museum.

By Grant Keddie. March 2023. [Part 4 in this series on Spindle Whorls in British Columbia will deal with the Thunderbird and Lightening Snake Iconography most relevant to Part 3] Introduction Large wooden spindle whorls from the historic post contact period were used primarily for twisting together two already twisted strands of fibre. The fibre consisting mostly of hair of mountain goat, domestic dogs, seal and other mammals as well as bird down and plant material such as the plume of the fireweed. Description of the Large Whorls in the Ethnology Collection There are 30 large spindles whorls in the Royal B.C. Museum Ethnology Collection. The term ethnology is used here to refer to non-archaeological artifacts in the Indigenous collections. … Continue reading “Spindle Whorls of British Columbia Part 3. Large Historic Spindle Whorls in the Indigenous Collection of the Royal B.C. Museum.”

Spindle Whorls of British Columbia: Part 2

October 11,2018. By Grant Keddie. Small Spindle Whorls in the Ethnology Collection of the Royal BC Museum Much of the attention in the literature has focused on the large spindle whorls used by speakers of languages in the Salish linguistic family on the south-eastern coast of British Columbia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, small spindle whorls were found among peoples belonging to several of the larger linguistic families. The lack of iconography on most of these smaller spindles likely contributed to their being of less concern to researchers than the study of the larger whorls – many of which have geometric, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic design patterns. The resurgence of indigenous weaving with the use of large spindle whorls … Continue reading “Spindle Whorls of British Columbia: Part 2”

Spindle Whorls in British Columbia. Part 1.

December 6, 2016. By Grant Keddie. Introduction and Spindle Whorls in the Archaeology Collection of the Royal BC Museum Introduction In order to provide a broader understanding of the earlier history and origins of both historic and pre-contact spindle whorls used in British Columbia, I will provide a description with images of all the spindle whorls in the Archaeology and Ethnology collection of the Royal B.C. Museum. This will be presented in three Parts: (1) Introduction and Spindle Whorls in the Archaeology Collection of the Royal BC Museum. (2) Small Spindle Whorls in the Ethnology Collection of the Royal BC Museum. (3) Large Spindle whorls from speakers of the Salish language family in the Ethnology Collection of the Royal BC … Continue reading “Spindle Whorls in British Columbia. Part 1.”

Haida Argillite Carvers in Victoria

July 22, 2019. By Grant Keddie. Introduction The Haida were among the many Indigenous northern visitors to Victoria after 1853. Many came to work to get trade goods or wages to purchase European commodities. The Haida visitors brought carvings they made on Haida Gwaii. Many of these were made of argillite, a stone unique to Haida Gwaii (see appendix 1, What is Argillite). Argillite was used primarily after 1810, there are only a few examples of argillite being used for labrets in ancient times (Keddie 1981). Argillite plates, platters, mugs, goblets, knives and forks became popular as the Haida copied the European-style tableware used by the settlers. The citizens of Fort Victoria enthusiastically purchased these. On July 21, 1859 the … Continue reading “Haida Argillite Carvers in Victoria”

The Archaeology and Ethnology of Wedges on the Northwest Coast

2018. By Grant Keddie Introduction Wooden and antler wedges are a common tool found in the Northwest Coast cultural area of North America. The purpose of this article is to drive a wedge into our current thinking about wedges and to stimulate further research by making some observations based on Royal B.C. Museum archaeological and ethnological artifacts. I combine this view of collections with my own background experience in working with wedges. Wedges are commonly known to have been used for splitting fire wood, for the manufacture of posts and planks used in house construction, household items such as boxes and bowls, and for the whole process of canoe making from cutting down trees to splitting the tree trunks and … Continue reading “The Archaeology and Ethnology of Wedges on the Northwest Coast”

Bird Bone Tube Snare Guards in the Archaeology Collection of the Royal B.C. Museum

June 3, 2019. By Grant Keddie Introduction There are many different sizes of bird bone artifacts found in archaeological sites in British Columbia. The function of many of these remains unknown. There is often no comparable artifact type in the ethnographic record. They are sometimes ascribed functions by archaeologists for which there is no evidence. Some of the long bird bone tubes referred to as “drinking tubes” are in fact, what I am calling bird bone snare guards – devices on snares which prevent marmots and ground squirrels from biting through the noose cord and escaping.   Here I present the evidence of how I determined, from my own observations and technology experiments, that some of the unidentified bird bone … Continue reading “Bird Bone Tube Snare Guards in the Archaeology Collection of the Royal B.C. Museum”