Dorset Eskimo Artifacts from Newfoundland and Labrador.
About three or four hundred years after the early Palaeo-Eskimos disappeared from Newfoundland and Labrador, they were replaced by the people of the Dorset Eskimo culture. The Dorset artifacts shown here consist of harpoon end-blades (top row), and-scrapers (middle row) and microblades used for cutting and carving (bottom row). They are arranged by place of origin to display certain regional variation.
Those in the vertical column on the left are from Saglek Bay, northern Labrador, where large amounts of translucent grey Ramah chert are available. Most Dorset artifacts from northern Labrador are made from this material, as are the three shown here. So large are the chunks of Ramah chert that some artifacts were made increasingly larger. The microblade at the bottom, for example, seems to belie the term "Arctic Small Tool tradition."
The items in the centre column come from western Newfoundland where cherts from Cow Head were the preferred raw materials. Since the cherts are only available in relatively small chunks, the tools from western Newfoundland remained fairly small throughout the Dorset period.
In the right-hand column are four artifacts from Trinity Bay in eastern Newfoundland. Though it resembles the other two end-blades, the end-blade at the top was actually sharpened and partially formed by grinding rather than chipping. The scraper and microblades were made from quartz crystal rather than the softer chert that was preferred for end-blades here.
