Although this National Geographic article is from two years ago, the material is associated with my previous post on the terrific work of Dr. Patricia Sutherland at the Tanfield Valley site on Baffin Island, Canadian Arctic. Many in the archaeology community will be forced to "eat crow" when Dr. Sutherland is finished proving that the Norse Greenlanders were much more involved in the Canadian Arctic than anybody previously thought. Again, a hearty well-done, Dr. Sutherland. (Ed.)
***
Sharpeners may be smoking guns in quest for New World's
second Viking site.
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Archaeologist Patricia Sutherland (orange jacket) excavates a
Heather Pringle
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 19, 2012
Part of our weekly "In Focus" series—stepping
back, looking closer.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID COVENTRY
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
For the past 50 years—since the discovery of a
thousand-year-old Vikingway
station in Newfoundland—archaeologists
and amateur historians have combed North America's east coast searching for
traces of Viking visitors.
It has been a long, fruitless quest, littered with bizarre
claims and embarrassing failures. But at a conference in Canada earlier
this month, archaeologist Patricia
Sutherland announced new evidence that points strongly to the
discovery of the second Viking outpost ever discovered in the Americas.
(Read the new National Geographic magazine
feature "Vikings
and Native Americans: Face-to-Face.")
While digging in the ruins of a centuries-old building
on Baffin
Island (map), far above the Arctic Circle, a team led by Sutherland,
adjunct professor of archaeology at Memorial University in Newfoundland and a
research fellow at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, found some very
intriguing whetstones. Wear grooves in the blade-sharpening tools bear traces
of copper alloys such as bronze—materials known to have been made by Viking
metalsmiths but unknown among the Arctic's native inhabitants.
Taken together with her earlier discoveries, Sutherland's
new findings further strengthen the case for a Viking camp on Baffin Island.
"While her evidence was compelling before, I find it convincing now,"
said James Tuck,
professor emeritus of archaeology, also at Memorial University.
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| Viking Ship |
Archaeologists have long known that Viking seafarers set
sail for the New World around A.D. 1000. A popular Icelandic saga
tells of the exploits of Leif Eriksson, a Viking chieftain from
Greenland who sailed westward to seek his fortune. According to the saga,
Eriksson stopped long enough on Baffin Island to walk the coast—named
Helluland, an Old Norse word meaning "stone-slab land"—before heading
south to a place he called Vinland.
In the 1960s two Norwegian researchers, Helge
Ingstad and Anne
Stine Ingstad, discovered and excavated the Viking base camp at L'Anse
aux Meadows (map) on the northern tip of Newfoundland—the first
confirmed Viking outpost in the Americas. Dated to between 989 and 1020, the
camp boasted three Viking halls, as well as an assortment of huts for weaving,
ironworking, and ship repair.
Viking Yarn
As reported in the November issue of National Geographic magazine,
Sutherland first caught wind of another possible
Viking way station in 1999, when she spotted two unusual pieces of cord that
had been excavated from a Baffin Island site by an earlier archaeologist and
stored at the Canadian Museum of
Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec.
Sutherland noticed that the strands bore little resemblance
to the animal sinew Arctic hunters twisted into cordage. The cords turned out
to be expertly woven Viking yarn, identical in technique to yarn produced by
Viking women living in Greenland in the 14th century.
The discovery prompted Sutherland to scour other museum
collections for more Viking artifacts from Baffin Island and other sites. She
found more pieces of Viking yarn and a small trove of previously overlooked
Viking gear, from wooden tally sticks for recording trade transactions to
dozens of Viking whetstones. (Also see "Viking
Weapon Recycling Site Found in England.")
The artifacts came from four sites, ranging from northern
Baffin Island to northern Labrador, a distance of a thousand miles (1,600
kilometers). Indigenous Arctic hunters known as the Dorset people had camped at
each of the sites, raising the possibility that they had made friendly contact
with the Vikings.
Intrigued, Sutherland decided to reopen excavations at the
most promising site, a place known as Tanfield Valley on the southeast coast of
Baffin Island. In the 1960s U.S. archaeologist Moreau Maxwell had excavated
parts of a stone-and-sod building there, describing it as "very difficult
to interpret." Sutherland suspected that Viking seafarers had built the
structure.
Clues Etched in Bronze, Brass, and Iron
Since 2001 Sutherland's team has been exploring Tanfield
Valley and carefully excavating surviving parts of the mysterious ruins. They
have discovered a wide range of evidence pointing to the presence of Viking
seafarers: pelt fragments from Old World rats; a whalebone shovel similar to
those used by Viking settlers in Greenland to cut sod; large stones that appear
to have been cut and shaped by someone familiar with European stone masonry;
and more Viking yarn and whetstones. And the stone ruins bear a striking resemblance
to some Viking buildings in Greenland.
Still, some Arctic researchers remained skeptical. Most of
the radiocarbon dates obtained by earlier archaeologists had suggested that
Tanfield Valley was inhabited long before Vikings arrived in the New World. But
as Sutherland points out, the complex site shows evidence of several
occupations, and one of the radiocarbon dates indicates that the valley was
occupied in the 14th century, when Viking settlers were farming along the coast
of nearby Greenland.
In search of other clues to help solve the mystery,
Sutherland turned to the Geological
Survey of Canada. Using a technique known as energy dispersive
spectroscopy, the team examined the wear grooves on more than 20 whetstones
from Tanfield Valley and other sites. Sutherland and her colleagues detected
microscopic streaks of bronze, brass, and smelted iron—clear evidence of European
metallurgy, which she presented October 7 at a meeting of the Council for Northeast
Historical Archaeology in St. John's, Canada.
Norse-Native American Trade Network?
Sutherland speculates that parties of Viking seafarers
travelled to the Canadian Arctic to search for valuable resources. In northern
Europe at the time, medieval nobles prized walrus ivory, soft Arctic furs, and
other northern luxuries—and Dorset hunters and trappers could readily stockpile
such products. Helluland's waters teemed with walruses, and its coasts abounded
in Arctic foxes and other small fur-bearing animals. To barter for such goods,
Viking traders likely offered bits of iron and pieces of wood that could be
carved into figurines and other goods, Sutherland says.
If Sutherland is correct, the lines of evidence she has
uncovered may point to a previously unknown chapter in New World history in
which Viking seafarers and Native American hunters were partners together in a
transatlantic trade network. "I think things were a lot more complex in
this part of the world than most people assumed," Sutherland said. James
Tuck agreed. "It's pretty convincing that there was a much larger Norse
presence in the Canadian Arctic than any of us thought."
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