A Bucket of Bifaces — Vesselquest

In early May of 2006 I was on a spring expedition surveying various sections of the shoreline around Lac Seul. At this time of year the water temperatures are very cold and the weather can be extremely volatile. Cruising around the lake and sleeping in a tent well out of reach of a cell signal is not for the faint of heart.

Following a terribly stormy night of howling winds and heavy rainfall, I broke camp and headed for a different area of the lake. Along the way I made a random stop to investigate a stretch of shoreline and came across a cluster of lithic (stone) artifacts comprised of bifaces and bifacial fragments. Along the high water mark of the rocky shoreline I was also amazed to find an unbroken 60 watt light bulb. As I started to map and document the distribution of artifacts it started to rain. The water droplets rapidly turned into a deluge and forks of lightning began to flash across the sky accompanied by deep rumbles of thunder. I rushed to collect and bag the lithic material, threw myself and the gear into the boat and scrambled to get away.

I quickly made an executive decision to head for home. I had been away for more than a week and the thrill of outdoor camping in sub-zero temperatures had slowly begun to fade. The incoming thunderstorm and pouring rain quickly extinguished the remaining enthusiasm for being on an archaeological expedition. The next morning from the comfort of a warm bed I peered out my bedroom window and saw a blanket of snow covering the ground. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Six years later in May of 2012 I was out on yet another early spring archaeological expedition investigating the shorelines of Lac Seul. The weather was warm, sunny and the winds light. I had spent the morning cruising around the lake, walking various sand beaches, eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking hot coffee from a keg sized thermos. I thought to myself, “Life doesn’t get much better than this”.

Drinking a vat of coffee has implications and I needed to make a shoreline stop as the sound of nature began to urgently call. It just so happened that I was passing by the Light Bulb site and, although a revisit to this site hadn’t been part of my plan for this trip, I changed course steering for shore.

After taking care of business I decided to do a quick scan of the site before heading on my way. As I began to examine the shoreline the first thing I noticed was a round circular piece of wood that looked like the handle portion of a tool. Excitedly, I gently tugged on wooden handle and removed some of the soil overburden to see what amazing artifact may lie beneath! Initially, I was somewhat puzzled when a large (Excalibur sized) and somewhat rusted trowel emerged from the ground with a tattered piece of orange flagging tap clinging to the neck. However, I quickly realised that I know knew the exact location of where I had lost my archaeological trowel back in 2006.

Apparently, in the haste of departing from the site in 2006 as the thunderstorm unfolded, I had overlooked collecting my trowel. I didn’t know it was missing until several days after I returned home and had no clue as to where it had gone. Ironically, within six years, it was as if the trowel used for digging artifacts had become an artifact itself.

Chuckling to myself I moved along the shoreline until I reached the approximate location of the 2006 recoveries when, much to my surprise, I spotted several clusters of lithic artifacts. As I stood there and looked around I could literally see fistfuls of bifaces and bifacial fragments scattered along the ground. For a moment it felt as though I had wandered into a magic biface garden and a new batch had grown back to replace the ones picked up six years earlier. As this was intended to be just a quick stop I had not brought my packsack or gear bag so I zipped back to the boat and grabbed the equipment needed to document the new finds. My methodology involves using marking sticks which are placed beside each artifact so that the distribution of the recoveries can be recorded. As the process unfolded I quickly ran out of marking sticks.

In addition, some of the bifaces were as large as my fist and one was bigger than my hand! At a moment like this, the correct course of action (from a strict archaeological standpoint) is to pause, stand back, and exclaim “Holy Shit”! This was possibly uttered in conjunction with a few more words as well (just use your imagination on this one).

Apparently, I had missed a few artifacts on my initial visit to the site. To be fair I left in a rush back in 2006 to avoid an intense lightning and thunder storm was unfolding around me (which also may account for me accidently leaving my lightning rod sized trowel behind on the beach).

Consequently, no sub-surface investigation at the site had been conducted. Once fooled twice stupid. So I carefully started pulling back the sand and gravel soils from around the artifacts. Numerous more artifacts began popping up from below the surface. I went back to the boat and grabbed the shovel, rake and screen (half inch mesh. After raking the soil, I shoveled and screened it. This turned out to be a good decision as quite a few pieces were recovered in the screen. I was getting so much material that I extended the area around the cluster of artifacts and ended up covering an area approximately 9 meters long by 2-3 meters wide.

After more than three hours of working flat out, I was parched, hungry and exhausted. This was just supposed to be just a quick pit stop before lunch and I hadn’t even stopped to eat. My body was a quivering bag of jelly and I didn’t have the strength to shovel one more grain of sand. Besides, I still had to travel further up the lake and set up camp for the night. I was out of time and energy so it was time to depart.

I stood back and looked at the several piles of bifaces, bifacial fragments and other lithic material stacked up. I was probably leaving something behind but feel I had given it my best effort (perhaps seeds remaining for another batch to grow?). The remaining task before leaving the site was to pack up all the artifacts.

Typically, the cultural material recovered from a site is bagged, but in this case using bags was not at all practical. The only container that I had with me able to hold the volume (size and weight) of the lithic material collected from the site was the boat’s 2 gallon bailing bucket and by the time I was done the pail was filled to the brim. It was literally a bucket of bifaces!

Upon returning home I was able to stretch out the assortment of bifaces, bifacial fragments, cores, flakes, projectile points and other possible tools across the top of my picnic table. Counting them indicated that a total of 241 pieces were collected from the site in 2012. Although this represented a super cool discovery, things became even better when the 31 pieces recovered in 2006 were compared to the 2012 material and broken pieces were refit!