Pictures of some of the artifacts recovered at the excavation.

Here are some of the artifacts recovered during our dig. I know Bilbo and Donny were interested in seeing them. These are the most interesting artifacts from the field school.

Left to right: Flaked schist biface, ground stone point, a quartz microblade, a pendant made from a tooth, another pendant made of bone or tooth.

Left to right: Flaked stone point, drilled bone, channeled harpoon valve, same channeled harpoon valve (other side w/channel), flaked stone point (beautiful one, came from the pit I was working in).

Right to left: Slotted harpoon valve (I think), flaked stone point (looks almost like an amulet to me), flaked chert (I think it's chert) stone point - another amazing find, another pic of the flaked chert point, barbed bone point.

Left to right: Elk bone chisel (my 16 yr old cousin said it looked like a bone vagina ;D), incredibly intricate drilled bone point (a needle), two pictures of the carved bone or antler comb (the best find of the trip), other side of the comb.

More pics of the comb:

Great pics Josh, the antler comb is amazing, is that pretty valuable?

What's the estimated age of these items? Are they all the same age or do they represent different epochs?

The glass microblade was cool, did they know how to make glass back then?

Facinating stuff J

sensational... To think they have been there ever since being layed down all those years ago.. and may have stayed there forever without you guys digging them up..

I was wondering why they have the drilled ones... is that to put on thread for a necklace?

Cool stuff in there

Awesome pics CFH; thanks for posting them up.

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Originally Posted by Bilbo

Great pics Josh, the antler comb is amazing, is that pretty valuable?

What's the estimated age of these items? Are they all the same age or do they represent different epochs?

The glass microblade was cool, did they know how to make glass back then?

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First of all, I was wrong about the mircroblade, it's actually quartz. I'm not sure why I wrote down glass, it was late and I was on auto-pilot when I posted them.

The antler (or bone) comb would most likely be quite valuable, I guess, but it was returned to the band whose land we were digging on and I can't imagine they would sell it as its cultural value far surpasses its monetary value.

As for the age, I only have rough estimates at this point. Radiocarbon samples were taken whenever possible, and after testing/analysis that will provide more precise dates. All this stuff was found between about 0.6M - 2.01M, so the dates will vary considerably. At the least, some of them will be many hundreds of years old (pre-contact with Europeans), and at the most the could be well over 5,000 years old. The back pit at the site was from a time when sea-levels were considerably higher, and it's estimated that that area is mostly likely over 5,000 years old; however, those are all just estimates until they get the hard dates back. They all represent the same epoch, as we've been in the Holocene for the last 10,000 years (according to geologists and those sorts), though some people are now claiming that we entered a new epoch a couple of centuries back.

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Originally Posted by Dizaster

sensational... To think they have been there ever since being layed down all those years ago.. and may have stayed there forever without you guys digging them up..

I was wondering why they have the drilled ones... is that to put on thread for a necklace?

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I have no idea why they are drilled. The small bone point could have been a needle of some sort, so perhaps the hole is drilled in that one for knitting etc. I'm pretty sure that's what that one is for. As for the other piece, I honesly don't know.

I'm going to make a few changes to the way I labeled them, as I said it was late and I was not thinking too clearly.

Whereabouts were you digging?

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Originally Posted by X

Whereabouts were you digging?

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Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. In Barkley Sound and the Broken Group Islands. The site itself was on the mainland of Vancouver Island, but the traditional territory of the Nuu-Chah-nulth covered Barkley Sound as well (where all the other digs have taken place). We lived on an island and traveled to and from the site by boat as it was remote and only accessible by water.

Damn! Josh...

Thanks for sharing the pics with us... Really enjoyed them. :)

Great pics!!

Looks like you guys had a great experience, and found a lot of interesting stuff.

I hope you enjoyed the trip, but I'm glad you're back, because I definitely missed seeing you around here. ;D

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Originally Posted by Diane

Great pics!!

Looks like you guys had a great experience, and found a lot of interesting stuff.

I hope you enjoyed the trip, but I'm glad you're back, because I definitely missed seeing you around here. ;D

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I could say the same thing back to you. I can think of many posters who would be happy you've returned.

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Originally Posted by CFH

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Originally Posted by Diane

Great pics!!

Looks like you guys had a great experience, and found a lot of interesting stuff.

I hope you enjoyed the trip, but I'm glad you're back, because I definitely missed seeing you around here. ;D

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I could say the same thing back to you. I can think of many posters who would be happy you've returned.

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Thank you! :-*

Lets bump this............

I missed this on it's first release, so I'm sure others did too. Amazing stuff bro. That needle is pretty crazy, I'm trying to wrap my head around how they would have made something that precision.