oa 74 part 01 pilon layout - Ontario Archaeological Society

Pilon A Stone Tool Cache from the Hudson Bay Lowlands 19regards future needs and the bifaces are generalizedand lend themselves to transformation intoa wide array of implements.Earlier it was suggested that there are a varietyof reasons for the creation of a cache and its eventualdiscovery by archaeologists. While the variousanalyses and observations reported here doenlighten us about the history of this particularcollection of stone tools and blanks, they remainsilent about the circumstances leading to theapparent abandonment of the collection.Was this stockpile of implements and blanksleft in the corner of a winter lodge that was notreturned to because of an accident while awayfrom the camp? Did the owner(s) intend toreturn but circumstances changed and theopportunity to return just never presented itself?Was the campsite caught in an unexpected springflood, burying the birch-bark container and itsprecious contents, as might be indicated by thelayer of sand and silt above the cache (Figure 5:middle image)? Might these objects have beenleft in anticipation of someone else passingthrough and needing a quick supply of stonetools? Answers to these questions are clearlybeyond the scope of archaeology but remain anintriguing source of rich speculation to drive furtherinvestigations.Acknowledgements. I express my sincere appreciationto my colleague, David Keenlyside, forhis critical reading of an earlier draft of this article.While the fieldwork that resulted in the discoveryof this unique collection of stone toolswas carried out more than 20 years ago and generouslysupported by Ontario HeritageFoundation funding and the Arctic WorkingGroup of the University of Toronto, several additionalpieces to this story were acquired morerecently, namely the blood residue analysis andthe radiocarbon dating of the birch-bark containerfragment. I am thus indebted to MargaretNewman for her residue analysis and to RichardMorlan for helping to provide the importantchronological anchor, and, of course, to theCanadian Museum of Civilization for providingthe institutional framework under which suchwork can take place.I thank Richard Gerrard of Toronto for hiscareful excavation of the Ouissinaougouk cachein the summer of 1983 and for his excellentmemory of the care he took in packaging the collectionfor shipping. Finally, I would like tothank Pat Julig, Susan Jamieson and AndrewStewart for reviewing the manuscript and providingconstructive comments that allowed usefulrefinement of some thoughts and clarificationof others. In the end, however, I retain fullresponsibility for all errors or omissions whichmay remain.References CitedBinford, Lewis1983 In Pursuit of the Past. Decoding theArchaeological Record. Thames and Hudson,New York, New York.Bishop, Charles A.1972 Demography, Ecology and Trade Among theNorthern Ojibwa. Western Canadian Journalof Anthropology 3(1):58-71.Boas, Franz1964 The Central Eskimo. Originally published asa part of the 6 th Annual Report (1884-1885)of the Bureau of Ethnology, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, 1888. Universityof Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska.Bradley, Richard1996 Hoards and Hoarding. In The OxfordCompanion to Archaeology, edited by BrianM. Fagan, p. 306. Oxford University Press,New York and Oxford.Cowan, Frank L.1999 Making Sense of Flake Scatters: LithicTechnological Strategies and Mobility.American Antiquity 64:593-607.Cumming, L.M.1969 Rivers of the Hudson Bay Lowland. In EarthScience Symposium on Hudson Bay, edited byP.J. Hood, pp. 144-168. Geological Surveyof Canada Paper 68-53. Geological Surveyof Canada, Ottawa.Dawson, K.C.A.1983 Prehistory of the Interior Forest of NorthernOntario. In Boreal Forest Adaptations, editedby A. Theodore Steegmann, Jr., pp. 55-84.Plenum Press, New York.Ellis, C.J., and D.B. Deller2002 Excavations at the Caradoc Site (AfHj-104):A Late Palaeo-Indian Ritual Artifact Deposit.