A Flint Site in Northernmost Manitoba

Abstract

The Churchill area of Manitoba is a meeting place of Eskimos and Chipewyans. It is also the boundary of the northern forest and the barren grounds. My field trip in the summer of 1953 to this part of the western margin of Hudson Bay had to do with both of these facts, for I intended to collect samples of timberline spruce for treering dating, and I hoped to find flint sites comparable to those of northern Alaska. The archaeological site that did turn up on the North Knife River was gratifying beyond expectations, because its flints fall into a very precise relationship with artifacts of early Alaskan and early Greenland sites.Upon first reaching Churchill by rail on the ninth of July, I inquired of several people as to their knowledge of arrowheads or other flints. Two or three reports of flint finds pointed either to remote places in the interior or to Dorset-culture sites in the northern part of Hudson Bay.