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| Yellow Lady Slipper on the west cost of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula |
Each year, our field staffing has emphasized the trans-border nature of the Gateways Project, with professional staff and students from both Canada and the United States.
2001 staff consisted of a crew that has returned yearly: Bill, Perry, Cristie, and Will. Additional participants during this first year included Lynne Fitzhugh, folklorist and author as well as Bill’s wife; René Levesque, an avocational archaeologist from Québec City; Selma Huxley Barkham, scholar and historian of the Spanish Basque presence in Newfoundland and the Straits, from Chichester, England; Steve Young, Director of the Center for Northern Studies in Wolcott, Vermont, and his wife, Jan; Valerie Boudreault, an Innu enrolled at Laval University with strong family ties on the North Shore; and Mathew Gallon, graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, who was Bill’s assistant at the Smithsonian Institution. Selma and René were only able to spend a few days with us in the first week of the project. |
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| Sundew, a micro-insectivorous plant |
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| Selma Huxley Barkham primed us for Basque discoveries as a team member in 2001 |
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Bill Fitzhugh with local volunteers (left to right) Christine Vatcher, Helen Morency, Georgianna Maurice
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The initial 2001 survey differed from subsequent years because it ranged over a much wider territory. That year the goals were to locate and sample sites from many different regions, and to determine the most productive areas for future work. Sites found were tested, sketched, and photographed; but no major excavations were made. Major discoveries included two Basque sites, a Groswater Paleo-Eskimo site, and several early Maritime Archaic longhouse sites, all previously unknown for this section of coast. |
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The 2003 crew: weather-beaten, fly-bit, and happy |
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| Part of the MBFM—the morale-boosting Female Majority (l-r): Cristie, Lena, Christine, Anja, and Christine |
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2002 staff included our returning staff of four plus students Alyssa Fisher from University of Chicago; Matt Gallon from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine; Anja Herzog from Laval University, and Carrie Swan from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.
2003 The core crew expanded to five with the return of Anja Herzog, who had decided to develop a Masters thesis for Laval on our Basque materials. Additional staff included Warren Hofstra, Professor of History at Shenandoah University, and his son, Andrew, both from Winchester, Virginia; Christie Leece, Bill’s assistant at the Smithsonian; and Lena Sharp, a recent McGill University anthropology grad from Newton, Massachusetts.
With the 2003 season, men on the crew were a definite minority! With volunteers from Harrington Harbour we actually had eight women working the sites in 2002. And in 2003 we added several volunteer excavators from the towns of Harrington Harbour and Chevery.
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| René Levesque began his LNS archaeological research while serving as a priest in the Innu village of Mingan |
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| Field Crew 2004 |
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2004 This summer the field crew included returning members William W. Fitzhugh, Christina Leece, and Helena Sharp from the Smithsonian’s ASC, Will Richard from Georgetown, Maine, and skipper Perry Colbourne from Lushes Bight, Newfoundland. New crew members included Emiliana Donati of Washington, D.C., Andy Colbourne of Lushes Bight, Mary Melnik (recently graduated from Bowdoin College, Maine) and Yves Chrétien from Québec City who joined the project for the first time as co-Director. Once again we were assisted by Christine Vatcher of Harrington Harbor.
The project goals for this season were similar to those in 2003, with continued excavation and testing of the Mécatina Basque site as our top priority, with continued surveys and excavations of other selected locales like Gros Mécatina and the St. Augustine region. |
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