Introduction to the Stock Cove Archaeology Project

Hello Everyone,

Today we are starting a new blog to keep people informed about the work we are doing at the Stock Cove Archaeology Project. This project began in 2008 when Dr. Christopher Wolff (Chris) of the University at Albany and three graduate students from Memorial University conducted test pits at the famous (or infamous) Stock Cove Site (CkAl-3) near the southern end of Trinity Bay in southeastern Newfoundland. Since that time, Chris and the co-principal investigator of the site, Dr. Donald Holly (Don) of Eastern Illinois University, have been regularly conducting archaeological research at the site and on the collections recovered from it and nearby sites. The site has turned out to be very important, with evidence of almost every culture that lived on the island going back perhaps over 5,000 years! We can tell this mostly from the thousands of stone tools we found at the site. The site is also in need of protection, both from the elements as it is being eroded every year, and from people taking important artifacts from the site and its beach area. Our hope is to work with nearby communities to bring the information that this site can provide to the public and to collaborate with those communities to study and preserve the heritage of the island.

This summer (2016) is particularly excited for us, because Don and I received a three-year National Science Foundation grant to conduct new research at the site. The focus of this research will be to discover evidence of the very first people who occupied Stock Cove, the Maritime Archaic. To do that, however, we will have to excavate through deep deposits of other cultures, so we think this summer is going to produce lots of amazing finds! Future blog posts will inform you about our progress over the summer, and will start to fill in the details as they come. We will also introduce you to the key researchers at the site and some of the people who help make it all possible.

Please feel free to post any comments or questions here.

Chris

Picture of Stock Cove from a nearby ridge.