Mysteries of the Lost Red Paint People

[Charl]

For those interested in the Maritime Archaic, the people who made all those great ground slate artifacts from Maine, and elsewhere in the Northeast, this older Nova episode is excellent. It also shows how similar the technology/tools were all around the Atlantic rim, in the so-called circumpolar region. A two part YouTube video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nGPfOiX4MKo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jbo-FAZSOTM

For instance, in the first photo, these are all screenshots from the video, those ground slate points are from Norway, not Maine, but are very similar in appearance to ground slate points from Maine. The photo showing the axe is a Mass. burial, on the Taunton River, and the burial articles are smothered in red ochre, hence the name "lost Red Paint people".....

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A Handbook of Civil War Bullets and Cartridges - Grab it through Amazon!

[mainejman]

Thanks very interesting...do you find any slate down your way?

 

[Charl]

Well, here's that axe smothered in red ochre, from the Taunton River off Narragansett Bay. Also note the bird effigy comb from Newfoundland and the bird effigy comb from Norway....

 

[Charl]

Thanks very interesting...do you find any slate down your way?

Yes, the first three photos are a ground slate point from Rhode Island. This is not Maritime Archaic, however. The Otter Creek people, and the Brewerton people also utilized ground slate weapons, independent from the Maritime Archaic in general, and independent of the Moorehead complex in Maine. The group of three ground slate points were part of a cache of 11 points found in Vermont. The largest in that photo is about 12" long.....

 

[crj1968]

Very interesting. Would like to go there sometime and see the stones and mounds.

So they seemed to never conclude the idea of diffusion as the burial found in North America was as old or older than the one across the ocean. (that one was strange by the way with the mother and child, stone by mother's head and blade by childs stomach...)

Seemed to suggest that the diffusion could have actually gone the opposite direction or that people in both places by the sea made very similar tools.....but the red ochre thing ties it all together....and the chert being from so far away as well... Mind boggling!

Artifacts; toggling harpoons! The killer whale effigy was just amazing...

The discovery of the red ochre at one site by a bulldozer leveling a pad for a movie theater; that is always strange to me... I know it happens all over the country....but where I am now the housing developments are expanding in the foothills where I have found a lot of obsidian flakes...a burial was uncovered there in the 70's with something like 250 points found....there's more there for sure, soon to be plowed over for McMansions. :/

Thanks again for sharing Charl very cool and I hope you can get out there and find some stuff. Find a caribou trail!