CI[)l1:721 - Memorial University of Newfoundland DAI

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or to land on highly tidal mud flats. Ashift to the use of more portable birdlbark
canoes during this transitional period may have negated the need for heavy
wood working tools. This could have resutted in their disappearance from the
cultural inventory, and, subsequently, given the impression of the demise of the
Moorehead Phase people.
This is not totally speculative. To reach offshore sites such as Tumsr Farm
and Stanley (Sanger 1975), some form of watercraft would have been required.
The Eaton site, Lrl North Reading, Massachusetts, may have been a
Susquehanna dugout workshop site (Petzold 1961), although the evidence to
support this is tenuous. Two dugout canoes from Ontario, with a proposed age
of 2000 years (Hothem 1978: 132) have been since been determined 10 dale
from late prehistoric times. One dugout canoe, reo' vered from Ohio. has been
radiocarbon dated to 35SO±70 B,P. (Brose and Greber 1982: 247); however, this
does not prove that such technology was available in the Maine-Maritimes'
region. It is possible that dugout canoes were in use in the region during the
Late Archaic period, but definite evidence is lacking.
The increase in the number of scrapers in the Early Ceramic period may
also result from an shift to birch bark technology and a shift in economic focus
to more terrestrial mammal hunting, indicated at Turner Farm during the
Susquehanna occupation. Few use wear studies have been performed in the
region, but one from the Indian Gardens site in Nova Scotia seems to suppon
this (Murchison 1987: 199). Here, between 40% and 50% of the scrapers
appear to have been used for skinning, hide scraping, shreddir.g, and cutting.