The Campaign to Thwart Paleogenetic Research Into North America's Indigenous Peoples

[bluedigger]

One of the major North American archaeological discoveries of the 20th century was made in 1967 by a bulldozer crew preparing a site for a movie theater in the small fishing village of Port au Choix (PAC), on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula. It was a vast, 4,000-year-old cemetery created by a complex maritime culture known among researchers as the Maritime Archaic. The graves contained beautifully preserved skeletons covered in a brilliant red powder called red ocher (powdered specular hematite). Buried with the skeletons were many finely crafted artifacts. A few similar ones had previously turned up in earlier field surveys on the island, but no archaeologist had suspected that such a large and magnificent ceremonial site existed in the North American subarctic.

Had the discovery been made only a few years earlier, it is likely that no trained archaeologist would have taken over from the bulldozer crew. But fortunately, Memorial University in St. Johns had just added archaeologist James (“Jim”) Tuck (1940–2019) to its faculty. The American-born scholar set out to explore the cemetery, eventually excavating more than 150 graves spread over three clusters (which he referred to as loci).

Jim and I had both been field-trained by American archaeologist William Ritchie. We had never worked together, but stayed in close contact. As Bill’s protégés, the two of us were among the first generation of professionally-trained archaeologists to take the field in north-eastern North America outside New York State. Many of us shared a common objective, which was to track down a culture (or was it a series of cultures?) dating from between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, which had left behind stone artifacts similar to those from PAC, and deposited them in ocher-filled graves extending from Maine to Ontario; and now, it had been discovered, Newfoundland.

We suspected that the communities represented by these cemeteries were linked, because of their similarly beautiful stone adzes, spear tips flaked from unusual rock types, elegant lance-tip-like objects made of ground slate, and tear-drop-shaped stone weights (called “plummets”). All of these artifacts, like the cemeteries themselves, differed from anything produced by more recent prehistoric peoples.

https://quillette.com/2021/03/29/the-campaign-to-thwart-paleogenetic-research-into-north-americas-indigenous-peoples/?fbclid=IwAR0cUDCkLiLSLJC34WuhRPmaxzk4sH5BIIGk7Aa4m2xxy-JPODgqFayJUjs

Fairly lengthy article from Bruce Bourque, who was a "big deal" in Maine archaeology when I was an undergrad at UMaine back in the 80s. Really interesting discussion of ethics in DNA research in North America.