Week Four of Memorial University's 2026 Field School on Turpin’s Island, Little St. Lawrence Just before the summer equinox, Memorial University’s archaeology field school sadly departs the Burin Peninsula. This fourth and final week brought last-minute finds, a community engagement night, and a memorable Friday farewell. Fig. 1 Left to right) Matt Williams, Jason Kean, Cole O’Brien, William Squires, Kayla Low, William Chafe, and Emma Turner on site at Turpin’s Island. Photo

Week Three of Memorial University's 2026 Field School on Turpin’s Island, Little St. Lawrence Week Three begins on Monday, June 8, 2026, with a busy laboratory day for all students. They begin the careful work of cleaning, sorting, preserving, and photographing each piece of Turpin’s Island's historical mysteries. Sitting together around a large table, they sort through artifacts, associating them with the layers and test pits from which they were recovered. When it comes to

Ceramics are a common find at Turpin’s Island. For today’s artefact of the week, we are going to look at some early 20th-century sherds with a “fibre” pattern! These ceramics have a white base and a blue pattern that resembles tree branches. It was first designed in England and became popular in the United States and Canada. Fig. 1 The Fibre ceramics found this week at Turpin’s Island The intricate design seems like it would take a steady hand to paint, but it was actually p

An exciting find from this week’s excavations is a clay tobacco pipe bowl recovered from Unit 3A on Turpin’s Island! Fig. 1 The clay tobacco pipe bowl that was found this week! Interestingly, this pipe bowl can tell us a lot about the people who occupied the island during the last 500 years. Fig.2 Unit 3A, shown in the red box This particular artefact is the bowl of a clay tobacco pipe, likely produced in England, which were common personal items among European fishermen in