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Archaeological Excavation
Warrior Cache
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- Goat horn core
- Killer whale jaw club
- Hammerstone or braining stone
- Copper bracelets
- Whalebone club
- Slate spear point or dagger
- Copper-wrapped cedar cylinders
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This is a special discovery of objects that were hidden in a burial
ground in the Prince Rupert Harbour area about 1,800 years ago. The
clubs, spear point and other objects in this "cache" may have belonged
to a warrior.
The cedar cylinders wrapped with copper may be remnants of rod armour
similar to that worn by Tsimshian warriors some 1,500 years later.
Other objects likely represent weaponry for hand-to-hand combat.
A human female skull and jaw found in the same pit as the artifacts -
possibly trophies of war - were partially stained blue-green by copper
salts in the soil. The skull and jaw were not directly associated with
other human bones or graves in the immediate area, some of which date
to about the same time as this cache of artifacts and others which date
to about 1,600 years ago.
This warrior cache is one of the more intricate discoveries of
cultural history recorded from the shell middens of Prince Rupert
Harbour.
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