Groswater Peoples

Groswater blade exhibit at Port au Choix Visitor Centre
©Parks Canada

About 2800 years before present (B.P.), several hundred years after the Maritime Archaic peoples had abandoned the area, the Groswater peoples arrived at Port au Choix. These people originating from the Arctic may have moved south to Newfoundland during a period of climatic cooling. Coming from the Arctic, the Groswater peoples may have been culturally better adapted and had better technology to exploit the marine resources during a period of a colder climate.

The Groswater peoples were even more marine focussed than the Maritime Archaic peoples. Their tools were for hunting marine animals such as seals and were distinctive in their smallness and fine craftsmanship. To date their unique bone, ivory and antler harpoon heads have only been found at Port au Choix .

Groswater peoples tools, (left) Harpoon head, (right) Side-notched endblade
©Parks Canada

With these tools, including the distinctive side-notched harpoon endblades, the Groswater peoples returned to Port au Choix every spring to hunt seals. They would set up camp at Phillip's Garden, near where modern-day seal hunters take off by boat. Excavations of the Groswater peoples camps at Phillip's Garden East and Phillip's Garden West suggest that the Groswater peoples occupied the sites only on a seasonal basis.

About 1900 years B.P. the Groswater peoples disappeared from this site and seemingly from history itself. Perhaps these people were displaced or assimilated by the newly arriving Dorset peoples. Another idea suggests the Groswater peoples were ancestral to the Dorset peoples. There is simply not enough evidence to make an absolute conclusion about the fate of the Groswater peoples and archaeologists continue to disagree on this point.