Argument:
a. Our understanding of regional archaeology is greatly frustrated by the international border and subsequent ethnographic bias. In brief we tend to think too much east west and not enough north south. It is common knowledge that refrigeration pit technology is widely used in the Arctic. Food was cached to facilitate long hunting trips by digging below the perma-frost and the burying the food, covering and securing the cache.
b. In both the Arctic and Lake Superior the down side of this technology would have been the same, animals, bears in particular, digging up your food. Some Pukaskwa pits can be found on Islands, the Welcome Islands, Thompson Island etc. The advantage to these locations and a point for further consideration on other sites, is that the island did not have bears or other predators, vermin or the neighbours to eat your food.
c. While we may never know how this practice came to the region I would be remise not to note the Winisk River is a well now canoe rout to the arctic close at hand.
d. Pukaskwa pit were seasonally built in the early spring when the ice was breaking up. Lake Superior is often calm with a heavy fog at this time of year. “Little boats stay near the shore, larger vessels may venture more,” conceptually may have been well known and practised tradition amongst our ancient mariners. They travelled by “coasting” they tended to follow the coast line to get from point A to point B. Clearly they also could and did travel from the Keweenaw Peninsula to Isle Royale. The distance from Houghton to Rock Harbour Isle Royle is 73 miles and due to the curve of the earth at times no land can be seen and celestial navigation was used.
e. With Pukaskwa pits location is important.
I. Pukaskwa pits are found on cobble beaches. They often occur on subservient cobble beaches. This is the easiest place to make a hole in the early spring when the ground is frozen. With the spring break up large chunks of ice is annually deposited on the adjacent lake shore. A couple of men could easily dig a pit and transport one or two tons of ice and food cache in the pit in half a day. By then covering the ice with something perhaps Birch bark white side out you would have an ice house that would keep food frozen well into the month of July. They would likely travel with large sheets of bark to effect hull repairs when necessary.
ii. As noted by just about every archaeologist who has looked at them Pits are often found in areas with a beautiful panoramic view of the lake. Also illustrated in above photo. This has lead to the idea that they were built perhaps for a ceremonial purpose, vision quest etc., We think it is the view from the lake that matters not the view from the pit. A large pile of ice covered in birch bark on dark rock beach with space vegetation would be easy to find on the way home in a few weeks.
iii. Anomalies. Some pit locations fall outside type of location described. In this model they seem to have less than optimal locations. We think this Pit construction occurred for two reasons one planned the other opportunistic. Ideal highly visible locations were sought out and built in key locations on these prehistoric canoes routs. These pits could be reused annually. While travelling they would have opportunistic kills. When boating at Isle Royale it is common to see moose swimming across channels or from one Island to another. In the Slate Islands Caribou are often encountered swimming from one Island to another. These animals are fast swimmers but large canoes 36'+ would have a hull speed just under 10 knots and when encountered in the water it would be an easy kill. The extra food could then be cached away is a kill site specific pit built close at hand, food on the way home.
