Description of Historic Place

The Fleur de Lys Soapstone Quarry, Borden number EaBa–01, is the site of a Dorset Paleo-Eskimo quarry; the oldest known mine on the Baie Verte peninsula. The Dorset people mined the soapstone quarry over 1600 years BP (before present). The site consists of an extensive series of heavily-worked soapstone outcrops which bear the scars of several hundred years of Dorset quarrying activities for the production of soapstone vessels. The designation encompasses the entire area as defined by the boundaries.

Heritage Value

The Fleur de Lys Soapstone Quarry has been designated a Registered Historic Site because it holds scientific value. This large and well-preserved prehistoric soapstone quarry is the only known Dorset quarry of its kind in Newfoundland and one of only a handful in the world. The site is located on a cliff face in Fleur de Lys, at the tip of the Baie Verte Peninsula in north central Newfoundland.
The Dorset Paleo-Eskimo were an arctic culture that lived approximately 4000 to 900 years ago. The term “Paleo-Eskimo” literally means “prehistoric Eskimo” and is used to distinguish these eastern arctic groups from modern Inuit, who are not their direct descendants. In Newfoundland and Labrador the Paleo-Eskimo period is subdivided into early (4000-2100 BP), and late (2100-500 BP). The Dorset people, who mined the Fleur de Lys site, were from the middle of the late period.

The Dorset Paleo-Eskimo utilized the generous soapstone outcrops found at Fleur de Lys for the purposes of manufacturing soapstone vessels and oil lamps. There are approximately one thousand removal scars preserved in the main exposed soapstone outcrop. These carvings are testimony to the quarry’s 500 year use which began approximately 1600 years BP. The quarry provided soapstone, which is a soft rock easily worked into forms such as bowls, pipes or figurines, and which also holds heat well.
The Fleur de Lys Soapstone Quarry is one of many natural soapstone outcrops which occur throughout the province. However, this particular site gives explicit evidence of prehistoric mining by more than one prehistoric group. Archaeological evidence suggests the Maritime Archaic peoples used it approximately 4000 years ago, while Middle Dorset Paleo-Eskimos used the soapstone approximately 1200-1800 years ago. The Middle Dorset have been directly associated with this quarry, as their finished vessels correspond in size with extraction scars on the quarry face. These scars enable archaeologists to reconstruct prehistoric quarrying behavior.

Active archaeological fieldwork began at this site in 1997, though the area became one of interest as early as 1915. Work has been done at the site in the 1980s and 90s by a number of archaeologists and a visitor’s centre and interpretive trails are there to inform visitors about the site's history. Evidence reveals Dorset lithic (stone) tools, including chert endblades (projectile points), quartz crystal microblades, chert endscrapes and flakes produced from modifying tools at the site. To date thousands of flakes, quarrying tools and vessel fragments have been recovered from the site. A rare organic, a finely-crafted wooden ladle, discovered in the 1997-98 field investigation, has been radiocarbon dated to an age of AD 435.

Source: the Newfoundland Gazette, Vol. 62, No. 34, Friday August 21, 1987, pp. 281-282, Newfoundland Regulation 145/87.

Character-Defining Elements

All those elements that respect the archaeological site and artifacts, including:
-in-situ archaeological soapstone and organic remnants in their location, form and materials, as well as artifacts removed from any and all of these sites in an intact and documented state;
-those artifacts which are in storage; and
-those artifacts which may be on display in the interpretation center.