Paper short abstract:

Replicas of Beothuk artefacts have proliferated in Newfoundland, Canada, partially in the absence of the “real” thing. So, for example, we have replica snowshoes yet no “real” Beothuk snowshoes have survived. This paper develops the argument that these objects, while recognised as not the “real” thing, nonetheless produce an uncanny affective communion with the past. This is a communion is realised not in the substance of the thing, nor in its resemblance to the real artefact (which can never be wholly and perfectly realised) but in the tactile material processes of its making and use.

Paper long abstract:

The Beothuk, a native people of the island Newfoundland, were extinct as a culture by the 1820's. They left behind little in the way of artefacts. This absence has been filled with a plethora of replicas many of which are fashioned by the descendants of the Anglo-Irish settlers who, directly or indirectly, were responsible for the demise of the Beothuk. There are replica canoes, pendants and spear-points, some of which are made for sale, or for public demonstration, but many of which begin as a more private hobby.

Based on conversations with those who have been involved in the making of these replicas, this paper discusses how it is that the Beothuk can be known in these imitations. In other words, in what sense are these replicas "real"? Or more precisely, what is the reality effect of these replicas that enables those who make and use them to somehow enter into communion with the past?

Focussing on the case of a pair of replica snowshoes, I will develop the argument that the reality effect of these replicas lies so much in their verisimilitude, for, although this is important there always remains a difference, however slight, that makes these things not "real"; rather, what is important is the tactile, material process of their making and use. The snowshoes may be an imitation, simultaneously real and unreal, but to make them, wear them, walk in them produces an uncanny, affective, communion with the past which transects the work of time and material decay.