Haida argillite carvings
Argillite carvings, therefore, are commonly seen as a tourist art because they were firstly designed to be exported from the Haida community and created solely as a means of economic prosperity.
These forms of argillite carvings also contained a lot of visual punning and joke making both at objects and animals in general as well as European culture.
Today argillite carvings are sold in galleries and fine art stores and take on more traditional Haida forms.
One of the first documented reports of the Slatechuck quarry occur in about 1820 when prospectors looking for coal or copper came across a large deposit of the black slate.
To the naked eye, argillite looks similar to other forms of shale, but differs microscopically as there are high amounts of organic materials trapped throughout the matrix.
A slab of up to 500-600 pounds (approximately 227-272 kilograms) is cut from the quarry using a variety of tools, including a hand saw, steel wedge, sledge hammer, shovel, crowbar, and long pole to use for leverage.
[8] Knut Fladmark, a professor in the Archaeology Department at Simon Fraser University, believes argillite was known to the Haida pre-European contact, and that it had been used for more utilitarian purposes such as the creation of labrets.
Fladmark's analysis of the assemblage led him to believe that the creation of argillite pieces for the purpose of trade followed its use within the Haida community as a pipestone.
The elbow pipes Fladmark discovered at the site may predate the generally accepted 1820 start date for the production of argillite as a saleable commodity.
[9] Robin Kathleen Wright believes it was the introduction of the tobacco pipe into the Haida culture that spawned the first argillite carvings.
Argillite pipes that show evidence of smoking tobacco date from about 1810–1840 and are generally small in size but have proportionally large bowls.
These very early argillite pieces depict traditional Haida images normally seen on totem poles, masks, rattles and spoon handles.
[10] Haida art has always held images of rank, lineage and status and it can be perceived as a type of "recording device" [11] for a society which has a rich history but no written tradition.
Barbeau believed that argillite carving had been created through the Haida's exposure to whalers' scrimshaw during contact with European and Euro-American traders.
Kaufman refutes the idea that this phase is influenced by European and Euro-American buyers who wanted to purchase Haida carved argillite in Western themes.
She also disagrees with the theory Barbeau and Erna Gunther proposed[14]: that Western themed argillite carving was inspired by whalers' scrimshaw.
Although this return to more traditional images has been interpreted as stabilization in Haida society due to the decrease of whalers and traders in the region, Kaufmann believes the substitution was actually caused by the disintegration of social and artistic regulation.
Because the Haida population had been decimated due to contact elements such as disease, increased mobility, and missionary influences the traditional rules which regulated the production of culturally important objects and images began to degrade.
[16] Wilson Duff, a Canadian anthropologist, noted some problems with the aforementioned theories of progression in the styles and themes of Haida argillite carving.
Duff reanalyzed the history of argillite carving and the existing theories concerning its influences and interpreted a timeline founded on what he calls "sense" and "non-sense".
According to Duff, these illogical representations in argillite are due to an unwillingness on the Haida's behalf to allow important elements of their culture to be owned by Europeans and Americans.
Meaning is suddenly apparent in argillite carving, as are important Haida figures such as chiefs and shamans and sacred or religious themes.
Duff sees this period as being an attempt by the Haida to record elements of their culture that were quickly being forgotten because of religious conversion or because of death.
