Port au Choix

The limestone here is alkaline, which preserves bone that would have dissolved in Newfoundland's usual acid soils, and that accident has made Port au Choix one of the most important archaeological sites in the northeast. Four distinct cultures used the peninsula: Maritime Archaic people from around five thousand years ago, whose cemetery was found by a man digging a foundation in 1967 and yielded burials with tools, ornaments and red ochre; then Groswater and Dorset Palaeoeskimo peoples; then the ancestral Beothuk. The visitor centre displays the finds and the sites are walkable on trails across the limestone barrens.

What you actually see

• The Maritime Archaic cemetery - five-thousand-year-old burials with grave goods.
• The four cultures - successive peoples using the same peninsula.
• The preserved bone - organic material surviving in alkaline limestone soil.
• The limestone barrens - a rare habitat with arctic plants at sea level.

When to go

June to September; the site closes for winter. The barrens flower in early summer with rare arctic-alpine plants. Fog is common on the peninsula.

Honest expectations

The sites themselves are landscape and low remains; the collection is in the centre. It closes for winter. The Great Northern Peninsula drive is long with sparse services.

Nearby

The Arches lie south; St. Anthony is north.