Introduction

     The idea of Europeans crossing the Atlantic in ancient times has a double standard, one standard used by archeologists and others who think of aboriginal peoples as real humans, and another standard used in popular thinking, which treats the aboriginal peoples of the world in much the same way as it does animals - part of the background - as if only the behaviour of the "advanced" civilized person means anything.
      Thus today, archeologists may speak of evidence of crossings of the North Atlantic dating back many thousands of years, as evidenced in the archeology on the coast of Labrador; while at the same time popular culture celebrates the "Norse" as the first Europeans to "discover" North America by their landing on the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts of Canada about 1000 AD. The saga of their visit was recorded in the Icelandic texts called the "Vinland Sagas" that spoke of journeys from Greenland to a place called "Vinland".  And over the decades other  theories have  proposed other "civilized" Europeans visited the coast of North America before the Norse, the most popularized one being that Irish monks reached the Canadian coast  in curraghs, skin boats of ox hide that had been used in the British outer islands by the native "Picts" there..
       This preoccupation with the recent past of European civilization "discovering" America has been seen more recently to be somewhat pointless, since LIVING North American Native culture is better respected, and it is acknowledged that a great deal of history occurred for thousands of years right here in North America; that North America did not begin in the 16th century. Thus the accidental stumbling on North America by the Greenland Norse certainly was certainly not the first time it occurred, considering that according to rock carvings found in places like Alta, Norway, dating to up to 6000 years ago, show large seaworthy skin boats capable of crossing an ocean just as easily as a Norse ship.  Furthermore the Irish curraghs, if monks managed to sail to Labrador or Newfoundland with such craft made of skins, themselves originated from aboriginals from the same traditions as those of arctic Norway.  As I demonstrate in SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of the Whale Hunters the skin boat was invented by the  seagoing aboriginals of the European arctic, and the Irish curragh itself is obviously descended from it - replacing ox skins for walrus skins after walrus became extinct in the British Isles. 
      Author Farley Mowat, coming from an older generation which thought in terms of "Norse" and "Irish Monks" and "discovery" by civilized Europe, was naturally disposed to view unusual manifestations in the archeology of the Labrador and Newfoundland coast, as evidence of visits by civilized Europeans, whether by Norse or others. Accordingly, departing from the archeologists' desire to view the archeology as representing features from aboriginal peoples, Mowat conjured a fantasy of  "Albans" from the British Northern Isles spending weeks crossing the North Atlantic, and spending a half a year on the Labrador coast, harvesting walrus for their tusks.
       His far-fetched theory was written up in his Farfarers: Before the Norse (Toronto, 1998), and the theory has been ridiculed by all scholars upon whose territories he tred.
       Starting with the archeological mysteries of remains of "longhouse foundations" and cylindrical rock "beacons" visible from the sea, and the suggestions by some archeologists that they may have been made by Greenland Norse, Mowat let his imagination run wild, suggesting that his walrus-hunting "Albans" created shelter by turning over their enormous curragh-like skin boats onto low rock walls, and that this was the origin of the remains of seeming walls of longhouses. Associated with these sites there were also large cylindrical rock "beacons" visible from the sea, which were obviously intended for boats to find the sites. The sites were obviously re-used in annual cycles of activity.


     
        Having established this notion of overturned skin boats, Mowat then proceeded to determine where they would have come from. By the term "Albans" he was referring to ancient British. They could easily have endured in the north even as the southern parts of the British Isles were invaded by Celts and Romans. These "Albans" would be identifiable with the peoples of the British Northern Isles from whom the Irish monks borrowed curraghs to sail in search of desolate islands to practice their religion.
        In his investigations into the "Albans" and their origins,  he found evidence of the use of skin boats by natives in the British Isles, dating back to the Roman Age and earlier. He found historical references to these people arriving at markets at the Scilly Islands in their skin boats, and sailing over the ocean to a place called "Mictis". In these people, Mowat found the perfect candidates for his theory about the Labrador "longhouse foundations".
        To the Oestrimnides (now Skilly Islands at the southwest tip of the Britain) come many enterprising people who occupy themselves with commerce and who navigate the monster-filled ocean far and wide in small ships. They do not understand how to build wooden ships in the usual way. Believe it or not, they make their boats by sewing hides together and carry out deep-sea voyages in them. .....[Roman poet Avienus, quoting fragments from a Carthaginian periplus (seaman's sailing directions) dating to the 6th century BC -  taken from Farfarers, Mowat, p 40]
        Another early reference to British in skin boats is from Pliny (the Elder) who explains in his Historia Naturalis written around 77A.D.  that a much earlier historian, Timaeus, made reference to an island called Mictis, "lying inward, in the sea; six days from Britain where tin is found, and to which Britons cross in boats of osier covered with stitched hides"  (This information is given in Farfarers p 337) 
        The trouble is that, as these quotes suggest,  the golden age of the "Albans" occurred probably before Roman times. Indeed, the fortifications in the British north, called Broches, were built during the Roman Age, as defences against Celts, and indeed Romans. The Romans were keen to assert control over all of the British Isles. I believe, therefore, that the original native British, those disposed to harvesting the sea with skin boats, simply sailed away to Norway, Iceland, and even North America during the Roman Age. If they were able to sail to Mictis (which I will explain below was probably Norway), well they could have remained there, safe from oppression of Romans or Celts. If they were able to sail west and land on fertile coasts of Labrador or Newfoundland, well they would have gone there too. Unlike land-based people who had no alternative than to accept the authority of invaders, these people could leave.
        Thus, I believe that  Mowat made a basic error. If his "Albans" reached the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, then they were the Newfoundland peoples known as the "Beothuks". According to archeology, the "Beothuks" appeared in Newfoundland about this time, in the early centuries AD, in the Roman Age. But they did not come to harvest walrus. They came to find a new home. They did not come with missionaries, because the Christian Church was still in its infancy.
     I have discussed in greater detail in SEA-GOING SKIN BOATS AND OCEANIC EXPANSION: The Voyages of the Whale Hunters, the fact that the British Northern Isles peoples who sailed in skin boats, must have ultimately originated from the general sea-going aboriginals of the Scandinavian arctic. At some early date, as early as 3000BC, some would have migrated south into the British Isles, found a wealth of sea life there, and some would have remained there, living a more localized life, compared to the original seafarers who lived a more nomadic, seasonally migratory, life in the style of ancient aboriginal hunters-fishers.  Being of those origins, the language they spoke would have been "Finnic", and so they would have had words that can be interpreted via modern Finnic languages.
        Mowat rightly assumes that the words the ancient Massilian Greek visitor to the north, Pytheas cited, like Thule and Orcades, came from the northern natives. But what was that language like? If it was Finnic as the theory of expansion of skin boat peoples suggests, then the word Thule should possibly interpret well with Finnic, such as with Estonian or Finnish. The name Thule has been accepted from earliest times to have been the name of Iceland. Iceland is characterized by the fact that it is actively volcanic, spewing smoke across the North Atlantic to the British Northern Isles and Norway. If it had a name, it seems that the name should make reference to this, since ancient names were simple descriptions of what was named. The name recorded by Pytheas as Thule (Greek TH sounds like a "D"), a word that is exactly identifiable with Estonian tule  (single T is more like an English "D") which as a genitive would mean '(place, island, etc) of the fire'  (Indeed in Estonian tulemägi, literally 'fire-hill', means 'volcano')  Finnish, which retained an -n genitive would have called the island tylen, which is also recorded in historical records.
       A further word, worth looking at from a Finnic perspective is the abovementioned Mictis. It could be an abbreviation and Germanic distortion of mägedese  'place of the mountains'
      Perhaps of greater significance to our argument that the Beothuks were in fact fugitives from the British Northern Isles, is the fact that Estonian can interpret the name "Picti" (first initiated by the Romans) with püükide   (Ü=  as in "ewe") which would mean '(people, etc) of the catches'  (of fish, etc). I believe that the northerners in the skin boats appeared at markets of mainland Britain selling fish and other marine products, and thus the native British, speaking the same Finnic-type language, simply identified northerners as fishermen, as sea-harvesters, fish catchers. (This notion that the language of the Britannicae was also Finnic is controversial because it has long been assumed it was a Belgic type of Celtic; however in the first century A.D. the Roman historian Tacitus, in describing the Aestii of the southeast Baltic in his Germania, who can be viewed as ancestral to Estonians, wrote that their language was "closer to that of the British".)    
         In some historical records the name Peti appears, perhaps abbreviated and hardened by the Norse language since it appears in Norwegian texts. This can be seen as a degeneration of the original word. Indeed, according to Ptolemy's information, the name Epidi appears in the British north in Roman times. See the discussion below. Peti, could be an abbreviation and/or dialectic distortion of BEOTHU which is seen in Beothuk,  the -K in Beothuk could have been  a nominalizer added by the Basque language, as a result of the early  Basque contacts with the Beothuks in Newfoundland.
       So is it possible the Beothuks were Mowats "Albans" who hunted walrus and created the "longhouse foundations"? We note that humans are by nature very territorial, so that Beothuks could not trespass on  hunting territory already occupied by indigenous "Dorset" culture seafareres. That may be the reason they ended up in Newfoundland, south of the Labrador coast "Dorset" peoples. We note that since the Dorset culture sea people did not sail, but went with currents, it is possible that they avoided travelling south past Newfoundland, on account currents would drive them out into the open sea. By staying adequately towards the north, if swept to sea, they would be carried back to Greenland. See the map of the current circuit "C".
     Thus there is logic in the fact that the Beothuks ended up in Newfoundland. And it is interesting to note that aboriginals in skin boats appear in the Vinland Sagas: : But one early morning as they looked around they caught sight of nine skin-boats: the men in them were waving sticks which made a noise like flails, and the motion was sunwise . . . . . .They were small and evil-looking, and their hair was coarse; they had large eyes and broad cheekbones. . . (Eirik's Saga, 10)  If one did not know that this account was made in Newfoundland, one might think it described Picts.           The argument for making a connection between the  "Peti" and "Beothuks" is strong.
       Also arguing against Mowat's theory of a later (post-Roman Age) "Alban" group that travelled back and forth from the British Northern Isles, is the fact that in the Roman Age, it is unlikely that people finding such a wealth of sea life as was found on the Canadian coast, would really find any reason to go back the the British Northern Isles to face the oppression by Celts and Romans that forced the building of the brochs.
    Collectors and sellers of walrus ivory must be well-established, European-based, traders. Where they? For example the Atlantic traders called the "Veneti", although falling under Roman authority, remained dominant in sea trade, and adapting to the Roman Empire, would have continued to operate in procuring resource goods, and selling them to the most profitable markets in Europe. Thus the only possible scenario for early trade involving the Labrador or Newfoundland coast, was that the Beothuks were visited from time to time by Veneti, who traded with them, and possibly even maintained a trading post or two.
       Supporting a theory that Newfoundland and Labrador was visited by Veneti traders, is the fact that they were closely associated with the Picts in the north parts of the British Isles, already in the Roman Age. Note in the following map, the names Vennicones in the British north and Vennicni (obviously an abbreviation of the same Vennicones) in the north of Ireland. I see them as settlements of traders, handling wares from "Picts" on the one hand and visiting VENNE trader ships from "Scythia" on the other.

THE "PICTI" NAME IN PTOLEMY'S DESCRIPTIONS FROM THE ROMAN AGE       There has been a tradition to assume that the name of the Picts, originating from Roman"Picti" first used in the early 3rd century AD, was derived from a Latin word meaning 'painted', presumably from native British painting their bodies for war. However all indications are that it was an indigenous word, not one invented by Romans. The appearance of a people called Rhobogdi has been mentioned above. We will look at Ptolemy's naming more closely. The map below shows the two locations of the names Rhobogdi and Epidi.      I show how one can arrive at Epidi by raising the vowels and abbreviating Rhobogdi. Such names were collected in Roman times from sources who were usually not natives, but officials working for the Romans and the distortions could have been made by the official and not the natives themselves. Since the major occupation of the northern peoples was harvesting the sea, one could suggest that the Picti word (Bogdi in the example), had something to do with catching fish, etc. That inspires us to suggest the Estonian püükide 'of the catches' may be some sort of parallel. (We bear in mind that Estonian has a very strong sea-trader tradition and would qualify as being located on the coast of "Scythia"!) The Rho at the front, would be the RA found in Rhone, Rhine, etc. which means 'way, path' and is often seen in the names of the earlier trade waterways (Ptolemy named the Volga Rha) but more often ot appeared as a suffix: Lige-RA, Wese-RA, Od-RA, etc.      There probably were two types of historic Picts. One type were sea-harvesters and used skin boats made from walrus hides, lived nomadically on outer shores and islands, and lived in semi buried circular rock shelters (like igloos, but made of rock and covered with sod). They were of the oceanic sea-hunter stock which had ultimately come from arctic Norwegian shores, and perhaps remained tied to it. The other type of people associated with the term "Pict" in later history, were long distance traders of the Veneti trade network, who made their stops at the trader-Picts. Ptolemy's map even suggests these trader-Picts were established beside the sea-hunter-Picts in order to be handy to each other. To the west of the Rhobogdi were the Vennicni and on the east side near today's Aberdeen were the Vennicones. Since the term VENNE, VENTA, etc were associated with trading, they can be seen as the trader-Picts, with long distance links to the east Baltic coast (the coast of "Scythia")

        If the Beothuks are identified as an offshoot of the Picts of the British Northern Isles of the Roman Age, then information from the Roman period, suggests that the sea-harvesters always had an association with the VENNE-named traders. They probably spoke close to the same language. The Picts and VENNE may have defined the two divisions of the later historic Picts - the one group being sea-harvesters, and the other being the trader settlements.
       Thus Mowat may have sensed something, and even looked at the Beothuks as candidates for his theory, but finally he dismissed the Beothuks. The problem lies in the fact that if the Beothuks arrived in Roman times as semi-civilized Picts, over a period of many centuries of isolation, they would have become more primitive again, and so the kind of people Mowat was looking for could not be found in them. If there were civilized peoples visiting Newfoundland between the time of the Romans and the Norse, they would likely have been the VENNE traders, because, after all, having always had close association with the Picts in northern Britain, they would have been aware of any Pictish who had sailed away and settled in territories to the west as well as those who had sailed away to the east to the Norwegian coast. It is also worth noting that the Norse called the VENNE traders by the name Vindo (plural Vindr) and the possibility exists that the Norse used the term "Vinland" as a result of rumours about the Vindr traders having visited the place.
     Returning to Mowat's theory, could any people from the British Northern Isles have been crossing the North Atlantic, camped under overturned skin boats, harvested walrus, and taken tusks back to Europe to sell? It seems to me that in the course of history, during and after the Roman period in the British Isles, any northern natives who were not able to sail away, were doomed. Some may have endured by keeping to the more remote islands, where the only people they encountered were Irish monks who sought the isolation for their own religious reasons.
       Before the Roman Age, they were so prevalent, that ancient historians saw them everywhere even in the south, riding in their crazy skin boats. After the Roman Age, during the rise of Christianity, those who had remained in the British Northern Isles and had not fled to Norway or Newfoundland (by my theory) were only witnessed by the monks on remote islands, as the following passage suggests:   
       Originally it was the "Peti" and the "Papae" who inhabited these [Northern]  islands. The first of these people, I mean the Peti, were scarcely taller than pygmies. Morning and evening they busied themselves to an amazing degree with the building and fitting out of their towns. But at midday, thoroughly drained of all their strength, they lay low in their little underground houses under the pressure of their fears....
    But in the days of Harold the Hairy... some pirates [Vikings] kin to the very powerful pirate Rognvald advanced with a large fleet across the Solundic Sea. They threw these people out of their long-standing habitations and utterly destroyed them; they then made the islands subject to themselves.  (from a 12th century compendium called Historia Norwegiae,  above excerpt  from p 111, Farfarers.)
       Proceeding further forward in time, even these "Peti" have vanished, but maybe not.  Mowat wrote:
    Existing Shetland traditions speak of a people called Finns who inhabited Fetlar and northwest Unst for some time after the Norse occupied Shetland. This name is identical with the one by which the Norse knew the aboriginals of northern Scandinavia. It is also the name given by Shetlanders (of Norse lineage) to a scattering of Inuit (sic). who, in kayaks, materialized amongst the Northern Isles during the eighteenth century.. (Mowat, Farfarers, p 110, Toronto, 1998)
     Mowat's dismissing the "Finns" as lost Inuit (ie from Greenland) shows a lack of awareness of the meaning and application of the word. In recent times scholars have identified the historic use of the word with "Lapps" (today "Saami") but in earlier times the word "Finn" also referred to aboriginals on the sea, and in forests, anywhere in the Scandinavian Peninsula that they were found. The use of the word "Finn" by the invading Germanic powers  was similar to Europeans calling all the North American natives "Indians" for the longest time. The Danish kingdom conquered the Norwegian coast from 800-1000AD, established rule, and assimilated the "Finns" with which they had contact. Only the reindeer-"Finns" in the mountains, making a living in a peculiar way off reindeer, were spared assimilation.
        But if we go back to before 800 AD, it would be hard to separate the seagoing "Finns" of the British Northern Isles from those seen on the Norwegian coasts. Historic accounts of  Picts crossing the sea to Mictis, can only refer to crossing the sea to Norway. Mowat thus may be in error in dismissing people called "Finns" as being lost Inuit from Greenland. They were more likely the remnants of  aboriginals of the Northeast Atlantic, who moved from place to place between the British Northern Isles, Norway, and perhaps Iceland and the Faeroes. Were the "Picts" and seagoing "Finns" variations on the same northeast Atlantic sea people. It is well known that aboriginal people varied everywhere  in the degree to which they became involved with civilization. It often depended on how close they were to the encroaching civilization.
     Thus, to summarize, although Mowat's vision of early British riding around in skin boats, may be correct, and in the north their defending themselves with the use of brochs may be correct, and their ability to travel both to Norway as well as Iceland may be correct.... it seems to me that evidence of their continued existence  after the establishing of  Celtic and Roman power, is lacking. All the information from the later period, at best speak of "Finns" or small people called "Peti".  They do not seem like the strong entreprendeurial people Mowat depicts crossing the North Atlantic and living for a half a year in harsh conditions just to spend days  harvesting walrus. Even if such strong entreprendeurial people still existed after the Roman Age, they would not have harvested walrus themselves. Throughout history, traders obtained goods by trading for them. If there had really been any "Albans" seeking walrus tusks, they would have journeyed to the Labrador coast with their boat filled with trinkets, traded them for walrus ivory, and returned home. Next year they would have done the same, spending little money and time, and letting the aboriginals obtain the desired goods in their efficient manner, and also avoiding angering the aboriginals by trespassing on their hunting territories. Any trade-minded people, like indeed the Greenland Church later, knew that the easiest way to obtain walrus ivory was to trade for it. And certainly evidence points to that happening from time to time, whether the traders were from among the VENNE or someone else.
       What Mowat describes simply would not happen. Later in history the Basques and others did embark on harvesting seas themselves, but only when demand greatly exceeded what the aboriginals could supply. In the American interior, when it came to the fur trade, the Europeans never abandoned the wisdom of having the Natives themselves obtain the furs and to trade them for it.
       Thus excluding any "Albans", or even Beothuks, as the makers of the "longhouse foundations", we come to the question, who made them and how?  The answer is the same as it has always been - it was made by "Dorset" seagoing peoples. But how? What was the way of life that gave rise to them?
    

    The entire story of the Picts and "Albans" that preoccupied Mowat in most of his Farfarers, thus can be seen as going off track, and although interesting, having no bearing on the mystery of the "longhouse foundations" that sparked the entire work.
    Both the "longhouse foundations" and "beacons" described earlier, can be, and have been, assumed by archeologists to have been made by seagoing Eskimos of some sort.  Still, the boat shaped archeological sites have posed a mystery to archeologists in that they have not found any evidence of how they were roofed.  Let us therefore leave behind the story of the skin-boat peoples of the Northern British Isles, and even the Beothuks, and pursue the question that started it all.
     Since the locations where the "longhouse foundations" were found, have no materials from which the longhouses could be built besides rocks and sod, the mystery has always been in how they would have been roofed. Did the visitors carry poles and skins with them for that purposes. If they were roofed by materials that seagoing people carried with them, then the problem was that carrying the materials for building the shelter would encumber the tribe. Surely if there were special materials for roofing the longhouses, it might be smart to leave them there, protected, for whenever the clan returned. Thus Mowat's idea of the boats themselves being used for the roof  is intelligent; but since the natives themselves had skin boats, umiaks, why not consider the possibility that the seagoing aboriginals themselves could have done it. No need to invent any foreign visitors from far away. Ironically, Mowat actually himself presented the idea of Inuit camping under  their  skin boats  in his introductory pages:
     "Certain it is that almost every Stone Age people throughout the northern circumpolar region depended upon skin boats. . . .  As late as the 1970's Alaskan Eskimos still made umiaks sheathed in walrus hides that could carry thirty or forty people across the stormy Bering Strait. When bad weather (or good hunting) brought such travellers ashore, they would turn their umiaks upside down to provide themselves with shelter. A big one upturned on a stone-and-turf foundation could provide comfortable housing for a large family, even in winter." (p 18  Farfarers)
       And yet, he failed to present any discussion about eastern seagoing Eskimos of the Labrador coast turning over their skin boats onto the "foundations".  He could have argued against it, still; because their skin boat shape was long and narrow and not consistent with the wider shape and width demanded by the "longhouse foundation" (Mowat had assumed a typical wide European-type shape for the "Alban" skin boat, which would have had a better fit to the foundation.)
      Mowat may also have failed to consider seagoing Eskimos  because he may not have been fully aware of their superioriy in the ocean.   Perhaps in his research he did not encounter the Greenland Inuit  skin boats and their dominance of whale hunting before the Basques entered the whaling industry in the 16th century. He made no mention of the Greenland Inuit whalers of the 16th century, who displayed a familiarity with this activity that could only come from a long history. As summarized by O.P. Dickason: ( my underlining)
   "The closest to sustained, contact that developed between Natives of the  eastern Arctic and Europeans during this period was through whaling. This began along the Labrador coast and the Strait of Belle Isle, where Inuit met with Basque whalers, and later with French. These encounters introduced Europeans to Inuit technology for deep-sea whaling, which during the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries was the most advanced in the world. Combined with European deep-sea ships, that technology led to the efflorescence of world-wide whaling. Initially, Inuit-white encounters followed the pattern of trading and raiding. It is not known if this behaviour extended to Davis Strait, where Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Scottish whalers were operating irregularly off the Greenland coast; but by the first half of the eighteenth century, Inuit were occasionally working with Europeans as the latter intensified their whaling activities. . ."   (p92, Canada's First Nations:A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, O.P. Dickason, Toronto, 1992)
      The skill in whaling obviously was not newly acquired. Most likely whaling and harvesting of sea life generally, had been firmly established in the northwestern Atlantic from earliest times, among the "Dorset" culture, dating back 5000-6000 years ago.
        The harvesting of large sea-animals must have been established and spread widely through the arctic seas long ago. We note that a toggling harpoon found at L'Anse Amour Mound in Labrador dates back to 7500 years ago (Archaic Cultures in the Strait of Belle Isle Region, Labrador, J.A. Tuck, R.McGhee, Arctic Anthropology, XII, 2 (1975) pp 76-91) .
    According to archeologists, many millenia ago, humans arrived and  spread through the Canadian east arctic from east to west in a number of stages of what archeologists called the "Dorset" culture. Recently,  an archeological "Thule" culture spread from the Canadian west arctic to east arctic  replacing the most recent version of the  "Dorest" culture. It seems   brother peoples coming from the west challenged the "Dorset" peoples with new technology, displaced them and/or absorbed them. But was the displacement total? It is reasonable to assume that the better "Dorset" activities and methods endured, and were not displaced. A sea-going "Dorset" people may have  continued to travel the waters of Labrador and Greenland, affected little by the "Thule" culture. Or more likely there was a blending of cultures, wherein the "Dorset" may have had superior whaling techniques, which remained undisplaced. Thus the "beacons" and "longhouse" sites perhaps belonged to older "Dorset" traditions rather than the new "Thule" traditions,  induring in the seagoing nomads of the Labrador coast, and lasting into the 18th century in the "Greenland Inuit".   It would explain why Greenland Inuit have a sense of having always been there, not of having come from the west. A culture such as archeology finds it, reflects only the physical culture. New physical culture can be adopted without language, history, or soft culture being changed. 
    No written description makes the case for the sophistication of aboriginal whaling activity in the North Atlantic than this illustration of Greenland "Eskimos" gathering to hunt whales. 






       It is easy to imagine that the techniques first shown in this prehistoric illustration are also depicted in the illustration of the Greenland Inut,
          Significant to our quest for an answer to the "longhouse foundations" is the appearance of  the Greenland "Eskimo" skin boats. They have poles on the ends, that may have been intended for handling the boat, and there is  a crosscrossing of rope on the side, which suggests the skins are designed to be easily removed. Compare these Greenland skin boats with an illustration of the Alaskan version.  The Alaskan umiak looks like a more permanent construction.



       The illustration of the Greenland "Eskimos" shows a gathering of the clans (bands, extended families) of the sea-going tribe. Each large umiak would represent one clan, and it appears there are four clans, which is a typical number for a natural tribe. Among boat-using hunting people across the northern world, a  tribe would  consist of some four to six clans who had established over many generations,  claims or rights to specific hunting territories, rights which they would pass down from the clan chief  to male descendants.
       The manner in which clans unite to form tribes is influenced by their circumstances. In a forest setting, the clans might unify into a tribe if the clans each occupy a branch of a river system. In the case of ocean-people, the pattern of ocean currents, coasts, and winds could join a number of clans into a tribe.
    The hunting territory for the seagoing peoples was not defined in terms of land area as in civilization (based on farming people)  but in terms of specific hunting areas in the sea. The clan would move within their own territory, from one hunting area to another according to the patterns of nature, in a usually annual circuit, only coming back to the same place the following year.   Each clan would  defend their  territory,  and respect the territories of the other clans. There would have to be an agreement if more than one clan hunted at one location. They moved through the environment on their own, but congregated, usually annually, at an agreed-apon location,  to affirm their identity in the larger social order, the tribe, exchange news, pursue celebrations, find mates.  A good place for the multi-clan meeting was where food was plentiful enough to support all the clans together, and where it was advantageous to have help from each other,  such as hunting whales.    
     Each clan had their own territory, their own number of campsites that they visited year-by-year, and they would have guarded their rights to the animals.  It is because hunting territories, campsites, associated clans, etc were all strongly defined, that a clan was not likely to wander aimlessly. Strange territory meant they could be intruding on some other people's territory and  had to be on guard, proceed with caution. It is because of this ownership of hunting areas, that it would be difficult for any foreigners to intrude. Any Europeans attempting to harvest some animal like walrus from a location a clan owned, could end up being attacked by the entire tribe - other clans coming to the aid of the clan experiencing trespassing.  While it would not have been difficult in recent history when Europeans had guns , early Europeans would not have had much defence against the aboriginals if they intruded on the aboriginal hunting territory. 
   Thus the  archeological features discussed by Mowat, the  seeming longhouse foundations and the beacons visible from the sea, are easily explained in terms of envisioning a sea-going people of the northwest Atlantic, who spent most of their lives moving around on the open Atlantic and harvesting large sea-animals like whales. These people would have  systemantically visited familiar  campsites year after year,  in their annual circuit,  camped on rocky coasts and islands if it was needed, to be close to their hunting places, and used methods and equipment that had been adapted to this specialized form of life over countless generations. With a way of life spent mostly on windblown rocky islands, being able to use the skins of one's boats as shelter would certainly have been part of a good system. The boats shown in the illustration were clearly not invented overnight, but over centuries in adapting to the special conditions encountered in the seas off the coasts of Greenland and Labrador.
    The places where the sea animals were located were usually far from the coast, among scattered rocky outcrop; and so,  the sea-harvesting clans  needed to be able to improvise their life on even small rocky islands not far from the hunting sites. They would improvise shelters from very large skins that were easily removed from frames with the long poles, by "unlacing" the rope. The debated "longhouse foundations" may simply have been one form of shelter, designed for open flat terrain. Elsewhere they draped the skins against rock walls, in front of caves, etc. 
    Merely overturning umiaks produced cramped shelters. Using skins of boats rather than whole boats  gave greater versatility and comfort in fashioning shelter.  It solves the objection of the umiak being too narrow if overturned. Possibly two skins could be combined to create a large communal shelter for two clans. Below reproduces, from Farfarers one of the remains of the so-called "longhouse foundations". Note that the scattered rocks do not show a constructed wall; and that assumptions that there was one, is speculation. The nature of the edges, with rotten turf and stones, could merely represent the accumulation of rocks and turf used to hold down and seal the edges of  the tent through repeated use. 
   The large number of such "longhouse sites" in the region of Ungava Bay suggests it was a congregating area for clans. Indeed a major hunting site was nearby. As mentioned above, while clans moved through the environment independently, they congregated at special locations of abundance and activity of larger scope that many clans could better perform together.