Provincial Archaeology Office 2023 Archaeology Review 95 L ittle St. Lawrence is located on the south- eastern side of the Burin Peninsula, on what is called the Chapeau Rouge Coast after the mountain that borders the western side of the entrance of St. Lawrence Harbour (Figure 1). Little St. Lawrence Bay lay just east of St. Law- rence Harbour. Turpin’s Island (CfAu-05), a small peninsula extending from the east side of Little St. Lawrence Harbour, has been recognized as a high potential site since 2006, associated with European and possibly precontact occupations. The Great History of Little St. Lawrence The earliest accounts and maps of Newfound- land mention St. Lawrence or Chapeau Rouge (the Mountain located on the west side of St. Lawrence Harbour) suggesting that the area was known since the first half of the 16 th century. The toponym St. Lorens first appears in Cosmographie universelle, selon les navigateurs tant anciens que modernes written and illustrat- ed by the cartographer Guillaume Le Testu, published in 1555 (Figure 2). More than the antiquity of the des- ignation of St. Lawrence Harbour by European car- tographers, it seems that in the second half of the 16 th century, St. Lawrence, and especially the very noticea- ble feature of the Chapeau Rouge Mountain, became a landmark in pilot books and navigation charts of Newfoundland and the Strait of Cabot. A good ex- ample is the pilot book of Martin de Hoyarsabal (1579) which gives routes to and from St. Lawrence: “[…] Giset port de Belin & S. Laures, est suest & oest norroest, y a 6. L. […] Gisent la montaigne qu’est à l’entrée de S. Laurens, & le cap de S. Marie Norroest & suest, y a 15. Lieuës”. This information entails that St. Lawrence was used by fishing crews in the early 16 th century, as cod fishing was the reason for the European presence in the area. In terms of cultural affiliation, it is likely that Basque crews fished in the area during the 16 th and the first half of the 17 th centuries. Laurier Turgeon (1986:532-533) demonstrated that a majority of the vessels outfitted in Bordeaux in the second half of the 16 th century were from the Basque Country (Saint- Jean-de-Luz and Gipuzkoa), and that the majority of them fished for cod. His research also showed that Placentia Bay was an important fishing destination for the Basque ships in the 16 th century. An archival rec- ord mentions a Basque ship in Little St. Lawrence in 1597: In “Great and Little St. Lawrence, encountering Turpin’s Island, Little St. Lawrence, CfAu-05 Small Scale Archaeological and Paleoenvironmental Excavation Catherine Losier, Paul Ledger & Pete Whitridge Memorial University Figure 1: Turpin’s Island (CfAu-05) location in Little St. Lawrence Harbour.