Just got back last night from Drummond Island, MI- a week of primitive camping and traditional arts classes.  It was awesome, I wish you guys could have been there!  I will post some more pictures as I process them (I did use a digital camera, but I take way too many so I have to sort them).
If you are curious here is the website: http://www.islandgathering.org/islandgathering/Welcome.html

Here is a picture of the canoe paddle carving class with some birch bark canoes in the background.

Nice pics and don't worry, many pizzerias here in Italy have oven the same size of your instructor's. And if we have it then it's ok  
There must be pics of the emergency one I built with a friend somewhere in the forum... I've got to find the link to the post...
I really hope you enjoyed your stay, don't you have more pics? Meet any animals in their habitat?
Greetings,
Mauro.

EDIT: nevermind about the pics, I just realized you already wrote about it  

EDIT #2: and here's the thread where I showed our pizza oven, made out of just 3 bricks, 3 rooftiles and some clay; it could bake a pizza in 3 to 5 minutes! It'd be amazing if you could make one at your house too!

Great pictures! Thank you.

Bill:  It was not vented, the only opening was the mouth.  The instructor did mention that he had made ovens with a large hole in the top so you could cook on it like a stove, but he said that they tended to crack and were more trouble than it was worth.  I do not recall anything about adding additional ventilation holes.

I made a lot of things last year, but not so much this year.  I did make a snowshoe needle (like those below that belong to the instructor) and began some quill plaiting, but nothing big.  I did make 'a sling in a minute' which was no big shakes except it literally took 60 seconds or less to do.  Mostly I listened to talks about brain tanning, axe/hatchet care, traditional woodcarving, that sort of thing- but I also helped prepare the corn soup, process rice and make some of the little pizzas.  So I was busy and learning, but didn't make much.

I also went on a group excursion to Harbor Island.  I paddled there in the 24' birchbark Voyager canoe and paddled in the bateau on the way back.  A word of advice- should you ever need to pick between paddling a birchbark canoe and a bateau, PICK THE CANOE.  On open water with any sort of wind the bateau is like paddling a heavy wooden box, probably because that is exactly what you are doing...

That is REALLY interesting. I had never heard of that before. Do you have any more info about it or how it is done??

Did he use a stone weight?  If he did, how big was it and what did it look like?  They dug up a stone object during the excavation at Moundville this summer, it is oval, not quite 2 inches at the longest (4cm) by 1 1/2 (35mm) by 1/2 inch (12mm) thick with a 1/3 inch (8mm) hole in the center.  It appeared to be made of sandstone.  Nobody was exactly sure just what it was or could be for, bead, some sort of spacer or some type of weight?  A reproduction using a sandy limestone took over four hours to make with stone tools, so whatever it was, it probably took longer to make, the sandstone is knappable, so it is much tougher to grind and drill.

Yes, he was spinning very fine thread and so only used the miniature wooden drop spindle that you see in the picture.  The disk was more for balance than weight, I think, because the wood was very light and was not weighted down.
He had the luck to observe a female cecropia moth hatch from her cocoon in his house and saw where she laid her eggs.  He then spent most of the summer 'ranching' cecropia moths and harvesting the cocoons once they hatched, so he had a lot of material to work with.  He said that cecropia moths are related to the silk worms of Asia, so their cocoon have many of the same properties.  Unlike their cousins, cecropia moth cocoons have a papery texture, and he had to boil them for hours to separate the fibers.  I do not remember if he boiled them with anything special in the water, but you could just pull the silk out after they were done.


Also, falconry happened.