Co-Investigators Christyann Darwent (Department of Anthropology, University of California-Davis) and Genevieve LeMoine (Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College) will undertake archaeological excavation at two Thule/Inughuit sites in the summers of 2008 and 2009. The goal is to investigate the prehistoric-historic transition in this region, and to gain an understanding of this period of key culture contact and environmental change. The prehistoric-historic transition here dates to the 19th century. Sporadic contact with Euro-Americans began in 1818 when John Ross first anchored off Cape York, and became increasingly frequent after 1850. At the same time, (ca. 1860) the Inughuit assimilated into their society a group of migrants from Baffin Island. Both of these processes had major and lasting impacts on Inughuit society, and because both of them involved introducing, or re-introducing, important technologies, they are amenable to archaeological investigation. Technological studies, using a variety of approaches, will be used to understand how the Inughuit adopted new tools and materials into their activities, and what impact such changes had on their lives. The nineteenth century also saw the end of the Little Ice Age, with increased warming accompanied by as-yet undocumented changes in the abundance and distribution of plants and animals. Studies of both economically important animals and the insect fauna of the sites will address questions of the timing and scope of these changes, as well as the Inughuit?s responses to them.
Sites have been selected on the basis of surveys conducted by the team in 2004 and 2005. In 2008 the team will excavate late-prehistoric/early historic winter dwellings at Cape Grinnell, a site first identified by Elisha Kent Kane in the1850s as having recently abandoned houses. In 2009 the research team will focus its efforts on Qaqaitsut, a winter village, occupied from ca. AD 1200 to as recently as the 1980s. Houses and adjacent middens will be excavated. They will also map both of these multi-component sites in detail. At Cape Grinnell, a geomorphological study will help the team understand the development of beach ridges, which have been occupied for over 4000 years. The investigators will be addressing questions of basic culture history; culture contact, both between indigenous groups and between Euro-Americans and Inuit; adaptation to the changing polar environment; and mammalian biogeography.
This project is part of NSF?s investment in International Polar Year research. The project is an international collaborative one with researchers from the United States, Canada, Denmark and Greenland (including members of the local Inughuit communities).
The Inglefield Land Archaeology Project (ILAP), ongoing since 2004, was established to study sites occupied by prehistoric and historic Inughuit and earlier peoples that would help us understand how these people accommodated and adapted to contact with a variety of different groups of people who stayed in the region. Inglefield Land is an area of unglaciated land in Northwest Greenland, on Smith Sound and Kane Basin (see map). It has been described as "the Gateway to Greenland" as it was the first place in Greenland to be occupied by waves of migrant hunters from Alaska over the last 4500 years. More recently this area was a focus of Euro-American exploration expeditions and, in the 1860s, the destination for a group of Inuit from Baffin Island. In the first years of the project we conducted extensive surveys to identify and map sites along much of the coast. We identified sites from all time periods in Arctic prehistory, from early Paleoeskimo (ca. 4500 - 900 bp) to Thule (prehistoric Inuit, ca. 900 – 200 bp) to historic, and including many different types of features, from semi-subterranean winter houses to snare lines, caches and kayak stands. Beginning in 2006 we conducted excavations at key sites. In 2006 we studied two historic (mid-late nineteenth to early twentieth century) Inughuit houses at Iita (Etah), an important site for both Inughuit and Euro-American explorers. In 2008 and 2009 we excavated eight Thule winter houses and four Paleoeskimo features at four different sites. Six of the Thule houses proved to be from the early Thule occupation of the region, in the 12th-13th century, while two were from century or so later. The Paleoeskimo features date from about 4000 to 1000 years ago. Studies of the materials excavated are still ongoing, but there have been some intriguing results. Our research focus was on the last 1000 years, so Paleoeskimo occupations were not a priority (although future work looks promising). For the most part we recovered no datable material and few artefacts from these features. Features from the last Paleoeskimo people, the Late Dorset, were the most productive, and generally fit well with what we know of such sites elsewhere in the region, including their link to widespread trade networks for meteoric iron from nearby Cape York. The people who constructed the Thule features we excavated were likewise linked to wide trade networks. At both Cape Grinnell and Qaqaitsut we found meteoric iron, but also Norse iron, including a link of chain mail. Norse items arrived through trade with intermediary Inuit groups to the south. More far-flung connections can be seen in pottery from one of the houses at Cape Grinnell. Thule people first arrived in this area from Alaska bringing pottery with them, but they soon found that making new pots in this extreme northern location was not practical and switched to making pots and lamps from soapstone. The pottery is very fragile, and houses with pottery in them were probably occupied by the first or second generation of migrants from Alaska. Artifacts of more local origin include various tools and ornaments of walrus ivory, bowhead whale baleen, and even amber. Analysis of animal bones is ongoing, but there have already been some interesting results. In one case, pieces of a butchered dog bone were found in a meat cache and a house at Qaqaitsut, directly linking the two. The numerous dog bones in the house and cache suggest that the inhabitants faced some hardship, and may have sacrificed some or all of their dog team to survive. Examination of the type and distribution of insect remains in the houses (mostly species of lice) revealed patterns of personal hygiene and the efforts of these people to keep their clothing and bodies free of these pests. Other ongoing studies include ancient DNA studies of dog, bird, and isolated human bones and teeth. Our work at these sites has had broader impacts on a number of levels. We introduced a number of Inughuit students, and one elder, to archaeological fieldwork. A number of graduate and undergraduate students from Bowdoin College, UC Davis, and Université Laval were involved in both field and lab work. For the general public we are preparing a series of posters in English and Greenlandic. These will be distributed to museums in Greenland (through the Greenland National Museum) and other venues in the US. People were also able to follow our fieldwork in real time through audio blogs posted (and archived) at the Arctic Museum website. The project has also allowed us to develop a strong working relationship with the Greenland National Museum which we expect will lead to further collaborations in the future.
