McGovern CUNY-Hunter College This is a dissertation improvement grant proposal to fund the work of Jim Woollett. The project examines subsistence and cultural change in Labrador Inuit culture. Consideration of subsistence economy in the study of contact-period cultural change has hinged upon ethnohistoric and possibilistic interpretations. This project combines zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical analyses of the existing collections produced from recent excavations at several sites in Labrador with oral history studies that address local environment and land-use patterns. The study will link changing economic behavior to social and environmental causes, most particularly through detailed studies of the organization and scheduling of seal and whale hunting.
