Most Canadians think of the Arctic as a barren and inhospitable land, a region that is barely capable of supporting human occupation. Few are aware of this area's long history of habitation by the ancestors of the Indians and the Eskimos. Yet it is from the northwestern Canadian Arctic that we have convincing evidence of the earliest human presence in the New World. At least 20,000 years ago, this area was inhabited by Palaeolithic hunters of mammoth and other large game. Following the retreat of the last Ice Age glaciers, ancestral Indians pursued the animals northwards, and by at least 8,000 years ago, they had advanced beyond the tree line. Eskimos or Eskimo-like peoples inhabited the northernmost regions of the High Arctic as early as 4,000 years ago.
The prehistoric inhabitants of arctic Canada were hunters and fishermen, and for them, the region provided a decent subsistence. It is a general rule of ecology that the farther one travels from the equator towards the poles, the fewer species of animals one finds. The populations of these few species, however, are relatively large. Extreme seasonal changes in arctic climate affect all aspects of animal life. Migration, the availability of food and the bearing of young occasion dense seasonal concentrations of many species. These factors combine to make hunting and fishing in the Arctic a very productive activity. Once one knows when the caribou are migrating across a certain lake, when the char are running in a river, or where the seal and walrus concentrate because of local ice conditions, it is possible to kill large numbers of these animals in a short time. Farther to the south, hunters must spend more time searching for widely scattered game and can make only isolated kills. Thus, for hunting peoples, the Arctic has always been an attractive place to live. Indeed, the region appears to have been occupied as soon as technologies were developed that permitted people to protect themselves from the extremes of arctic winters, and to pursue and kill arctic animals.
Since the Indians and the Eskimos of arctic Canada left no written records, and oral traditions extend only a few generations into the past, almost all that we know of the history of the region must come from archaeological research. By excavating and studying the remains of the villages and camps occupied by prehistoric peoples, we can obtain at least a vague idea of their way of life. The remains of houses or tent foundations tell us the approximate size of the settlements. The bones of animals killed for food are usually well preserved in the frozen arctic soil and permit the archaeologist to describe the people's diet. The same bones, as well as charcoal from cooking fires, can be analyzed by the radiocarbon dating method, in order to determine the approximate age of the settlement. The archaeologist discovers how various prehistoric arctic technologies changed over time by examining tools and weapons that were lost or discarded by a site's occupants and comparing them with objects found in other excavations.
The study of modern or historic populations in the Arctic assists archaeologists in their study of the region's prehistoric peoples. Prior to the introduction of European materials and ideas, the Eskimos and Indians who occupy the area today had ways of life that they had learned from their ancestors. Our knowledge of these peoples provides invaluable clues that assist in the reconstruction of the life of the prehistoric population. This method has a somewhat limited usefulness, however, as cultural patterns in the Arctic have changed rapidly as the people adapt to changing environmental conditions. As we shall see, many of the prehistoric peoples with whom we are dealing had a way of life that was quite different from that of their descendants of recent centuries.
The history of the Eskimos and the Indians may also be traced, to a limited extent, through the study of their languages and physical or racial characteristics. For example, all of the people known as Eskimos speak languages that are related to one another and that, therefore, must have derived from a single ancestral language. The Inuit of arctic Canada speak one of these Eskimo languages. The Eskimo languages are related to that of the Aleut people of the Aleutian Islands, suggesting that both peoples are descended from a common population of the distant past. Similarly, the Eskimo and Aleut languages are distantly related to those of the Chukchi, Koryak and Kamchadal peoples of northeastern Siberia. This suggests an Asiatic origin for the Eskimos and the Aleuts -- a theory supported by the fact that their languages are unrelated to those of any North American Indians.
The racial characteristics of these northern peoples tell a similar story. The Eskimos and the Aleuts have been grouped together with several northeastern Siberian populations in a category known as Arctic Mongoloid, characterized particularly by very flat facial features. The Indian populations of northern Canada and Alaska, however, do not show these features and have a greater similarity to Indian populations in more southerly regions. This again suggests a different history, with the Indians deriving their ancestry from the south and the Eskimos being more closely related to Siberian peoples. The Eskimos may have originated in Asia subsequent to the migration of the Indians' ancestors to North America.
Given the limitations of our current knowledge of Arctic prehistory, it should not be surprising that many aspects remain vague and uncertain. Because this brief volume omits many of the details and arguments of interest only to archaeologists, the reader may get the impression that Arctic prehistory is straightforward and well understood. That is certainly not the case, and one should realize that our understanding is based on the excavation of a relatively small number of archaeological sites. We can be certain that future archaeological investigation will modify our present statements and clarify many of the details that are now obscure.
Palaeolithic Hunters (20,000 - 10,000 B.C.)
For the greater part of the past 100,000 years, most of Canada lay buried beneath the continental glaciers of the last Ice Age. The largest unglaciated area was in the western Arctic, extending westward from the Mackenzie Delta region. This was the eastern edge of a large unglaciated area that stretched across the northern Yukon, Alaska and Siberia. Some 1,000 kilometres wide, the uncovered area joined Alaska and Siberia. Across this land bridge moved the inhabitants of the Ice Age tundras: caribou, horse, mammoth and the Palaeolithic Siberian hunters who pursued them. These people reached the northern Yukon at least 20,000 years ago.
Although there is no certain evidence, we suspect that the descendants of these first immigrants remained in far northwestern Canada throughout the last part of the Ice Age. They were probably ancestors of the people whose tools are found in local caves and dated to approximately 11,000 B.C. Around that time, some of these people probably moved southward and became the ancestors of the American Indians.
Early Indian Occupations (10,000 - 2000 B.C.)
The continental glaciers began to melt about 13,000 B.C., and by 8000 B.C. most of the western Arctic had been deglaciated. The waters of the Bering Sea had risen to the point where Alaska and Siberia were once more separated. We suspect that, by this time, the ancestors of all American Indians had reached North America from Asia. As the glaciers retreated northward and life became established in the exposed areas, various groups of Indian hunters began to move northward into what is now the Canadian Arctic. These peoples had developed technologies and ways of life suited to at least subarctic conditions while living during the glacial period on the low-latitude tundras that existed on the southern Plains, in the Great Lakes region and in New England.
Even though we suspect that the Yukon and Alaska continued to be occupied by descendants of the first Palaeolithic immigrants, there is evidence that other Indian hunters began to move northward as early as 9000 B.C. They carried with them the distinctive fluted spear points that had been developed to the south of the glacial ice. By at least 6000 B.C., the Barren Grounds region, between Hudson Bay and Great Bear Lake, had been occupied by Indians using lanceolate spearpoints identical to those used by bison hunters of the central Plains. Some of these people may have adapted their bison-hunting techniques to the pursuit of caribou in the northern forest and southern tundra, and followed this environment northward as it expanded and transformed territory that was formerly glaciated. Indians have lived in the area almost continuously since that time, making summer forays onto the tundra in pursuit of the migrating caribou and retreating to the forest during the winter.
On the Atlantic coast, we have evidence of a third major northward movement, which reached the Strait of Belle Isle region of Labrador by at least 7000 B.C. and the far north of Labrador by approximately 3000 B.C. These Indians of the "Maritime Archaic tradition" were hunters of caribou, but they must also have had a fairly sophisticated sea-hunting technology because there is proof that they killed seals and walrus. Our knowledge of all these groups is derived from the stone tools that they left behind objects that provide only limited information about the lives of their creators. The burials of the Maritime Archaic people, however, give us insight into the religion and society of these Indians. By 5000 B.C., these occupants of southern Labrador were burying some individuals in stone crypts beneath large mounds of boulders. This burial practice is more sophisticated than any other that we know to have existed in the world at that time. Although their population must have been small and scattered, these early arctic hunters appear to have had the time and energy to expend considerable thought and physical effort on the disposal of their dead.
By 5000 B.C., the continental glaciers had retreated to the mountainous islands of the eastern Arctic and northernmost Labrador, where they remain today as remnants of the last Ice Age. Between approximately 7000 and 2000 B.C. the climate of the Arctic appears to have been considerably warmer than it is today, and the tree line was farther north. Yet, aside from summer forays by caribou-hunting Indians, the vast areas of tundra and arctic coast remained uninhabited. This absence of human occupation resulted not from a shortage of resources on which the hunters could live but, rather, from the lack of a technology which would allow survival during arctic winters in the tundra, where there were no trees with which to erect shelters or make fires. But far to the west, in either Alaska or Siberia, there were people who were developing such a technology.
Immigrants from Siberia (8000 - 2000 B.C.)
About 8000 B.C., at approximately the time that water began to flow through Bering Strait, small groups of hunters began to appear in Alaska, bringing with them a stone-tool technology that was alien to North America. This technology was based on Siberian Mesolithic styles, including the use of microblades small, sharp-edged slivers of stone made by a specialized technique and used to give sharp cutting edges to bone spears and knives. This was perhaps the last population to enter North America by land. Some archaeologists believe that these people were the ancestors of the Dene Indians of northwestern Canada and Alaska. Others suspect that they may have been the ancestors of the Eskimos and the Aleuts. The latter view is supported by the fact that archaeological evidence from the island of Anangula, at the eastern end of the Aleutian chain, suggests a technological continuity between these early immigrants and the Aleuts of the historic period. Elsewhere, the situation is not so clear. In most of mainland Alaska, there is evidence only of Indian occupation during the period between approximately 6000 and 2000 B.C. On the Pacific coast of Alaska, however, we find, as early as 4000 B.C., a maritime hunting culture technologically resembling that of the people on the adjacent Aleutian Islands. Again, there appears to be continuity between these people and the Eskimos who occupied the south coast of Alaska in historic times. There is, therefore, a possibility that the ancestors of the Eskimos and the Aleuts arrived in North America as early as 8000 B.C. and developed their distinctive maritime way of life along the Pacific coast of Alaska and on the Aleutian Islands. They may have been influenced by the rich sea-hunting cultures developing to the south, in coastal British Columbia.
Immigration from Siberia to Alaska did not stop with the flooding of Bering Strait. It is possible that ancestral Eskimos crossed the strait at some later time. The most likely candidates for such a movement are the people of the Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt). Their camps begin to appear on the coasts and in the tundra regions of northern and western Alaska around 2000 B.C. The stone tools found around these camps are the products of a technology totally different from any known to have existed earlier in Alaska or elsewhere in North America, and they are very similar to those used by Neolithic peoples of Siberia. As suggested by the name, "Arctic Small Tool tradition," almost all of the stone tools are extremely small. These include microblades similar to those brought to Alaska by earlier immigrants, burins (specialized bone- cutting tools with a chisel-like edge), tiny triangular endblades used as tips for harpoons, and small arrowpoints, probably the first evidence of the use of the bow and arrow in North America. The ASTt people never reached the south coast of Alaska or the Aleutian Islands, but they appear to have expanded rapidly across the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. We have found a few skeletons of their descendants, and these tell us that the ASTt people were of the Arctic Mongoloid physical type, similar to Eskimo populations. They may have spoken an ancestral Eskimo language, but it is also possible that their language was related to that spoken by the Chukchi or some other Siberian group. We sometimes refer to this group and their descendants as Palaeoeskimos. In any case, the ASTt people were the first occupants of the Canadian Arctic coast and islands.
The Early Palaeoeskimos (2000 - 1000 B.C.)
Although the earliest known ASTt camps in Alaska date to around 2000 B.C., dates of similar antiquity have been obtained from ASTt sites as far east as northern Greenland and Labrador. Since it is certain that these people came from the west, we suspect that the earliest Alaskan sites have not yet been found and that the expansion eastward out of Siberia must have occurred during the third millennium B.C. These early ASTt people were apparently hunters of the northern Siberian forests who developed a way of life that allowed them to live in the tundra areas further north. They may have been attracted to the tundra initially by the herds of caribou that migrated north each summer. Once there, they would have discovered the musk-oxen and the seals of the arctic coasts, animals that remain in the area throughout the winter. When they learned how to hunt the animals of the tundra and the arctic ice, and to use their skins and fat as clothing and fuel, it was not necessary to retreat to the forest during the winter. This opened up a large area of the world that had never previously been occupied by man.
Since the earliest known ASTt sites in each region are dated within a century or so of 2000 B.C., the group's expansion through Alaska, Canada and Greenland must have been quite rapid. As there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that these people had boats or domesticated dogs that could pull sleds, it is thought that they probably travelled on foot. Also absent are many other elements of later Eskimo technology, most importantly the snowhouse and the blubber lamp. These gaps in the technological development of the ASTt people suggest that their way of life must have been much more uncomfortable, and probably more precarious, than that of the historic Eskimos.
The archaeological remains of the ASTt people of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland are grouped by archaeologists into two categories: Independence I culture and Pre-Dorset culture. Independence I is known primarily from the northern islands of the High Arctic, while Pre-Dorset is found mainly to the south of Parry Channel (Viscount Melville Sound, Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound). It has been suggested that these variants represent two streams of immigration from Alaska, one to the north and one to the south. While this may indeed be the case, at present it seems equally likely that the two variants represent either two streams of people moving eastward at different times or the earlier and later phases of an immigration that continued over several centuries.
Independence I: 2000 - 1700 B.C.
Throughout most of arctic Canada, archaeological sites can be dated roughly by their elevation above the present sea level. Since its release from beneath the burden of glacial ice, most of the Arctic has been gradually rebounding upwards, and many of the coasts are lined by series of raised beaches that represent the sea level at various times in the past. As most arctic hunters seem to have preferred to live on the beach to have direct access to the sea and sea ice, the elevation to which the remains of their camps have been raised gives us some idea of their age. Everywhere in the High Arctic, and in some Low Arctic localities, sites at the highest elevations are those of the Independence I people. The value of this method of dating by means of elevation is confirmed by a series of radiocarbon dates on local willow charcoal, which generally range between 2000 and 1700 B.C.
Independence I camps are generally small, often consisting of the remains of one to four tent camps that appear to have been occupied for only a few days or, at most, a few weeks. The ground plans for the tents were either oval or rectangular and measured only about three by four metres. The edges of the structure were held down by rocks or piles of gravel. The floor of the tent was generally divided into two halves by a "mid-passage" two lines of stone slabs set upright in the gravel to form a passage approximately eighty centimetres wide. The passage had a slab floor and, in the centre of the structure, upright slabs set across the passage formed a hearth-box. This style of house may have an ancient history in Asia, and a very similar interior arrangement could be found in the tents of the northern European Lapps during the historic period. In the hearths, we find fragments of charcoal from arctic willow or driftwood and, more frequently, fragments of burned animal bones. The small amount of charcoal and burned bone in most hearths suggests that fires may have been relatively rare luxuries. Fire-reddened or cracked pebbles in and around the hearths suggest that cooking may have been accomplished by heating these rocks and dropping them into skin containers of water in order to boil the food.
Animal bones found around the camps indicate that the Independence I people hunted musk-oxen and a few caribou. Their diet was supplemented with small ringed seal and larger bearded seal when they were available. The absence of walrus and whale bones, however, suggests that Independence I technology did not furnish the wherewithal to permit the successful pursuit of those creatures. Large numbers of arctic fox, duck and goose bones indicate that, at times, these people may have depended heavily upon the hunting of small game. Amongst their hunting weapons were bows and arrows, as evidenced by small stemmed arrow points of chipped stone, and larger stone points that must have been used to tip lances that were held and thrust or else thrown. These stone points were probably mounted in bone weapon heads or foreshafts, which were in turn mounted on wooden shafts, although none have yet been found. We have, however, found bone or ivory harpoon heads, and these were sometimes fitted with small triangular stone "endblades." Small oval "sideblades" were occasionally mounted in the edges of weapon heads in order to provide a sharp cutting edge -- a technique that can be traced to the European and Asiatic Mesolithic period at the end of the last Ice Age. The harpoon heads were small, and they could have been used for thrusting or throwing at seals that basked on the ice, swam in leads in the ice, or appeared at breathing holes.
The development of harpoon technology was very important for human occupation of the Arctic in that it allowed an increasingly efficient use of the large sea-mammal resources of the region. This development is also important to archaeology, as the gradually changing styles of harpoon heads and associated equipment allow us to assign an approximate age to these objects on purely stylistic grounds. The Independence I harpoon heads are either male or female-socketed. The former have a basal tang that fits into a cup-shaped socket in the end of the harpoon shaft, a technique that had always been favoured by maritime hunting peoples of the Pacific rim and eastern Siberia. The female-socketed harpoon heads, on the other hand, possess a basal channel or hole into which is fitted a bone foreshaft on the end of the wooden harpoon shaft, a technique that was used throughout the remainder of the prehistoric period by the Palaeoeskimo and Eskimo peoples of arctic North America. What distinguishes the harpoon from other weapons is that the head is designed to break free from the shaft once it has struck the animal. Attached to the head is a line that is held by the hunter and, when drawn in, retrieves the wounded animal from the water or from beneath the ice. Independence I harpoon heads employ two methods by which to hold the animal: either a single, lateral barb bifurcated at the tip or a basal spur designed to "toggle" the harpoon head sideways inside the skin of the creature. The heads had either a sharply pointed tip or a slot in which to mount a sharp stone blade to pierce the animal's thick skin.
No remains of either pottery or stone blubber lamps have been found in Independence I camps, indicating that all heating and cooking was done on the open hearths in the centre of the tents. From the absence of blubber lamps we can conclude that these people did not use snowhouses, since an open hearth cannot be used in such a structure. This limiting factor must have restricted the range of Independence I occupation to some extent, despite the fact that animal bones and blubber were also burned.
Without blubber lamps, these people may not have been able to camp on the ice during the winter, as did the Eskimos of the historic period. We think of the Independence I people as living in small camp groups, probably leading a rather precarious existence and being forced frequently to move their area of occupation in search of new resources of food and fuel. Such movements may account for the apparent rapidity with which ASTt people spread throughout the Arctic.
Pre-Dorset: 2000 - 800 B.C.
Shortly after 1700 B.C., the High Arctic appears to have been abandoned, and there are few traces of occupation during the subsequent 700 years. The later ASTt occupation of arctic Canada was centred in more southerly regions, those around northern Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin, Hudson Strait, Baffin Island and the central Arctic. These areas are much richer in game than the High Arctic, and the archaeological sites are larger, apparently reflecting a somewhat larger population. Sites assigned to the Pre-Dorset culture have been radiocarbon dated to as early as 2500 B.C., but the oldest dates have been derived from the charcoal of driftwood and sea-mammal bone or burned fat. These last two materials seem to give dates that are several centuries too old. The most reliable dates are obtained from the charcoal of willow and the bones of land mammals, and these suggest that the main period of Pre-Dorset occupation was between roughly 2000 and 800 B.C.
The archaeological remains of Pre-Dorset culture derive from the same ASTt tradition as those of Independence I. There are microblades, burins, small bone needles with round eyeholes and round cross sections, stemmed points and sideblades for weapons, small stone scrapers for working hides or bone, harpoon heads and barbed fish spears, but the styles in which these objects are made are somewhat different. The methods of production are also different, with some stone tools being formed by grinding rather than chipping. The mid-passage structures characteristic of the Independence I people's tents disappear, and Pre-Dorset structures seem to have been oval or round in layout, with no apparent interior structural arrangements. The presence of hearths is reflected only by scatters of charcoal or burnt bone. Small circular soapstone lamps have been found, obviously designed to burn blubber. This invention made it possible for people to occupy snowhouses. These structures would have allowed people to live on the winter sea ice, thus opening to occupation large regions of the central Arctic. In this area, the only winter resource was the ringed seal, which came to the surface of the ice at its breathing holes.
The settlements of the Pre-Dorset people are more common than those of the Independence I culture, and they are generally larger and marked by much greater accumulations of refuse, suggesting that they were occupied by more people for longer periods of time. Harpoon technology had also developed, and new styles of harpoon heads made it possible for hunters to kill animals such as walrus, narwhal and beluga. Even though the remains of boats have not been found, the location of some Pre-Dorset sites in predominantly open water areas suggests that vessels, perhaps small kayak-like boats, may have been used. The bones of large dogs have been found at a few sites, but none of the sophisticated sled equipment associated with later groups. The dogs, therefore, may have been used only as hunting and back-packing animals.
By approximately 1500 B.C., the Victoria and Banks islands area was occupied by Pre-Dorset people who appear to have specialized in hunting musk-oxen and caribou, rather than sea mammals. Shortly thereafter, some of these people apparently began to move south across the Barren Grounds area, where their remains can be found as far south as the forested areas of Great Slave Lake and Lake Athabaska. This expansion forced out the Indian residents who had occupied the region for several millennia, and they did not return until after the Palaeoeskimos abandoned the Barren Grounds, around 800 B.C. Perhaps this period of southerly movement by both Eskimos and Indians relates to a climatic cooling that is known to have occurred after 1500 B.C. This natural phenomenon may also account for the contemporaneous abandonment of the High Arctic by ASTt peoples.
Dorset Palaeoeskimo Culture (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1400)
The stylistic elements of Pre-Dorset artifacts changed gradually over the second millennium B.C., but it appears that the rate of change accelerated rapidly after 1000 B.C. The mid-passage arrangement associated with Independence I camps was resurrected as new styles of houses or tents appeared. This type of structure may have been preserved in some areas of the High Arctic or in Greenland by descendants of the Independence I people, who once again occupied the High Arctic about 1000 B.C. At this stage of their history, they are identified by archaeologists as the Independence II culture. Dorset houses were larger than those of the preceding groups and were sometimes semisubterranean, excavated several centimetres into the ground. Rather than using skin, these people appear to have built more permanent structures with walls of turf. In contrast to Pre-Dorset sites, which contain only rare examples of small, round lamps, Dorset sites commonly yield rectangular or oval, thin-walled soapstone lamps that once heated their owner's homes. One gets the impression that, at least during the winter, the Dorset people were distinctly more comfortable than their Pre-Dorset ancestors.
Larger than those of Pre-Dorset cultures, Dorset archaeological sites appear to reflect more permanent occupation by a denser population. This was perhaps the result of advances in hunting technology, which allowed more efficient exploitation of the environment. Indeed, in addition to the soapstone lamp, several new elements of technology appear at this time. These include bone implements that have been interpreted as snow knives, specialized tools that may have been used for cutting snow blocks for the construction of snowhouses. Given the simultaneous increase in the use of blubber lamps, such structures would have been useful. Also found at the sites are sled shoes, strips of bone or ivory designed to be pegged to the bottom of wooden sled runners in order to protect them on rough ice or gravel. These, along with a few finds of dog bones, suggest that the Dorset people may have used dogsleds. A few ribs from kayaks or kayak-like boats have been found, and many Dorset sites are located in areas where kayak hunting would have been profitable. Harpoon heads continued to develop, with the open channelled sockets of the Pre-Dorset period gradually being replaced with closed sockets gouged in the base of the heads. Although these new styles of harpoon heads do not appear to be more efficient than the older ones, some Dorset groups seem to have been great hunters of walrus and small whales -- perhaps as a result of more efficient watercraft.
Manufacturing techniques also changed. The burins of the ASTt period -- the tools used for all basic carving of bone or ivory -- were replaced by burin-like tools of ground flint, which probably held their edge longer and were more easily sharpened. Knives of ground slate became common and may have been more efficient butchering tools than the chipped stone knives of earlier centuries. But there were also some rather surprising deletions from the toolkits of the Dorset people. While their Pre-Dorset ancestors had made holes in wood, bone or ivory with drills, probably hand-held twist drills, all Dorset perforations were made by laboriously gouging a slot with a burin-like tool. While there is quite good evidence of the use of the bow and arrow in ASTt times, no definite bow equipment or arrowheads are found for the Dorset period. The reasons for these absences are not understood.
Dorset technology, however, does appear to have been in general more efficient than that of their forebears. During the period 800 to 500 B.C., it seems to have spread across arctic Canada, including the High Arctic and northern Greenland, which was occupied by the Dorset-like Independence II people. By 500 B.C., or shortly after, Dorset people had extended their range of occupation down the coast of Labrador to the island of Newfoundland, where they seem to have formed the primary occupation for approximately the next 1,000 years. The only arctic area that they did not occupy was the Barren Grounds west of Hudson Bay, perhaps because this region had been reoccupied by Indian groups that they could not displace.
The culmination of Dorset culture occurred in the period between A.D. 500 and 1000, when their area of occupation was most extensive and they produced a unique and rather astonishing art. A few small ivory carvings representing people and animals are known from Pre-Dorset culture, but these objects appear to have been carved more frequently during the Dorset period. In the later centuries of the Dorset culture, however, the number of carvings appears to have increased dramatically. Whereas many of the carvings are naturalistic representations of humans, bears, and other animals and birds, many are stylized objects that are generally interpreted as being associated with the magic performances and ceremonies of the shaman. Wooden masks and drums, carved ivory sets of animal teeth meant to be inserted in the mouth, and intricately carved ivory tubes or "soul catchers" may have been used by the shaman during magic healing or hunting ceremonies. Miniature harpoon heads and figures of humans or bears, with holes in their chests into which are inserted slivers of wood or red ochre paint, may have been used in acts of white or black magic. The functions of many of these implements, whose forms appear to have been standardized over wide areas, are totally unknown.
The late Dorset people began to build large structures that can most likely be interpreted as ceremonial centres. These take the form of rectangular boulder enclosures that measure up to forty metres by seven metres. Lines of isolated hearths are associated with the structures but do not seem to have been used as parts of houses. Some of these features, found in arctic Quebec, have been misinterpreted as Viking "longhouses." We do not understand why the Dorset people built these structures or why an apparent florescence of artistic activity occurred at this time. There is a possibility that it may have been influenced by the historical events of the time, when the Dorset people, whose culture had developed in the isolation of the Canadian Arctic over the previous 3,000 years, found themselves being intruded upon by alien peoples: the Greenlandic Norse, who may have made occasional forays into the eastern Arctic in the period around A.D. 1000, and the ancestors of the Inuit, who were moving eastward from Alaska at about the same time. Whatever the cause, this final flowering of Dorset culture also marks its end. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Dorset occupation of most of arctic Canada ended around A.D. 1000, at roughly the same time that the ancestors of the Inuit began to move eastward from Alaska. Only in arctic Quebec, which the Inuit did not reach until several centuries later, do we have evidence of the survival of Dorset culture until as late as A.D. 1400.
Development of Alaskan Eskimo Culture (2000 B.C. - A.D. 1000)
During the 3,000 years that the Palaeoeskimos were developing their unique culture in arctic Canada, quite different developments were occurring in Alaska. The archaeological picture there appears to have been much more complex and is poorly understood. On the Aleutian Islands, there was continuous but gradual change, which culminated in the culture of the historic Aleuts. On the Pacific coast of Alaska, a technology based largely on ground slate tools was evolved and may have been ancestral to the Historic Eskimo cultures of the region. The western and northern coasts of Alaska were occupied for most of the second millennium B.C. by ASTt people with cultures similar to those of arctic Canada. Around 1000 B.C., however, there is a break in the record of human activity that lasts for a few centuries. Following this apparent hiatus, a series of groups (Old Whaling, Choris and Norton cultures) appear whose technologies are a curious mixture of elements that seem to have come from different sources: chipped stone tools apparently derived from those of the ASTt; items such as ground slate tools, stone lamps and labrets (ornamental lip-plugs) similar to those used by the people of the Pacific coast; and pottery stamped with check designs similar to that used by the contemporaneous Neolithic peoples of eastern Siberia.
The latest of these groups, the Norton people of approximately 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, were almost certainly Eskimos, since we can trace undoubted archaeological continuity from them to the Eskimo peoples of the historic period. If the Norton people were the descendants of ASTt groups who had learned much from the sea-hunting cultures of South Alaska, then we can assume that the ASTt people were Eskimos. However, if the Norton people were South Alaskans who moved northwards to the coast of the Bering Sea and learned their stoneworking skills from a remnant ASTt population, as well as learning how to make pottery through contact with Siberian groups, then the ASTt people were not ancestral Eskimos. In that case, Eskimo traditions would be traced back to the peoples who had occupied the Pacific coast of Alaska for the past several millennia. The present limitations of our archaeological knowledge regarding the Norton people do not permit the resolution of this issue.
Whatever their origins, around A.D. 1 some Norton groups in the vicinity of Bering Strait began to develop very sophisticated techniques for hunting sea mammals. In the villages of the Old Bering Sea culture, we find the remains of skin boats, both the kayak and the umiak. The latter was an open vessel, some eight to ten metres long, which could be used both to move camp and to hunt the large bowhead whale. The invention of the float-harpoon by this group effected important changes in the hunting of sea mammals. With this gear, the line attached to the harpoon did not have to be held in the hunter's hand. Rather, it was tied to a float made of inflated sealskin. Previously, some large sea mammals could not be safely and successfully secured through the use of the hand-held line, but now the hunter could harpoon the enormous creatures and let them drag the float until they tired. The prey could then be killed and retrieved. Using such equipment, the Old Bering Sea people hunted large numbers of walrus, whose ivory constituted the basic material for a large part of their technology. Many of the sophisticated gadgets of later Eskimo culture can be traced to this period: snow goggles to protect the hunter from snow blindness; ice-creepers tied beneath the feet to prevent slipping on smooth ice; imitation seal flippers used to scratch on the ice in order to attract seals; the compound bow with a cable of twisted sinew attached to the back in order to increase its power; barbed arrowheads of bone or antler; and knives of ground slate.
Perhaps as the result of new and more efficient hunting technology, patterns of settlement changed. Small, permanent winter villages consisted of several houses excavated into the ground, with walls and roofs of driftwood covered with turf and with sunken cold-trap entrance tunnels. These houses were heated with large blubber lamps made of pottery, and cooking was done in ceramic pots. Such dwellings must have been much more comfortable than any previously used in arctic regions. They could, however, be adopted only because of the availability of large amounts of food that could be stored for use during the winter. The wealth of the Old Bering Sea people is also reflected in the elaborate style of art that decorates many of their tools and weapons.
The descendants of the Old Bering Sea people continued to develop this way of life until the historic period in the Bering Strait area. By around A.D. 500, this type of culture spread to the north coast of Alaska, either as a result of the migration of people or simply due to the diffusion of ideas through trading contacts. Although North Alaska was generally not as rich as Bering Strait, the people here had one important resource that they could now begin to exploit. Each spring the large bowhead whales migrate eastward along the coast of North Alaska, through narrow leads in the ice. In these leads they are very vulnerable to hunters, who even today park their umiaks on the edge of the lead and wait for the whales. When the slow-moving animals are spotted, the boats are quickly launched and the whales harpooned. Each successful kill provides several tonnes of meat and blubber. Between A.D. 500 and 1000, the people of North Alaska learned this style of hunting and established large villages of semisubterranean houses at good whale-hunting localities. These people were the immediate ancestors of the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.
Thule Culture (A.D. 1000 - 1600)
Sometime around A.D. 1000, the whalers of North Alaska began to move eastward, probably travelling by umiak and bringing with them most of the elements of the sophisticated sea-hunting culture that had developed in Alaska over the previous millennium. We do not know why this movement took place, but it may have been related to a general climatic warming throughout the Arctic at this time. The higher temperatures probably reduced the amount of sea ice, making a greater area available for the summer feeding of bowhead whales and other large sea mammals, and perhaps at the same time making whaling more difficult during the brief spring migration season along the coast of North Alaska. The archaeological remains of these migrant whalers were first found near Thule in northern Greenland, hence the appellation Thule culture. We suspect that the Thule people followed the whales eastward and northward to Parry Channel, where they encountered the Greenland whale, the Atlantic race of the Alaskan bowhead whale, and then followed these creatures to Greenland, Baffin Island and Hudson Bay. With the open water conditions of the time, and with whale populations not yet reduced by European hunting, whales must have been widely available throughout the summer months. This situation contrasted with the brief migration season these people had come to expect at localities in North Alaska. The existence of such a widespread and dependable resource may have encouraged exploration of new country and frequent movements to new areas.
Thule villages are spread throughout the coastal areas of arctic Canada. After the first, apparently rapid, movement across the Arctic, Thule people began to penetrate other areas where whales were not available but other resources could be found. On Victoria Island and the adjacent mainland, for example, we find evidence of Thule people who seem to have subsisted primarily on seals, caribou and fish. In the region around Igloolik, they must have soon discovered the immense walrus resources of the area and built villages in good walrus-hunting localities. Even in those areas where whaling was clearly a very successful activity, Thule villages contain large numbers of bones of seals, walrus, caribou and other animals. One concludes that they were diversified hunters who utilized their technology to fully exploit the surrounding environment. Yet the number of whales they killed suggests that much of their food and fuel must have continued to come from that source. In one small High Arctic village of eight houses, there are the bones of at least twenty large whales. Larger villages contain the bones of up to fifty whales.
The Thule people's exploitation of whales was not confined to the mammal's meat and blubber; their bones were also used, as construction material. The driftwood with which they had built their winter houses in Alaska was not widely available in arctic Canada, and in order to maintain the same style of house they had to adopt other materials. Floors and raised sleeping platforms were now constructed of flat slabs of rock, and the lower walls, of piled boulders. Whale bones were used as roof supports, covered with skins and a thick layer of turf. The resulting winter houses must have been as comfortable as those of their Alaskan ancestors. During the summer months, as in Alaska, they lived in skin tents. The Thule people, however, also used a type of winter dwelling that was unknown to the peoples of Alaska, the domed snowhouse. Specialized tools for building snowhouses probes for testing the depth and consistency of snow, and knives for cutting large blocks are common finds in Thule villages. The Thule people may have invented this style of structure, but it seems likely that they adapted it from snowhouses used by their Dorset predecessors in the area. Another element of technology they may have learned from the Dorsets is the use of soapstone for the construction of lamps and cooking pots. Although the early Thule people continued to use pottery, the lack of wood with which to fire ceramics must have encouraged them to search for a substitute. Their soapstone pots and lamps are larger than those of the Dorsets and completely different in design, but the original idea may have come from contact with the earlier occupants of the area.
The remainder of Thule technology, however, is based directly on the tools and ideas the original migrants brought with them from Alaska. The Thule people did make one vast improvement on an earlier piece of technology, the sled. Although sled parts are found both in the Dorset culture of arctic Canada and in early Alaskan sites, these sleds all appear to have been small and were probably pulled by humans. The first appearance of dog harnesses and other specialized equipment for dog traction occurs in Canadian Thule sites, and it may have been these people who invented this mode of transportation that greatly increased the range of winter hunting and travel.
One of the mysteries of the Thule occupation of arctic Canada involves their relationships with the Dorset people, the previous occupants of the area. As we have mentioned, a few elements of Thule technology may derive from Dorset prototypes, suggesting that some contact occurred. Canadian Inuit legends recount that when their ancestors first arrived in the country, they encountered a people known as Tunit, described as a large and gentle race of seal hunters who lacked several elements of Inuit technology. The stories tell of fights between the two groups, and of the Tunit being driven away. These Tunit may well be the people we know archaeologically as the Dorset, and the archaeological evidence for the disappearance of Dorset culture at roughly the same time as the Thule migration is consistent with the Inuit legends. The Dorset people appear to have survived in arctic Quebec as late as A.D. 1400, and this is the area last occupied by the Thule culture; no Thule sites from Quebec or Labrador can be dated to earlier than A.D. 1500. By that time, the Thule Inuit had completed their occupation of arctic Canada.
The Little Ice Age and the Historic Inuit (A.D. 1600 - 1850)
The Thule expansion resulted in the spread of a relatively uniform, rich and sophisticated maritime hunting culture across all of arctic Canada. Yet when European explorers penetrated the region in the past four centuries, they described groups of Inuit with meagre economies based variously on seals, fish and caribou. The disappearance of Thule culture and the development of dissimilar regional cultures living on a less adequate economic level can best be explained by climatic change. Around A.D. 1000, a warmer climate resulted in the tree line advancing 100 kilometres north of its present position. This modification of their environment may have encouraged Thule expansion eastward, but the subsequent cooling, which began about A.D. 1200 and worsened between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the Little Ice Age in Europe), seems to have caused the decline of the Thule way of life. In addition, the Europeans commenced whaling activities in the western Atlantic in the sixteenth century, and this may have decreased the stocks of whales migrating into the eastern Arctic. Some Thule groups must have starved, while others moved to new areas, but most seem to have adapted rapidly to their reduced economic circumstances.
A few Thule groups were able to survive with few changes in their way of life until contact with Europeans. The Inuit of Labrador do not appear to have been greatly affected by the Little Ice Age, and they perpetuated a basically Thule culture that was described by European explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the end of this period, however, these Inuit had become heavily involved in trade with Europeans, and had acquired European boats and guns which transformed their lives to a greater degree than did the climatic change.
At the other extreme, the Thule people who had occupied much of the High Arctic were forced to abandon the area. Many groups may have died while trying to adapt to the new conditions, while others may have moved eastward to the Thule district of northwestern Greenland. There, a remnant Inuit population clustered around the sealing grounds and bird cliffs until it was discovered by Europeans in the nineteenth century and termed the Polar Inuit.
In the central Arctic, Thule people seem to have adapted by emphasizing certain aspects of their seasonal rounds of hunting activity, while other pursuits declined. Those who had previously spent their summers in coastal hunting of whales and other sea mammals, and then stored food to be consumed in permanent winter villages, must have found that the increasing amounts of summer ice made hunting impossible. Accordingly, they began to spend most of the summer in the interior, fishing and hunting caribou. During the winter, with little food stored and with ringed seals as the only food resource available, they abandoned their permanent winter houses and lived in villages of snowhouses on the ice. As the winter progressed, their migration was dictated by the depletion of the local seal population. Many elements of Thule technology were dropped as people made these adaptations. The permanent winter houses and the complex sea-hunting technology, which had been made obsolete by climatic change, much of the religious culture, art and mythology, and the sophisticated social organization, which must have characterized the Thule period -- all this disappeared.
Thus, as the result of worsening environmental conditions, the Inuit of arctic Canada who were described by nineteenth and twentieth-century explorers and anthropologists had ways of life much more meagre than those of their ancestors a few centuries earlier. Their culture was but a remnant of a considerably more sophisticated and secure way of life, recently reduced through the accidents of environmental change.
