Ancient Ancestors

Words by Charles Arnold

MOST ARCHAEOLOGISTS WOULD ADMIT to having favourite artifacts they have uncovered in their fieldwork.

My list includes the so-called ‘Thule type 2’ harpoon heads that I have found at several archaeological sites in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. Their size and shape suggest they were tips of harpoons used for throwing at swimming seals, either from a boat or at the ice edge.

Like so much of the technology that has made survival in the Arctic possible, this type of harpoon head was a marvel of engineering. The complete harpoon was designed in such a way that, when a seal was struck, the head with a line attached to it would separate from the rest of the harpoon. If the harpoon head penetrated deeply, a spur at the base would cause it to pivot so that it would not pull out when the hunter retrieved the seal. If it did not penetrate completely, barbs near the pointed end might still hold the harpoon head attached to the seal.

These harpoon heads could have been made only with basic functional features and worked as intended, but often they were enhanced with decorative elements that may carry meanings one can only wonder about. I use the word ‘elegant’ when I describe them. These harpoon heads also fascinate me because they are a signature of a great migration of people from northern Alaska into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland about 800 years ago that ushered in the Thule Period of Inuit history.

A ‘Thule type 2’ harpoon head uncovered during excavations of an archaeological site at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. (C. Arnold photo)

The term Thule (pronounced ‘too-lee’) was adopted from an ancient village near Thule (modern Qaanaaq) in northern Greenland that was excavated in the 1920s, and is applied to the archaeological remains found across much of the Arctic of a hunting culture that was based in large part on harvesting large marine mammals, particularly bowhead whales and walrus, by pursuing them in skin boats on the open seas.

Archaeological sites in the Bering Sea region show that the technologies, and by inference the knowledge and skills, for hunting large marine animals were developed in that area as early as 2,000 years ago by people who were the ancestors of Yuit, Inupiat, Inuit and Kalaallit. Over the next 1,000 years, this maritime culture spread north along coastal regions of Siberia and Alaska. Then, in a migration that seems rapid in comparison, people moved into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. What triggered this eastward movement of people is unknown, but an episode of global climate warming that began at about the same time may have played a role by reducing the extent and seasonal duration of ice in the Arctic Ocean, which in turn increased the summer range of whales and walrus that depend on open water.

This map shows possible routes by which people expanded into Arctic regions north of the Bering Strait during the Thule period.

The Inuvialuit Settlement Region was at the gateway for the Thule migration into the rest of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, but except for a few places, erosion along shorelines has erased much of the archaeological record of that period. One of the places where remains from the Thule Period have been found is at the mouth of the Nelson River on the south coast of Banks Island. In that area, rings of boulders mark the location of tents that people lived in during the summer open water season while they hunted bowhead whales, and nearby are the remains of more substantial sod houses built with frames of driftwood and whale bones that those same people might have lived in during the winter.

This drawing shows what the shape of one of the winter houses at the Nelson River archaeological site might have looked like based on remains revealed through excavations.

The buried remains of a two-roomed winter dwelling at the Nelson River that was in the process of being washed away by wave action was excavated in the early 1980s. Radiocarbon dates indicate that it had been built about 800 years ago, and most of the artifacts found in the excavations are typical of the early Thule Period. These include hunting and fishing implements, such as parts of harpoons, fish spears and bows; household items, including an oil-burning lamp made from clay, containers made from strips of baleen taken from the mouths of bowhead whales, ladles and platters made from driftwood; skin scrapers, needles and a needle case for preparing clothing; teeth of various seals, fox and polar bears with drilled holes or other modifications that could have been amulets; and numerous items that would have been used by children, such as dolls, child-size bows and arrows, and a small qamutik sled. These artifacts are now being cared for at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife.

While archaeology can paint a fairly detailed picture of activities at a particular site, especially if it incorporates Inuit Traditional Knowledge, when extended over a broader area and a longer period of time, the picture can be painted only in broad strokes. Many of the objects found at the Nelson River site have been found in near-identical forms in early Thule Period archaeological sites in other areas of what is now the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. But that uniformity began to break down over time as people adapted to local resources.

Archaeologists stand near shallow depressions that mark the location of an eroding Thule Period archaeological site near the mouth of the Nelson River on the southern coast of Banks Island. (C. Arnold Photo)

In some coastal areas of the Beaufort Sea, hunting of large whales continued, but people who moved into the estuary at the mouth of the Mackenzie River turned to hunting beluga whales as a main source of food. In the eastern part of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, cooling of the Earth’s climate starting around 400 years ago is thought to have increased the duration and extent of sea ice, particularly in the Coronation Gulf, so that large whales no longer entered those waters. People there began to divide their time between hunting caribou and fishing on land in summer, and hunting seals on the sea ice in winter.

Regional cultural patterns also developed in other parts of the Arctic. These were based on differences in what was available locally for survival, the impacts of changes in climate over time and the nature of contacts with Europeans – beginning with Norse settlers in Greenland and later with whalers, traders, missionaries and government agencies. Some Thule Period Inuit might also have encountered remnant groups of their distant ancestors, the Sivullirmiut (‘The First People’ in Inuvialuktun), who had disappeared from much of the Arctic except perhaps in isolated areas (note: refer to the Spring 2019 edition of Tusaayaksat Magazine, where we look closer at the Sivullirmiut). But the diversity within Inuit culture that occurred over space and through time was built on the knowledge, skills, technologies and other cultural traits that were carried throughout the Arctic in the Thule Period, and that are the common heritage of Inuit today.

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DID YOU KNOW? All beneficiaries of the IFA are able to browse Inuvialuit artefacts – including ones from the Nelson River site – at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, NT. Set up an appointment today at: (867) 767-9347 or by emailing pwnhc@gov.nt.ca