Radiocarbon Evidence for Fourteenth-Century Dorset Occupation in the Eastern North American Arctic

Abstract

One of the most persistent debates in the archaeology of the North American Arctic relates to thirteenth-century AD population distributions and movements. Around this time, the final culture of the long-lived Paleo-Inuit tradition, known as Late Dorset, was replaced by Thule Inuit, who migrated from Alaska to the Eastern Arctic. Due to the almost complete lack of evidence for direct interaction between Dorset and Thule, there are currently two contrasting models for this transitional period. The first proposes a temporal hiatus between Late Dorset and Thule during which the Eastern Arctic was unoccupied. The second proposes that Late Dorset persisted to at least the late thirteenth century and still occupied some regions of the Eastern Arctic when Thule arrived. Resolution of this question depends largely on radiocarbon dates, particularly for the poorly understood Late Dorset period. This article presents 56 new AMS radiocarbon dates from three Late Dorset sites in the Iqaluktuuq region of southeastern Victoria Island in the Central Arctic. They resolve a significant part of the debate by confirming that Dorset settlement continued in this region later than AD 1300, thus overlapping with Thule settlement in adjacent regions for decades, and perhaps as much as a century.

Elucidating the sustainability of 700 years of Inuvialuit beluga whale hunting in the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada

“…One, BETA 201281, has been previously published (Friesen 2009); the other 16 are new to this study. All are on terrestrial mammal bone - caribou ( Rangifer tarandus ), moose ( Alces alces ), and Dall sheep ( Ovis dalli ) - which is widely considered the most accurate dating material in Arctic contexts (Friesen 2020). These new dates were processed at the W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle AMS facility at the University of California, Irvine.…”

Paleogeography of Human Settlement at Iqaluktuuq, Victoria Island, Nunavut

“…Friesen's research program has resulted in extensive dating of the archaeological sequence at Iqaluktuuq [18]. While the archaeological sequence has a riverine focus, the land at the time of human occupation would be above the corresponding marine limit and the sites discussed are within a short distance from the coast of Wellington Bay.…”

“…950-600 cal B.P. [18]. Cold season occupations are evident at NiNg-2, which contains a minimum of 10 Dorset semi-subterranean houses, plus extensive middens dating primarily to the Late Dorset period.…”

“…The Late Dorset occupation of Iqaluktuuq is relatively well-dated [18]. The landscape at the time of occupation (ca.…”

Detecting Early Widespread Metal Use in the Eastern North American Arctic around AD 500–1300

“…The Late Dorset are the descendants of peoples that had lived in the Arctic since the first evidence of human presence in circumpolar North America around 3000 BC. They disappear from the archaeological record around the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries AD (Appelt et al 2016; Appelt and Gulløv 2009; Friesen 2019; Savelle et al 2012), which coincides with the eastward migration of the early Inuit—an archaeologically and genetically distinct group—from Alaska into Canada and Greenland (Fitzhugh 1994; Friesen and Arnold 2008; McGhee 2009; Pinard and Gendron 2009; Raghavan et al 2014).

Figure 1.The North American Arctic with the names of major locations mentioned in the text.

Figure 2.Location of potential metal sources and Late Dorset sites with surviving metal objects.

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