The Dorset-Thule Succession in Arctic North America: Assessing Claims for Culture Contact

Abstract

Most Arctic archaeologists believe that the people of the Thule culture, who arrived in the eastern Arctic approximately 1,000 years ago, met people of the Dorset culture and acquired important knowledge from them while replacing them in this region. The most convincing indication for technology transfer comes from the Thule adoption of Dorset harpoon-head styles. However, a review of radiocarbon dates, artifact styles, and site data reveals no conclusive evidence for face-to-face contact between the people of these two cultures. Given evidence that the Thule actively salvaged harpoon heads and carvings from abandoned Dorset sites, I contend that salvage was the sole means of contact between these cultures and the means by which harpoon-head technology was transferred. This example points out the importance of salvage as a mode of culture contact and the weakness of studies that interpret changes in material culture solely in a culture-historical context.

The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic

“…New series of radiocarbon dates suggest temporal overlap between the Dorset and the Thule that lasted between 50 and 200 years, with geographical coexistence in some areas (14,16,(71)(72)(73)(74)(75), whereas an earlier reassessment of the eastern Arctic radiocarbon dates suggested that Dorset had disappeared from the eastern Arctic more than 200 years prior to Thule entering the eastern Arctic and thus the two groups never met (12,76). Although we cannot preclude later gene flow between the Dorset and the Thule (that is, subsequent to the more ancient gene flow that occurred at least 4000 years ago), the contrasting genetic and cultural affinities of the Sadlermiut individuals present a conundrum.…”

“…The Dorset culture is divided into three phases: (i) Early Dorset,~800 BCE to 0 BCE/CE; (ii) Middle Dorset,~0 BCE/CE to 600 to 800 CE; and (iii) Late Dorset~600 to 800 CE to 1300 CE (9). The Paleo-Eskimo tradition in the eastern Arctic ended sometime between 1150 to 1350 CE, shortly after the sudden appearance of the Neo-Eskimo Thule whale-hunters from the Bering Strait region (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17).…”

From Middle Ages to Colonial Times: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Studies of the Thule Culture in South West Greenland 1300–1800 A.D., by Hans Christian Gulløv

“…Part of his thesis is that one of the "parallel traditions" derived from contact between people of the Thule and Dorset cultures. I have elsewhere argued that the preponderance of evidence, including harpoon head styles and radiocarbon dates, does not provide convincing proof for such culture contact (Park, 1993). There is no need to repeat those arguments here, but I am no longer alone in questioning at least some of the commonly cited evidence for DorsetThule contact (Kleivan, 1996).…”

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction and Timeline of a Dorset-Thule Settlement at Quaqtaq (Nunavik, Canada)

“…Moreover, at Diana Bay and elsewhere in Nunavik, Thule Inuit campsites frequently map onto Dorset sites, which can obscure archaeological interpretations. Dorset artifacts are often recovered from Thule Inuit house contexts, but their presence more likely indicates the use of sod recovered from Dorset dwellings-either adjacent or underlying-in the construction of Thule Inuit semisubterranean houses, rather than a simultaneous occupation of the site by the two cultural groups (Park, 1993;Lofthouse, 2003Lofthouse, , 2007Arsenault and Gendron, 2007;Pinard and Gendron, 2009).…”

“…In fact, while archaeological studies such as McGhee (2000) and Friesen (2004) proposed a temporal overlap between the Dorset and the Thule people, other scholars (e.g., Park, 1993Park, , 2000Pinard and Gendron, 2009) have suggested that the Dorset people had disappeared from the eastern Arctic prior to the arrival of the Thule. The latter scenario seems to be supported by a recent study involving paleogenetic data (Raghavan et al, 2014), which identified two separate migration pulses from Siberia across the New World Arctic: the initial Paleoeskimo movement, followed later by a separate Thule migration.…”