Volume 11, 1958 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL. XI No.4
THE ARCTIC CIRCULAR
67
On Mansel Island six sites were found in a very
restricted area about the river valley. Four of these were pure
Dorset culture in content and representative of various stages
in the development of that culture. A fifth site contained both
Dorset and later houses and artifacts. A sixth site, extending
along the river bank for hali a mile. was pure Dorset culture
in some areas and mixed in others. Again,houses of more than
one period were represented. The most significant preliminary
results of the Mansel Island work were (a) a Dorset site that
seems to be typologically earlier than the proto-Dorset site,
T-l, on Southampton Island (Henry B. Collins, ~. Rept. ~.
Mus. Can. Bull. No. 14Z, 1956); (b) the finding of many Dorset
cultur~use ruins, and (c) the recovery, in a pure Dorset
culture site, of human skeletal material including a mandible and
a femur - only the second find of analysable human bone in a
Dorset culture context.
On Sugluk Island work was continued on proto-Dorset
and terminal Dorset period sites dHicovered in 1957. Significant
in this was the excavation of a late-period Dorset culture house
ruin. In addition a fourth site was found On this little island and
it proved to be the most enlightening of the season. It consisted
of three superimposed culture strata, the topmost of which
contained proto-Dorset material; the lower layers were earlier
but also proto-Dorset in typology. Excavation was not carried
beyond the third stratum because of permafrost at a depth of
four feet.
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•
In the top stratum of this site a human mandible and
three ribs were found. These are, for the moment, the oldest
human bones excavated in the North American Arctic and have
been dated by radiocarbon analysis to 500 B.C. Both this
mandible, from an early Dorset period, and the mandible from
Mansel Island are morphologically Eskimo. The same may be
said of the skeleton excavated at a Dorset site near Payne Bay
in 1957 (Arctic Circular, Vol. 10, pp. Z5-7). These constitute
the only analysable human remains from the Dorset period.
Though the sample is small, it is consistent, and provides
convincing evidence against the theory of an Indian migration
as the origin of the Dorset culture, formerly held by several
Eskimologists •
The small village site at "Eeteevianee" belongs in
the middle of the Dorset time span. The most remarkable
observation on this site was the high incidence of seal bones,
which totalled more than 90 per cent of the animal bone sample.