1984/01/01 by Robert McGhee, McGhee, R. · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Arctic and Russian Policy Studies #Indigenous Studies and Ecology #Science
paper · pdf · doi:10.2312/polarforschung.54.1.1
openalex publication_date 1984/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Summary: The culture of Arctic Canada is archaeologically ancestral to that of the Central and Eastern Arctic Inuit (Eskimos). The present paper examines evidence relating to the date of the which brought ancestral Inuit to Arctic Canada, and speculates on the nature and cause of this migration. It is conc1uded that earlier hypotheses, relating the to expansion of hunting potential du ring the Mediaeval Warm Pertod. does not adequately explain the apparent rapidity of the the movement, nor the fact that the ice-fields of the central Arctic must have been unproductive for hunters despite the c1imatic amelioration 0 f the time. It is suggested that the occurred very rapidly, and may have taken place in order to obtain metal either from the Cape York meteorites of northwestern Greenland, or from the Norse Greenlandic colonies. Zusammenfassung: Die Thule-Kultur des arktischen Kanada ist der archaologische Vorlaufer jener der zentralen und ostlichen arktischen Inuit (Eskimo). Dieser Artikel untersucht die Informationen uber den Zeitpunkt der Ausbreitung, die die Vorfahren der Inuit in das arkti sche Kanada brachte, und versucht, Art und Ursache dieser Bewegung zu ergrunden. Danach erklaren fruhere Hypothesen, die die Thule Ausbreitung mit einer Ausweitung des Jagdpotentials wahrend des mittelalterlichen Warmeoptimums in Verbindung bringen, weder die of fensichtliche Geschwindigkeit der Bewegung noch die Tatsache hinreichend, das die Eisfelder der Zentralarktis trotz der Klimabesserung fur die Thulejager unproduktiv waren. Es wird daher angenommen, das die Thule-Ausbreitung sehr schnell erfolgte und ausgefuhrt wurde in dem Bestreben, sich Metall entweder von den Kap York-Meteorsteinen in Nordwestgronland oder von den normannischen Siedlungen in Gronland zu beschaffen. When Therkel Mathiassen defined the culture of Arctic Canada in 1927, he placed the origins of that culture in the western Arctic, more specifically in northern or northwestern Alaska. The western de rivation of culture was confirmed by later archaeological research, which also traced origins to a relatively long developmental sequence on the coasts of the Bering and Chukchi Seas. The apparent absence of a related sequence in Arctic Canada led to the assumption that culture was brought to Arctic Canada in the relatively recent past. The term Thule migration became commonly used in dis cussions of the appearance of culture in the central and Eastern Arctic; less commonly used was the term Thule expansion, also implying a relatively large-scale movement of people. The possibility that culture reached Arctic Canada not through population movement, but by diffusion to an indige nous population, has rarely been seriously considered, and does not seem to be supported by the archaeo logical evidence.