PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE
July 14, 2000
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
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RESOLUTE BAY — Not far from Resolute Bay, there’s some unusual activity going on at an ancient Thule archeological site.
This week, two archeologists and three high school students from Resolute Bay are to begin excavations at an 800-year-old Inuit dwelling.
It’s one of 14 similar houses found at the site that Bob McGhee from the Canadian Museum of Civilization calls "a very interesting site."
"It’s the first place that Inuit would have stopped at on their way from Alaska," McGhee said.
This summer McGhee wants to excavate what looks now like a pile of bones and stones, and restore it to the Thule house as it was long ago, with sleeping benches, hearth and floors from stone, and a whale-bone frame.
Two other dwellings have already been similarly reconstructed, and in attraction-poor Resolute, they’re considered a bit of a tourist draw.
The site, one of four similar ones around Resolute, was first excavated in the 1950s by the Smithsonian Institute of Washington, D.C., and has since been re-excavated by McGhee and other Canadian archeologists.
To date, it’s yielded many objects made by Thule Inuit who lived in the region about 800 years ago.
"There’s enough here for a lifetime of work," McGhee said.
But money, even for modest archeological digs, is tight. McGhee said the Museum of Civilization funds only one or two digs a year.
Because no one could gain access to any government student job money, the museum’s money must also be stretched this year to pay the salaries of the three students hired for the dig.
"But I think it’s money well spent," McGhee said.
Uncovering the house sites requires patience, as each piece of stone or whalebone moved must be recorded, and any finds have to be mapped. The students will assist in all stages of the work during the three-week-long dig.
Excavation of this site may reveal more about the lifestyle of the Thule, ancestors of today’s Inuit. The Thule, according to the remains of bones found at the site, subsisted on a diet heavy in marine mammals.
They also traded with Vikings, apparently, as pieces of smelted Norse metal have been found on the site in past digs.