Fractal Worlds: An Archaeology of Nested Spatial Scales

Archaeologists approach their evidence at numerous scales, from the intercontinental distributions of people and their things to the microscopic structure in a thin section. This is possible and worthwhile, in part, because people in the past also acted in, and conceived of, their worlds at a variety of scales. The precontact Inuit record reveals not only large-scale regional networks and intricate site structures, but also the diminutive worlds depicted in toys, amulets, and figurative art. The human body was the most popular object of this miniaturization discourse, and it served to anchor the fractal-like proliferation of imagined worlds in everyday bodily experience.Les archéologues abordent leurs éléments de preuve sous différents angles, de la répartition intercontinentale des gens et leurs objets à une structure microscopique faisant partie d’une mince section. Cela est possible et intéressant, en partie, parce que par le passé, les gens agissaient sur leur monde et le concevaient également à différentes échelles. Les documents sur la période précontact avec les Inuits révèlent non seulement des réseaux régionaux à grande échelle et des structures de site complexes, mais également un monde miniature représenté par des jouets, des amulettes et de l’art figuratif. Le corps humain était le sujet le plus populaire de ces miniaturisations, car il a permis d’ancrer la prolifération fractale des expériences corporelles de tous les jours dans le monde imaginaire

Paleoeskimo Demography on Western Victoria Island, Arctic Canada: Implications for Social Organization and Longhouse Development

Paleoeskimo populations on western Victoria Island reached maximum levels in Early Pre-Dorset time and declined abruptly shortly after 3800 14C years BP. The largest subsequent recovery occurred during Dorset time, particularly during Late Dorset, about 1500 to 600 BP. Early Pre-Dorset settlement patterns were similar to those documented for the same period and culture elsewhere in Arctic Canada, with dispersed nuclear families and small extended families occupying the region for most of the year, but with annual aggregations producing sites with 15 or more dwellings. After 3800 BP, large Pre-Dorset aggregation sites are absent. Dorset settlement patterns are dominated by multi-family longhouse – hearth row aggregation sites and by sites with two to four dwellings. Possibly the Dorset were living mainly in snow dwellings on the sea ice during cold seasons, with longhouses and hearth-row sets representing coming-ashore aggregations. Architectural aspects of longhouses and hearth rows indicate a common purpose behind their construction and use throughout the region and apparently throughout Arctic Canada, but their place and time of origin remain obscure. Radiocarbon dates place most longhouses and hearth rows on western Victoria Island in Late Dorset time, as elsewhere, but some dates indicate that these structures were being used in the western Canadian Arctic by Middle Dorset time. The latest Dorset radiocarbon dates from the region overlap with the earliest of the more reliable dates on Thule houses.Les populations paléoesquimaudes de l’ouest de l’île Victoria ont atteint leur summum à l’époque pré-Dorset puis ont chuté rapidement peu après 3800 années radiocarbones BP. Par la suite, la plus grande reprise s’est produite à l’époque du Dorset, plus particulièrement vers la fin de celui-ci, soit entre 1500 et 600 BP. Les types de peuplements du début du Dorset étaient semblables à ceux documentés pour la même période et pour la même culture ailleurs dans l’Arctique canadien, c’està- dire qu’il y avait des familles nucléaires dispersées et des petites familles étendues qui occupaient la région pendant la plus grande partie de l’année, ainsi que des agrégations annuelles composées de 15 habitations ou plus. Après 3800 BP, il y a absence de grandes agrégations telles qu’au pré-Dorset. Pendant le Dorset, les types de peuplements sont dominés par des maisons longues multifamiliales et des rangées de foyers, ainsi que par des sites de deux à quatre habitations. Il est possible qu’à l’époque du Dorset, les occupants vivaient surtout dans des habitations en neige placées sur la glace de mer en saison froide, tandis que les maisons longues et les rangées de foyers étaient installées sur la terre. Les caractéristiques architecturales des maisons longues et des rangées de foyers indiquent que leur construction et leur utilisation avaient une raison d’être commune au sein de la région et apparemment dans l’Arctique canadien, mais leur emplacement et le moment de leur origine demeurent obscurs. D’après la datation au radiocarbone, la plupart des maisons longues et des rangées de foyers de l’ouest de l’île Victoria remontent au Dorset tardif, comme ailleurs, mais certaines dates indiquent que ces structures étaient utilisées dans l’ouest de l’Arctique canadien vers le Dorset moyen. La datation au radiocarbone du Dorset tardif effectuée dans la région chevauche la plus ancienne des dates les plus fiables établies relativement aux habitations de Thulé

Archaeological evidence of resource utilisation of the great whales over the past two millennia: A systematic review protocol

Archaeological faunal remains provide key insights into human societies in the past, alongside information on previous resource utilisation and exploitation of wildlife populations. The great whales (Mysticete and sperm whales) were hunted unsustainably throughout the 16th - 20th centuries (herein defined as the modern period) leading to large population declines and variable recovery patterns among species. Humans have utilised whales as a resource through carcass scavenging for millennia; however, increasing local and regional ethnographic and archaeological evidence suggests that, prior to the modern period, hunting of the great whales was more common than previously thought; impacts of earlier hunting pressures on the population ecology of many whale species remains relatively unknown. Hunting guided by traditional ecological knowledge may have been sustainable and likely originated in societies that also incorporated opportunistic use of stranded individuals. The collation of georeferenced zooarchaeological data of the great whales between the 1st - 20th centuries CE worldwide will provide insight into the timescale and distribution of resource utilisation of the great whales and how this varied within and between societies, and may have changed over time. By comparing regions of known resource utilisation and breeding and feeding grounds of current-day whale populations, this information will subsequently be used to infer regions where whale populations were possibly lost or extirpated prior to detailed historical records. This systematic review protocol also provides a template for archaeologists, ecologists, and historians interested in using faunal remains to infer historical ecology and resource use of wild animal populations. The transparency of our data collection approach provides opportunities for reproducibility and comparability with future datasets

Thule subsistence and optimal diet : a zooarchaeological test of a linear programming model

Thule archaeological sites typically yield large quantities of well-preserved faunal remains. These remains represent a wealth of information on a wide range of activities related to Thule animal-based subsistence economies, but have only recently been subjected to the quantitative ecological analyses that have increasingly concerned archaeologists elsewhere. This thesis involves the development of a linear programming model of Thule resource scheduling, and an explicit test of its applicability. When compared to the results of a detailed zooarchaeological analysis of faunal material collected from a variety of seasonal site types on southeastern Somerset Island, the modelling procedure was found to offer moderately interesting insights not otherwise attainable