Brooman Point Village

Last updated January 29, 2023

Based on archeological finds, Brooman Point Village is an abandoned village in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the central High Arctic near Brooman Point ( 75°23′00″N097°17′30″W / 75.38333°N 97.29167°W / 75.38333; -97.29167 (Brooman Point) ^[1]) of the Gregory Peninsula, part of the eastern coast of Bathurst Island. Brooman was both a Late Dorset culture Paleo-Eskimo village as well as an Early Thule culture village.^[2] Both the artifacts and the architecture, specifically longhouses, are considered important historical remains of the two cultures.^[3]^[4] The site shows traces of Palaeo-Eskimo occupations between about 2000 BC and 1 AD, but the major prehistoric settlement occurred from about 900 to 1200 AD.

History

Archaeological excavations have revealed the presence of a late Dorset Palaeo-Eskimo village. The Dorset people inhabited Brooman around 2000 BC to 1 AD. The remains of the village were almost obliterated by early Thule-culture Inuit, who built a village on top of the Dorset site. The Thule people lived in Brooman from about 900 to 1200 AD. Aspects of Early Thule culture as seen in the architecture of a site on Victoria Island, Amundsen Gulf.^[2]^[5] They incorporated many Dorset artifacts into the wall-fill of their houses, thus preserving them in permafrost. Thule walls were made of whale bones that rested on large porticos. Roofs were shed-like: flat or with a slight slope. Some buildings included a small kitchen. When they abandoned the locality, they left behind stone boxes as well as many carvings depicting humans and animals.^[6] These artifacts include one of the largest known collections of Dorset carvings in wood, ivory and antler.

Dorset Culture

Dorset culture, 500 BC-1500 AD, is known archaeologically from most coastal regions of arctic Canada. The Dorset people were descended from Palaeo-Eskimos of the Pre-Dorset Culture. Compared to their ancestors, the Dorset people had a more successful economy and lived in more permanent houses built of snow and turf and heated with soapstone oil lamps. They may also have used dogsleds and kayaks. They lived primarily by hunting sea mammals and were capable of taking animals as large as walrus and narwhal. About 500 BC they moved down the Labrador coast and occupied the island of Newfoundland for about 1000 years. About 1000 AD they were displaced from most arctic regions by an invasion of Thule Inuit from Alaska, but they continued to live in northern Québec and Labrador until approximately 1500 AD.

Thule Culture

Thule culture, 1000-1600 AD, represents the expansion of Alaskan Inuit across arctic Canada about 1000 AD and the gradual displacement of the Dorset Palaeo-Eskimos who occupied the area previously. Thule people brought with them a sophisticated sea-hunting technology that had been developed in the Bering Sea area. They hunted animals as large as bowhead whales and were able to store sufficient food to allow winter occupation of permanent villages composed of houses built from stone, whalebones and turf.^[7] Most Thule artifacts were made from bone, antler, ivory and wood; they used few stone tools, preferring cutting edges of metal obtained either from natural deposits or from Greenlandic Norse. Thule culture declined after about 1600 AD from a combination of deteriorating climatic conditions and the introduction of diseases from contact with Europeans, but the people continued to occupy arctic Canada and are directly ancestral to the historic Inuit.^[8]

Palaeo-Eskimo people

The term "Palaeo-Eskimo"(palaeo=old) is used to refer to the peoples of the Arctic who lived before the Thule. The Thule were the direct ancestors of the Inuit who now inhabit the Canadian north. Palaeo-Eskimo peoples may be remotely related to the Inuit, but they are not the direct ancestors of any modern Arctic people.

Related Research Articles

The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. The links between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic.

The Paleo-Eskimo were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the arrival of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) and related cultures. The first known Paleo-Eskimo cultures developed by 2500 BCE, but were gradually displaced in most of the region, with the last one, the Dorset culture, disappearing around 1500 CE.

The Dorset was a Paleo-Eskimo culture, lasting from 500 BCE to between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, that followed the Pre-Dorset and preceded the Thule people (proto-Inuit) in the North American Arctic. The culture and people are named after Cape Dorset in Nunavut, Canada, where the first evidence of its existence was found. The culture has been defined as having four phases due to the distinct differences in the technologies relating to hunting and tool making. Artifacts include distinctive triangular end-blades, oil lamps made of soapstone, and burins.

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Patricia D. Sutherland is a Canadian archaeologist, specialising in the Arctic. She is an adjunct professor at Carleton University, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, and sole proprietor of Northlands Research. Much of her recent research has focused on evidence of a lengthy Norse presence on Baffin Island in the 11th to 13th centuries CE and trade between them and the now-extinct Dorset people of the region. Sutherland's theory that there were Europeans on Baffin Island hundreds of years before the Norse settled Greenland at the start of the 11th century is controversial.

References

↑ "Brooman Point Village". Geographical Names Data Base . Natural Resources Canada.
1 2 Robert McGhee. Brooman Point Village. The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 25, 2019.
↑ Park, Robert W. (2003). "The Dorset culture longhouse at Brooman Point, Nunavut". Inuit Studies. 27 (1–2): 239–253. doi:10.7202/010803ar.
↑ Canada. Dept. of Energy, Mines and Resources (1983). Polar Continental Shelf Project: Titles and Abstracts of Scientific Papers Supported by PCSP. Energy, Mines and Resources Canada. p. 6.
↑ Nelson, D. Erle; McGhee, Robert (December 2002). "Aberrant radiocarbon dates on an Inuit arrowhead" (PDF). Arctic. 55 (4): 345–347.
↑ Sutherland, Patricia (2003). "Variability and change in Palaeo-Eskimo architecture: a view from the Canadian High Arctic". Inuit Studies. 27 (1–2): 191–212.
↑ "An Ancient Bond with the Land". Canadian Museum of History.
↑ McGhee, Robert (July–August 1981). "A Tale of Two Cultures: A Prehistoric Village in the Canadian Arctic". Archaeology . Vol. 34, no. 4. pp. 44–51. JSTOR 41727171.