ODDS’N’SODS — Arctic site once inhabited

To the untrained eye, the Tasiariluk site on Little Cornwallis Island, N.W.T., does not represent an imposing spectacle. Its only distinguishing feature seems to be a few small patches of sparse vegetation set off against a barren backdrop of yellow-gray limestone and dolomite gravels.

In short, the site appears to be cold, empty and unfriendly. These small patches of green, however, provide the first clue that there is something special about this spot. It is a 1,000-year-old village called Tasiariluk, which means “place of many small lakes” in Inuktitut. The site was discovered in 1989 by James Helmer during an archaeological survey of the area surrounding Cominco Exploration’s Eclipse drill site. Cominco sponsored an additional season of field work in 1990; and last summer, based on positive results of that work, Helmer and Genevieve Le Moine, together with a team of archaeologists, began a 3-year investigation of what is one of the most significant archaeological sites found in the High Arctic in recent years.

Like much of the High Arctic Archipelago, southeastern Little Cornwallis Island is a polar desert. Natural vegetation covers less than 10% of the total exposed land surface.

One of the few chances plants have of gaining a tenuous foothold in this barren place is on or around the organic residues left behind by the other living things — the nitrogen-rich droppings of roosting shorebirds, the burrowed dens of Arctic lemmings, the scattered remains of dead animals left by scavengers (such as the Arctic fox) or by predators (such as human hunters).

Closer inspection of the circular, rectangular and long linear patches of lichens, mosses and saxifrage found at the site reveals that they mark the locations of ancient semi-subterranean houses, tent rings, cooking hearths, boulder caches, cache pits and middens — refuse areas where the unused portions of prey were discarded.

Scattered amongst these architectural features are fragments of small, delicately worked stone tools (blades, knives, etc.) made from a variety of black, gray or yellow-brown cherts (a flint-like rock found in sedimentary limestone deposits) collected from outcrops and beach deposits near the site. . . .

Because of the cold Arctic desert conditions, organic materials such as bone, antler, ivory and wood — which are normally absent in other archaeological contexts — are well-preserved at the Tasiariluk site.

From careful examination of animal bones, it is known that the people who once lived here pursued the small ring seal, caribou, polar bear, fox, hare and nesting waterfowl. They also hunted walruses, bear seals and smaller whales such as the beluga and narwhal.

How the houses were constructed is largely conjectural. All that remains of these structures are vegetation-filled sub-rectangular depressions rimmed by raised gravel “berms” that once probably weighed down the edges of a skin tent cover.

The people who once lived at the Tasiariluk site belong to what archaeologists call the “Late Dorset” culture. Late Dorset peoples were related to Arctic-adapted hunters who moved into Far Northern Canada from the Bering Strait region about 4,500 years ago.

The Late Dorset period is, in many ways, a mysterious episode in Far Northern prehistory. Soon after its appearance throughout much of the Eastern Arctic (from Victoria Island to Newfoundland and Greenland) between 1,500 and 1,000 years ago, the late Dorset culture literally disappears from the archaeological record. And it is not known why. Work at the Tasiariluk site may help archaeologists understand more about this fascinating chapter in Canadian Arctic prehistory.

— The preceding article appeared in a recent edition of Cominco’s “Orbit” publication. The authors, James Helmer, Genevieve Le Moine and Donna Hanna, are with the University of Calgary’s archaeology department.