Abstracts
Abstract
The Thule whale bone house is one of the most impressive features of the arctic landscape. Bowhead whale bone elements within 18 Thule winter houses along the southeastern coast of Somerset Island (Nunavut) were mapped and the patterning of these elements was investigated through the application of a bowhead architectural utility index and through principal components analysis. The results suggest that while whale bone was initially selected for dwelling construction on the basis of architectural value, socio-economic status may be reflected in the positioning of certain bone elements. Informed by historic North Alaskan Inupiat analogies, the positioning of various elements within the entrance tunnel in particular appears to have been related to whale symbolism.
Résumé
La maison d'os de baleine thuléenne est une des caractéristiques les plus impressionnantes du paysage arctique. Les éléments d'os de baleine boréale à l'intérieur de 18 maisons d'hiver thuléennes le long de la côte sud-est de l’île Somerset (Nunavut) ont été cartographiés et leur mode de distribution a été étudié par l'application d’un index d’utilité architecturale de la baleine boréale et par l’analyse des composants principaux. Les résultats suggèrent que même si l'os de baleine était initialement choisi pour la construction d’habitations sur la base de sa valeur architecturale, le statut socio-économique peut être reflété par le positionnement de certains éléments en os. En utilisant des analogies historiques provenant des Inupiat du Nord de l'Alaska, on apprend que le positionnement de divers éléments particulièrement dans le tunnel d'entrée semble avoir été lié au symbolisme de la baleine.
Appendices
References
- BANNING, Edward B., 2000 The Archaeologist's Laboratory: The Analysis of Archaeological Data, New York, Kluwer Academic.
- BINFORD, Lewis R., 1984 Faunal Remains from Klasies River Mouth, Orlando, Academic Press.
- BLANTON, Richard E., 1994 Houses and Households: A Comparative Study, New York, Plenum Press.
- BOAS, Franz, 1901 The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 15(1).
- BODENHORN, Barbara, 1990 I'm Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is: Inupiat and Anthropological Models of Gender, Études/Inuit/Studies, 14(1-2): 55-74.
- BOURDIEU, Pierre, 1973 The Berber House, in Mary Douglas (ed.), Rules and Meanings: The Anthropology of Everyday Knowledge, Harmondsworth, Penguin: 11-98.
- BURCH, Ernest J., 1981 The Traditional Eskimo Hunters of Point Hope Alaska:1800-1875, Barrow, North Slope Borough, Alaska.
- CLARK, Julia C., 1996 Whaling Ritual and Symbolism: Historic Accounts and Archaeological Implications, M.A. thesis, Fayetteville, University of Arkansas, Anthropology Department.
- DAWSON, Peter C., 1995 "Unsympathetic Users": An Ethnoarchaeological Examination of Inuit responses to the Changing Nature of the Built Environment, Arctic, 48(1): 71-80.
- DAWSON, Peter C., 2001 Interpreting Variability in Thule Inuit Architecture: A Case Study from the Canadian High Arctic, American Antiquity, 66(3): 453-470.
- DUMOND, Don E., 1987 The Eskimos and Aleuts, London, Thames and Hudson.
- HABU, Junko and James M. SAVELLE, 1994 Construction, Use, and Abandonment of a Thule Whale Bone House, Somerset Island, Arctic Canada, Quartenary Research (Japan), 33(1): 1-18.
- KILMARX, John N., 1990a Archaeological Investigations at Mound 6, in Edwin S. Hall and L. Fullerton (eds), The Utqiagvik Excavations, vol. 2, Barrow, North Slope Borough Commission on Inupiat History, Language and Culture: 4-26.
- KILMARX, John N., 1990b The Katak Antechamber and Interior Parts of the Tunnel, in Edwin S. Hall and L. Fullerton (eds), The Utqiagvik Excavations, Barrow, North Slope Borough Commission on Inupiat History, Language and Culture: 113-126.
- LARSEN, Mary Anne, 1995 And Then There Were None: The "Dissappearance" of the Qargi in Northern Alaska, in Alan P. McCartney (ed.), Hunting the Largest Animals, Edmonton, Canadian Circumpolar Institute: 207-220.
- LANTIS, Margaret, 1938 Alaskan Whale Cult, American Anthropologist, 40: 438-464.
- LANTIS, Margaret, 1947 Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism, New York, J.J. Augustin, Monographs of the American Ethnological Society, 11.
- LOWENSTEIN, Tom, 1993 Ancient Land, Sacred Whale: The Inuit Hunt and its Rituals, London, Bloomsbury.
- MARY-ROUSSELIÈRE, Guy, 1984 Iglulik, in David Damas (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, 5,Arctic, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution: 415-446.
- MATHIASSEN, Therkel, 1927 Archaeology of the Central Eskimos: The Thule Culture and its Position within the Eskimo Culture, Copenhagen, Nordisk Forlag, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924, 4.
- MAXWELL, Moreau S., 1985 Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic, New York, Academic Press.
- McCARTNEY, Alan P., 1977 Thule Eskimo Prehistory along Northwestern Hudson Bay, Ottawa, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 70.
- McCARTNEY, Alan P., 1979a A Processual Consideration of Thule Whale Bone Houses, in Alan P. McCartney (ed.),Thule Eskimo Culture: An Anthropological Retrospective, Ottawa, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 88: 301-323.
- McCARTNEY, Alan P., 1979b Archaeological Whale Bone: A Northern Resource, Fayetteville, University of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Anthropological Papers, 1.
- McCARTNEY, Alan P. and James M. SAVELLE, 1985 Thule Eskimo Whaling in the Central Canadian Arctic, Arctic Anthropology, 22(2): 37-58.
- McCARTNEY, Alan P. and James M. SAVELLE, 1993 Bowhead Whale Bones and Thule Eskimo Subsistence-Settlement Patterns in the Central Canadian Arctic, Polar Record, 29(168): 1-12.
- MacDONALD, George F., 1979 Preface, in Alan P. McCartney (ed.), Archaeological Whale Bone: A Northern Resource, Fayetteville, University of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Anthropological Papers, 1: i-xii.
- McGHEE, Robert, 1984 Thule Prehistory of Canada, in David Damas (ed.),Handbook of North American Indians, 5,Arctic, Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution: 369-376.
- MURDOCH, John, 1892 Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, 9th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the years 1887-1888: 19-441.
- NELSON, Edward W., 1899 The Eskimo about Bering Strait, 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1896-1897: 3-518.
- OOSTEN, Jarich G., 1983 Incest of the Sun and Moon: An Examination of the Symbolism of Time and Space, Études/Inuit/Studies, 7(1): 143-151.
- OOSTEN, Jarich G., 1986 Male and Female in Inuit Shamanism, Études/Inuit/Studies, 10(1-2): 115-131.
- PARK, Richard W., 1997 Thule Winter Site Demography in the High Arctic, American Antiquity, 62: 273-284.
- PATTON, A. Katherine, 1996 The Ideological Dimensions of Whale Bone Use in Thule Winter Houses, M.A. thesis, Montreal, McGill University, Anthropology Department.
- PEARSON, Michael and Colin RICHARDS, 1991 Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space, London, Routledge.
- PULU, Tupou L., Ruth RAMOTH-SAMPSON and Angelina NEWLIN, 1980 Whaling: A Way of Life (Agvigich Iglauninat Niginmun), Anchorage, University of Alaska, Development Centre, Rural education, Anchorage National Bilingual Materials.
- RAINEY, Froelich G., 1947 The Whale Hunters of Tigara, Anthropology Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 41(2): 231-283.
- RASMUSSEN, Knud, 1929 The Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, Copenhagen, Nordisk Forlag, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924, 7(1).
- RASMUSSEN, Knud, 1952 The Alaskan Eskimo, Copenhagen, Nordisk Forlag, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924, 10(3).
- SABO, George and Debby R. SABO, 1985 Belief Systems and the Ecology of Sea Mammal Hunting Among the Baffinland Eskimo, Arctic Anthropology, 22(2): 77-86.
- SALADIN d'ANGLURE, Bernard, 1978 L'homme (Angut), le Fils (Irniq) et la Lumière (Qau), ou le Cercle du Pouvoir Masculin chez les Inuit de l'Arctique Central, Anthropologica, 20(1-2): 101-144.
- SAVELLE, James M., 1987 Collectors and Foragers: Subsistence and Settlement System Change in the Central Canadian Arctic A. D. 1000-1960, Oxford, BAR International Series, 358.
- SAVELLE, James M., 1991 Fieldnotes in possession of the author.
- SAVELLE, James M., 1997 The Role of Architectural Utility in the Formation of Zooarchaeological Assemblages, Journal of Archaeological Science, 24(1): 869-885.
- SAVELLE, James M., 2000 Information Systems and Thule Eskimo Bowhead Whaling, in Peter Rowley-Conwy (ed.), Animal Bones: Human Societies, Oxford, Oxbow Books: 74-86.
- SAVELLE, James M., 2002 Umialiit-Kariyit Whaling Complex and Prehistoric Thule Eskimo Social Relations in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka), 27(1): 159-188.
- SAVELLE, James M. and Junko HABU, 2004 A Processual Investigation of a Thule Whale Bone House, Somerset Island, Arctic Canada, Arctic Anthropology, 41(2): 204-221.
- SAVELLE, James M. and Alan P. McCARTNEY, 1994 Thule Inuit Bowhead Whaling: A Biometrical Analysis, in David Morrison and Jean-Luc Pilon (eds),Threads of Arctic Prehistory: Papers in Honour of William E. Taylor Jr, Ottawa, Canadian Museum of Civilisation, Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper 149: 281-310.
- SAVELLE, James M. and Alan P. McCARTNEY, 1999 Thule Eskimo Bowhead Whale Interception Strategies, World Archaeology, 33: 437-451.
- SAVELLE, James M. and Alan P. McCARTNEY, 2002 The Application of Bowhead Whale Bone Architectural Indices to Prehistoric Whale Bone Dwelling Sites in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic, Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka), 27(2): 361-387.
- SAVELLE, James M. and George W. WENZEL, 2002 Out of Alaska: Reconstructing Prehistoric Canadian Thule Inuit Social Structure, in Junko Habu, James M. Savelle, S. Koyama and H. Hongo (eds), Hunter-Gatherers of the North Pacific Rim, Osaka, National Museum of Ethnology, Senri Ethnological Series: 103-121.
- SHEEHAN, Glenn W., 1990 Excavations at Mound 34, in Edwin S. Hall and L. Fullerton (eds), The Utqiagvik Excavations, vol. 2, Barrow, North Slope Borough Commission on Inupiat History, Language and Culture: 181-325.
- SHEEHAN, Glenn W., 1995 Whaling Surplus, Trade, War and the Integration of Prehistoric Northern and Northwestern Alaskan Economies, A. D. 1200-1826, in Alan P. McCartney (ed.), Hunting the Largest Animals: Native Whaling in the Western Arctic and Sub Arctic, Edmonton, University of Alberta, Canadian Circumpolar Institute, Occasional Publication 36, Studies in Whaling 3: 185-206.
- SHEEHAN, Glenn W., 1997 In the Belly of the Whale: Trade and War in Eskimo Society. Aurora, Alaskan Anthropological Monograph Series, 6.
- SHENNAN, Stephan, 1997 Quantifying Archaeology, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
- SMITH, Timothy, 1990 The Mound 8 Excavations, in Edwin S. Hall and L. Fullerton (eds), The Utqiagvik Excavations, vol. 1, Barrow, North Slope Borough Commission on Inupiat History, Language and Culture: 84-111.
- SØBY, Regitze M., 1969-70 The Eskimo Animal Cult, Folk , 11-12: 43-78.
- SPSS, 1999 SPSS for Windows, Chicago, SPSS Inc.
- SPENCER, Robert F., 1959 The North Alaskan Eskimo: A Study in Ecology and Society, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 17.
- TAYLOR, J. Garth, 1985 The Arctic Whale Cult in Labrador, Études/Inuit/Studies, 9(2): 121-132.
- VICTOR, Anne-Marie, 1987 Éléments symboliques de la chasse à la baleine, Études/Inuit/Studies, 11(2): 139-164.
- VIERRA, Robert K. and David L. CARLSON, 1981 Factor Analysis, Random Data, and Patterned Results, American Antiquity, 46(2): 272-263.
- WHITRIDGE, Peter J., 1999 Construction of Social Difference in a Prehistoric Inuit Whaling Community, Ph.D. Dissertation, Tempe, Arizona State University, Department of Anthropology.
- WILLIAMS, Frederick, 1992 Reasoning with Statistics, Fort Worth, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.