A study of technology, subsistence and settlement patterns of the late Pre-Dorset people who occupied a large coastal site near Churchill, Manitoba around 3,000 years ago.

Abstracts of Master’s and Doctoral thesis completed at Canadian universities between 1970-1982 dealing with ethnographic, archaeological, linguistic, and physical anthropological topics relevant to Canada’s Native peoples.

Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa are the only known sites of the Early Arctic Small Tool tradition in the Eastern Arctic, where all kinds of organic materials - wood, bone, baleen, hair, skin - are preserved in permafrozen culture layers. Together, the sites cover the entire Saqqaq era in Greenland (c. 2400-900 BC). Technological and contextual analyses of the excellently preserved archaeological materials from the frozen layers form the core of this publication. Bjarne Grønnow draws a new picture of a true Arctic pioneer society with a remarkably complex technology. The Saqqaq hunting tool kit, consisting of bows, darts, lances, harpoons, and throwing boards as well as kayak-like sea-going vessels, is described for the first time. A wide variety of hand tools and household utensils as well as lithic and organic refuse and animal bones were found on the intact floor of a midpassage dwelling at Qeqertasussuk. These materials provide entirely new information on the daily life and subsistence of the earliest hunting groups in Greenland. Comparative studies put the Saqqaq Culture into a broad cultural-historical perspective as one of the pioneer societies of the Eastern Arctic.

This study is an analysis and functional interpretation of the cultural remains from a Middle Period bison hunters’ campsite situated in the parklands of central Saskatchewan. The Harder site, excavated by the author during 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972, and radiocarbon dated at 3,400 years, belongs to the Oxbow archaeological complex.

Excavations at the Lagoon site (OjRl-3) on the southern coast of Banks Island, Northwest Territories have provided a database with which to formulate hypotheses concerning the Paleoeskimo culture history of the western periphery of the Canadian Arctic at ca. 500 B.C.

A detailed description of the specimens recovered from the Glenbrook prehistoric village site in Glengarry County, Ontario attributed to the St. Lawrence Iroquois. The presence of certain Huron ceramics and smoking pipes suggest liaison between the villagers and the Huron on the Benson or Parsons site time levels. This connection supports the conclusion derived from the analysis of the artifacts which places the occupation of the Glenbrook village very late in the prehistoric period.

Analysis of the Atigun site based on work conducted in 1973 and 1974 on the North Slope of the Central Brooks Range, Alaska. The Atigun site is marginal to both Native and Inuit territory, thus the primary concern of this analysis is the cultural affiliation of its occupants. Conclusions point to late summer occupation of the site by Athapaskans between A.D. 1400 and A.D. 1800. This period is defined as the Kavik phase.

Excavations in 1971 and 1972 reveal two major occupation levels at the Estuary Bison Pound site, located near the head of a large coulee on the south bank of the South Saskatchewan River, just below its confluence with the Red Deer River. They present strong evidence to suggest that the Old Women’s phase developed from the Avonlea phase.

The Majorville is a large cairn located in the centre of a medicine wheel, situated south of Bassano, Alberta, on the banks of the Bow River. Stratigraphic excavation indicates initial construction in Oxbow times, with additional accretions ending in the Historic Period. Cultural continuity in ritual practice in the Plains over a period of 5,000 years is thus established.