Thule Iron Use in the Pre-contact Arctic

461 Pages·2017·23.17 MB·English

CCiittyy UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff NNeeww YYoorrkk ((CCUUNNYY))
CCUUNNYY AAccaaddeemmiicc WWoorrkkss
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center
9-2017
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Eileen Colligan
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
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THULE IRON USE IN THE PRE-CONTACT ARCTIC

by

Eileen M. Colligan

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
The City University of New York

2017
© 2017
Eileen M. Colligan
All Rights Reserved
ii
Thule Iron Use in the Pre-contact Arctic
by
Eileen M. Colligan

This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology
in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

________________________ __________________________________
Date Thomas H. McGovern
Chair of Examining Committee

________________________ __________________________________
Date Jeff Maskovsky
Executive Officer

Supervisory Committee:
Karine Taché
James M. Woollett
Anne M. Jensen

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
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ABSTRACT
Thule Iron Use in the Pre-contact Arctic
by
Eileen M. Colligan

Advisor: Thomas McGovern

This thesis examines the use of iron by the Thule people, a Neoeskimo culture
that lived in the North American Arctic between approximately 1000 AD and 1400 ̶
1500 AD. The study takes a pan-Arctic perspective to bring together research that has
usually been done on a more-limited geographical scale. This viewpoint shows the Thule
culture from a view that corresponds to their world.
The study focuses on: (1) revisions in the accepted chronology of the Thule and
how these have affected the explanations for the Thule Migration from Alaska to
Greenland; (2) new understandings about the iron that was available to the Thule; (3) new
insights into the quantity of iron that would have been available to the Thule; and (4) new
evidence for how trade was conducted and how iron was traded by the Thule.
The methodology includes extensive references to published literature, an
experiment using cut mark analysis to find a new proxy for iron, and spatial analysis
using GIS based on data from government-maintained archaeological databases. The
literature review includes research since McCartney’s last work on iron in 1991. The
methodology for the cut mark analysis enabled stone and metal manufacturing marks to
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be distinguished but it faced unanticipated problems in application to analyzing museum
artifacts: many had no incised lines to examine while others had been conserved using
material that obscured the lines. The GIS visualizations were more useful in raising new
research questions than in definitively answering old ones; nonetheless, the visualizations
were an effective way to grasp overall patterns in the data.
The conclusions of the study are: (1) the Thule Migration was not sparked by
knowledge of, or rumors of, iron or commercial opportunities to the east (as Robert
McGhee proposed); the Thule would not have known about the Greenlandic iron prior to
their arrival in the Central or even Eastern Arctic; (2) the Cape York meteorite fall zone
was the site of extensive iron working by both the Late Dorset and the Thule; (3) copper
and rodent teeth were often available alternatives to iron for cutting antler and ivory, and
are frequently present in Thule assemblages; (4) the Thule trade network enabled and was
maintained by an extensive communication network, evidence for which can be seen in
widespread stylistic similarities of tools shown in illustrations in the thesis itself and in
Appendix 2.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have looked forward for a long time to being able to acknowledge the support of
the many institutions and people who helped with my dissertation. Without this help I
could not have moved forward and most likely would have abandoned the very
interesting topic of Thule iron use.
I am grateful to the sources of funding for travel to museums. Despite the fact that
the first grant may not have been intended for my subject, I applied for and received a
Knickerbocker Award for Archival Research in American Studies from CUNY. The
award made me feel that I was taken seriously; it also made me feel obligated to start my
field research. I am grateful for the initial push and means to begin. Without generous
funding from the American Scandinavian Foundation, I would not have been able to
work in Nuuk and Copenhagen, expensive places to visit but where two very important
collections of Thule material are located.
CUNY’s New Media Lab was my base for the last three years, a supportive,
interdisciplinary space within the University. The NML gave me stipends and grants for
conference travel and for working on a digital component to my dissertation. Thank you
for the funding and the pressure to present at conferences; by presenting posters and
papers, I met colleagues with similar and complementary academic interests.
My thanks also for funding from the CUNY Doctoral Student Council, which
partially funded my work at the Iñupiat Heritage Center, and provided additional
conference travel funds.
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Of course, the help I received went far beyond grants. Once I planned to include
an experimental archaeology component, as suggested by Jim Woollett, I realized that I
had no idea how to proceed. Thanks to Rita Wright at NYU for her course on the
technology of society and for steering me to Randy White’s experimental archaeology
seminar; the ideas and Randy’s access to legal ivory, were essential to moving forward.
The stone burin from my experimental tool kit was made by my MA adviser and lithics
professor William Parry of Hunter.
Fortunately, early in my project I found Bill Scheer, a blacksmith at Mystic
Seaport. Thanks to Bill, who made the iron blade to my specifications and spent many
hours discussing forging, published references on iron and iron tools, and how cold
hammering did not work on wrought iron.
I bought a piece of caribou antler in an Alaskan shop; it was not fresh and was
difficult to work. I wrote to a hunters’ organization in Alaska but, based on the
blisteringly hostile response, it appeared that I tapped into the survivalist movement.
Finally I learned about reindeer research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. I inquired
about fresh antler; a few months later, a large box of reindeer antlers, some still covered
with velvet, arrived at my door.
Recording good quality images was a priority. I experimented with macro and
micro photographic equipment. Despite my years of photographic experience, it took
trials of different equipment and techniques before I consistently got pictures of the
desired quality. Thanks to many people who helped with this: Alaskan photographer
Brian Adams for advice on a better lens choice; Gregory Dunkel, my partner and a skilled
photographer, for loaning me equipment and teaching me (again and again) how to use it;
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and to Tom McGovern for loaning me the Dinolite microscope and optical lights for
micro images.
Museum staff members are key to successful research in their collections. In each
museum they pulled objects for me, explained their cataloging system, and prepared
workspaces for use during my visit. During my trial run at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, Anibal Rodriguez also showed me how to distinguish
walrus and mammoth ivory (yes, both are found in Thule assemblages). Three years later
I returned to AMNH; despite his having retired, he helped me with Ipiutak material that
the Native Village of Point Hope, Alaska, had kindly permitted me to study for
comparative purposes.
Thanks to the many others who helped me access the collections they are
responsible for: Kevin Smith and Doug Anderson at the Haffenreffer for the original
Cape Krusenstern collection; the staff at the Maxwell Museum at UNM for access to
Walakpa material; Bryan Just for showing me the lovely Bering Strait objects at the
Princeton University Art Museum; Fawn Carter for retrieving material from UAF’s
Museum of the North in the midst of a lab chock full of researchers in town for the Little
Tripple A’s (Alaska Association Association) conference; Anne Jensen for access to the
Nuvuk material; at the Iñupiat Heritage Center, Maribeth Timm found artifacts for me
and Diana Martin spent many hours sharing her knowledge of Iñupiat whaling culture
and skin working; David, a skilled carver in Utqiaġvik, showed me current carving
techniques with steel and diamond-tipped tools and speculated on the old ways.
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The international travel component of my research was to Greenland and
Denmark. Thanks to Hans Lange, Georg Nyegaard, and Hans-Christian Lennert for help
in accessing Thule collections in the Greenland National Museum in Nuuk.
At the National Museum of Denmark I was welcomed and guided by Bjarne
Grønnow, Martin Appelt, Ulla Odgaard, and Jens Fog Jensen, my way eased no doubt by
the many years Tom McGovern and these colleagues had worked together in the North
Atlantic. I was fortunate to arrive when Martin, Bjarne and Jens were wrapping up a
reexamination of meteoritic iron use in Greenland. Iron was the topic of conversations.
Thanks for taking up the pXRF test I suggested and for continuing to answer my
questions even after I had left Copenhagen.
Special thanks to Stacey Girling-Christie for her help in navigating the newly
renovated storage cavern at the Canadian Museum of History. And thanks for helping me
get in touch with the database managers later when I began my spatial analysis for the
Grand Thule Map Project.
Thanks to those dedicated people who maintain the databases without whom there
would have been no spatial analysis: Jeff Weinberger (Alaska); Ruth Gotthardt (Yukon);
Julie Buysse (Northwest Territories); Heather McClean (Manitoba); Sylvie LeBlanc
(Nunavut); Steve Hull (Newfoundland and Labrador) and Lori Temple (The Rooms);
Claudine Giroux (Quebec); and Bo Albrechtsen (Greenland).
Absolutely essential to the mapping was extensive help from the Baruch GIS Lab
where Frank Donnelly and Janine Billadello gave me great amounts of their time. Before
Frank and Janine, there were months of the most profound frustration. After them, there
were maps. Thank you so many times over.
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