Sled dogs are among the most iconic animals of the North, and their efforts in pulling sleds facilitated trade and subsistence practices of many Indigenous groups for millennia. Though the identification of archaeological sled dogs has been mostly addressed through their association with material remains of sleds and harnessing equipment, there is currently no way to identify sled-pulling activity directly from canid remains. As part of a larger project on Indigenous dog sledding of the Western Arctic, our research focuses on developing a visual scoring manual for entheseal changes to address this knowledge gap. Entheseal changes are morphological variations to muscle, tendon, and ligament attachment sites on bone and have been extensively studied in bioarchaeology, and more recently, in reindeer and equids to reconstruct working activity during life. This method is applied to canid remains by examining how visual scores in sled dogs, pet dogs, and wild canids reflect activity and biological factors like age, sex, and body size. The results show that sled dogs have significantly higher scores than non-working canids in several attachments, demonstrating this method also as a useful tool to better understand the history and development of human-dog relationships in the North.

Pedestrian surveys in maritime regions of the Canadian Arctic often employ purposive sampling strategies that privilege outer seacoasts where large residential sites are located. These strategies have been influenced by the accessibility of coastal vs. inland sites, the heightened surface visibility of architectural remains in coastal contexts, and the economic-rationalist presumption that past people continuously occupied these settings to optimize their access to nearshore resources. In this paper, I propose that building archaeological survey designs in conversation with Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit can help address spatial biases by expanding the scope of investigations to include a greater variety of site types. Through a case study of two Tuniit (Paleo-Inuit) settlement areas in Amittuq (northern Foxe Basin), Nunavut, I outline how Inuit oral testimonies have informed targeted surveys of underrepresented contexts and the identification of newly documented sites. The research challenges dominant cultural-historical and socio-evolutionary narratives of the region's occupational history, and highlights local diversity in community practices and social structures during the Tuniit period (c. 2500 BCE – 1350 CE). 

The ancestors of contemporary Inuit groups, known as Thule Inuit, migrated to Canada and Greenland from Alaska and the Bering Strait region approximately 800 years ago. Over a period of at least 200 years, between 1200 and 1400 A.D, they resided at Qausuittuq in a series of occupation events. The dwellings at the M1 (QeJu-1) site show a range of variability including deep semi-subterranean single-family habitations, bi-lobed and tri-lobed multi-roomed houses, qarmat (heavy tent rings for spring or fall seasons), and qarmat-like structures. Coupled with artifact analyses, two of the occupations indicate ties to the west, the original homeland(s) of the Thule Inuit. In this paper, I will explore these different residential episodes in the context of modelling the migration(s) of early and later Thule Inuit groups.