Inuvik Phase of the Arctic Small Tool tradition-Introduction

Résumé

Seize siècles avant notre ère, des Paléoesquimaux fréquentaient le sud-ouest de la plaine d'Anderson, aux Territoires du Nord-Ouest canadiens. Les restes archéologiques laissés par leur passage nous permettent d'établir des liens avec d'autres sites paléoesquimaux de la région de la mer de Beaufort et du golfe d'Amundsen. Ces sites de la phase Inuvik de la tradition microlithique de l'Arctique se différencient du Prédorsetien des Barrenlands et s'apparent plutôt au Complexe Denbigh Flint de l'Alaska et à l'Indépendancien I du Haut-Arctique canadien.

Abstract

Sixteen centuries ago, Palaeoeskimos lived in the southwest Anderson Plain area of Canada's Northwest Territories. Their archaeological remains exhibit links with other sites in the Beaufort Sea-Amundsen Gulf region. These sites of the Inuvik Phase of the Arctic Small Tool tradition are clearly different from the Pre-Dorset sites of the Barrenlands, and much more closely related to the Denbigh Flint Complex of Alaska and Independence I of High Arctic Canada.

Introduction

In the recent past, the Beaufort littoral has suffered greatly from the effects of the relative rise in sea level. Numerous instances can be cited of historic period archaeological sites being totally washed away or well on their way to being so (Le Blanc 1986; McGhee 1969). Present erosion rates vary widely from the Alaska border to the tip of Cape Bathurst Peninsula. The actual annual rates are not only controlled by the eustatic sea level rise, but also by the amount of ground ice present in the coastal zone and the direction of storm winds. Recently recorded coastal erosion rates are on the order of metres per year. For the Liverpool Bay-west Cape Bathurst Peninsula region, estimates average -1 to -2 m/yr, with maximum documented retreat rates of up to -7 m/yr (Harper et al. 1985).

It is generally assumed that such erosion, if it has persisted for any significant time, would have destroyed most or all of the sites associated with the passage of people from Alaska into the Canadian Arctic. Such a west to east route is currently held to have been followed by the first people known to have inhabited the Arctic Archipelago, the early Palaeoeskimos. While archaeological remains of this culture have been found in the Beaufort Sea coastal zone (Gordon 1970; MacNeish 1956), they are few in number, they have not been well studied, and their significance in terms of the peopling of the Canadian Arctic has yet to be determined.

During the field activities of the Canadian Museum of Civilization's Northern Oil and Gas Action Plan (NOGAP) Archaeology Project, Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) artifacts were recovered at four different localities in the lower Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories, more than 250 km from the Beaufort Sea coast. This article's primary aim is to describe the ASTt collections from the lower Mackenzie and to attempt to place them in the context of the complex picture of the early peopling of the Canadian Arctic.