Thule Culture in Western Coronation Gulf, N. W. T. National Museum of Man Mercury Series,Archaeological Survey of Canada, Paper No. 116 by David A. MorrisonReview by: Charles D. ArnoldCanadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1983), pp.108-110Published by: Canadian Archaeological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41102258 .

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108 Reviews and Book Notes/ Comptes Rendus et Notes de Lectures

Wray, CF. and H.L. Schoff 1953. A Preliminary Report on the Seneca Sequence in Western New York, 1550-1687. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 23(2):53-63.

Thule Culture in Western Coronation Gulf, N. W. T. David A. Morrison. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Can- ada, Paper No. 116, 1983. 365 pages.

Mercury Series continues to prove its worth as a vehicle intended "to permit the rapid dissemination of recently-completed information" with this publication of David A. Morrison's Ph.D. dissertation, which was completed in 1982.

Morrison achieves a good blend of description, analysis and speculation in this monograph. Chapter 1 is "An Overview of Thule Culture" which focuses on spatial and temporal variation, a theme which is an essential part of his interpreta- tion of data presented in a later chapter. Chapter 2 describes "The Environmental Setting" of the western regions of Coronation Gulf, wherein the peculiar charac- teristic of the region in having one of the largest expanses of stable winter ice in the North American Arctic is identified. This, too, is an important factor Morrison uses to construct his thesis. Chapter 3 describes "The Coronation Gulf Thule Project" and how the investigation of the sites reported in Chapter 4 ("Site Descriptions") came about. Three sites are reported: the small and relatively unproductive Nuvuk site, the large Beulah site which was only briefly tested, and the multiple-component Clachan site, which yielded most of the artifacts analysed in Chapter 5 ("Artifact Analysis"). Morrison is to be commended here for the orderly and articulate manner in which he handles artifact descriptions, and for his recognition of a new harpoon head type (the "Clachan" type) previously character- ized simply as a variant of the Thule type 2 form. Chapter 6 establishes the "Cultural Position" of the people who occupied those three sites, and the following chapter, "Subsistence," rounds out his cultural reconstruction by drawing upon evidence for the economic strategies of western Coronation Gulf Thule. The "Conclusions and Implications" in Chapter 8 summarize this reconstructed regional variant of Thule culture, which has primary ties to Alaskan Thule and which exhibits marked differences when compared with the Copper Inuit who occupied the coasts bordering on Coronation Gulf by the time of European contact.

While reading Morrison's dissertation, I identified several areas deserving additional comment.

The first of these is his contention that western Coronation Gulf Thule (consist- ing of his three sites and several others that have been excavated) may be analo- gous to an ethnographic "tribe" (p. 27 1). Morrison states that his interpretation is based upon the appearance of a number of distinctive traits in the artifact assemb- lages, but he identifes only two: the Clachan harpoon heads and the extensive use of native copper for a variety of implements. I would argue that the latter could as easily be explained by the local availability of native copper, leaving only the

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY Vol. 7 (No. 1) 1983 109

Clachan harpoon head as a distinctive trait, but one that appears only in two of the sites excavated. Morrison's suggestion would have been strengthened by a distri- butional analysis of other traits that might also distinguish western Coronation Gulf Thule.

It is also legitimate to question the use of the term "tribe" in this context. The term is inappropriate to most historically known Inuit groups because of its connotations of political and territorial unification. True, Inuit society of the early historical period may not constitute an accurate model for Thule culture, but in any event the concept of "phase" as defined by Willey and Phillips (1958:22) may be more appropriate than the term tribe, especially if the temporal span of the western Coronation Gulf variant of Thule can be compressed from Morrison's estimate of three to four centuries.

I found the functional analysis of harpoon gear and its relationship to subsist- ence strategies to be one of the most stimulating parts of this study. Morrison concentrates on harpoon foreshafts, and distinguishes between those that are best suited for hunting sea mammals in open water and others used for taking seals at breathing holes on the sea ice. Here, too, further discussion seems warranted, as harpoon heads might also be useful indicators of maritime hunting practices.

The most common kind of toggling harpoon head in early Thule assemblages are the "Type 2" forms, of which the Clachan type is a variation. The numerical superiority of the Type 2 harpoon heads almost certainly must be a result of the maritime hunting strategies employed. The Thule 2 harpoon head has redundancy built in to its form in that it has both barbs and a toggling spur. I think that Morrison is correct in stating that the early Thule possessed an essentially open water hunting economy (in its maritime focus), and it seems to me that barbed harpoon heads might be well-suited to hunting seals from kayaks. In those situations, the force which could be applied when casting a harpoon might have been insufficient for the head to penetrate completely, which is necessary for the toggling action to occur. The barbs at the proximal end of the harpoon head would, however, ensure that the animal, once struck, would remain secured. However, breakage patterns which can be noted when examining harpoon heads of this kind show that the "neck" below the barbs is a weak point, and I suggest that the Thule 2's might be unsuited to situations where more thrust can be brought to bear. This would include hunting from a stable ice platform, either harpooning animals at open water leads, while basking on the ice, or at their breathing holes. In those situations, the unbarbed toggling harpoon heads might be more effective. It is worth exploring whether shifts in frequencies of the various types of Thule harpoon heads correlate with shifts in sea mammal hunting strategies of the kind suggested by Morrison.

A third topic dealt with in a rather sparing fashion is the origin of the breathing hole hunting complex. Morrison follows the general concensus of archaeological thought in ascribing the development of this strategy and associated technology to the Dorset, and transferring it to the Thule soon after they entered the eastern regions of the arctic. While this may be true, it has yet to be demonstrated, and the

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110 Reviews and Book Notes/ Comptes Rendus et Notes de Lectures

possibility remains that hunting seals at their breathing holes on the sea ice was a Thule development, born out of need in areas where open water was not available year round and where there was no access to the large herds of barrenground caribou to allow stores of meat to be built up for the winter.

Finally, the origin of the Copper Inuit, who occupied western Coronation Gulf during the historic period, is still not resolved. Morrison suggests that "rapid socioeconomic change which may be inferred for the final three hundred years of the prehistoric period" (p. 278) not covered by his data may have transformed the culture of the indigenous Thule into that of the Copper Inuit. This seems to be a reasonable hypothesis, but one which should be examined through further field studies.

These comments are not offered as criticisms of Morrison's dissertation. His is a fine piece of research, one that builds on previous archaeological studies of Thule culture and advances our overall knowledge of that culture. It also is thought- provoking, and stimulates inquiry along lines such as I have suggested here.

Charles D. Arnold, Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre

References Willey, Gordon R. and Phillip Phillips 1958. Method and theory in American archaeology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of the Churchill River. T.E.H. Jones. Anthropological Series, Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History, No. 4, Regina, 1981. 114 pages. $8.00.

In this monograph, T.E.H. Jones examines 22 rock art sites situated along the Churchill River from Pinehouse Lake, Saskatchewan, to South Indian Lake, Manitoba, in what he states is "the first systematic attempt to determine the age, cultural affiliation, and interpretation of the rock paintings in this part of the Canadian Shield."

The first half of the work is devoted to a description of the sites, the majority of which were recorded by the author in the 1960's. The paintings are typical of the Canadian Shield: red ochre images of thunderbirds, anthropomorphs, game animals, smoking pipes, and other motifs typical of hunting and gathering groups of the region, painted (probably) with the hands and placed singly or in small groups on the vertical faces of shoreline rocks. Each site is presented in a detailed graphic reproduction which Jones has fashioned from direct tracings and photo- graphs. The paintings are rendered as they appear on the site, with no attempt to reconstruct or clarify images that are indistinct due to weathering. These records

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