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Canada / NU / NcPd-2 (99-225 H.17) / TO-8509
- Lab number
- TO-8509
- Field number
- 99-DCA-225c
- Material dated
- whale bone collagen; collagène osseux de baleine
- Taxa dated
- Balaena mysticetus rib (7.1 g, id. by J.M. Savelle)
- Locality
- on the south coast of the west end of Lady Franklin Point, Wollaston Peninsula, Victoria Island, Nunavut
- Map sheet
- 87 A/07 E
- Submitter
- A.S. Dyke and J.M. Savelle
- Date submitted
- February 26, 2002
- Normalized Age
- 1540 ± 70
- Significance
- Neoeskimo, Thule; Néoesquimau, Thuléen
- Context
- House 17, 4 m asl
- Associated taxa
- Mammalia: Balaena mysticetus, Delphinapterus leucas, Phoca hispida, Ursus maritimus, Rangifer tarandus, Canis familiaris
- Additional information
- Dense cortical bone was isolated by chiselling off the outer surface and grinding off the interior porous tissue.
- Comments
- NcPd-2, Lady Franklin Point: This site has 21 Thule winter houses constructed of closely spaced vertical wooden posts (driftwood) against which sods are stacked on the outside. The houses are in two groups: 19 houses on a single beach ridge at 4 m above high tide; and 2 houses on another beach ridge at 5 m aht about 100 m farther inland. The site is behind the oil storage tanks on the beach at the Lady Franklin Point DEW Line station. The site was partly excavated by W.E. Taylor, Jr. in 1963 and described by Taylor (1972). He noted that "...the midden areas have been very extensively dug over, so far as I could determine, by Eskimos with retail intentions." Since Taylor's excavations, the site has been further extensively "potted," most of the houses have been deeply dug out, and a large part of the main house row has been bladed by a bulldozer down to bare beach gravel. However, all of Taylor's numbered houses can still be identified with the aid of his sketch map. We collected 12 radiocarbon samples from this site, mainly material that had been dug out of the houses or associated middens: 225a (CAMS-66368), bear longbone in front of House 19; 225b, wood from a post in the wall of House 17; 225c (TO-8509), a bowhead rib fragment from House 17; 225d, a bear femur head epiphysis and pelvic fragment near House 17; 225e, a chunk of burnt bone breccia impregnated with burnt fat dug from House 17; 225f, an antler lying in House 17; 225g, ring seal longbone from House 17; 225h (TO-8542), two dog molars from House 12; 225i, a bowhead skull fragment (condyle at foramen magnum) in front of Houses 17-19; 225j, beluga mandible fragment and vertebra from bulldozed area; 225k, wood from a post and a cut caribou antler tine (CAMS-66369) in House 21 [5 m level]; 225l (TO-8510), a bowhead rib fragment from House 21. This is the only known Thule winter village on southwestern Victoria Island. Elevations given here are based on altimeter measurement with 5 minutes between readings at site and at high tide line. The elevations are for the lowest parts of the houses. Taylor incorrectly reported the elevations of the lower houses as 26 feet [8 m] and the upper houses as 35 feet [11 m]. Based on artifacts recovered, Taylor concluded that the site did not date from very earliest Thule time, but from a later stage. The artifacts "generally suggest an occupation that would be termed early Thule in the light of eastern Arctic Thule materials but, compared to Alaska, the occupation is not relatively early for it seems chronologically comparable with the end, roughly, of the Nunagiak stage at Pt. Barrow" (Taylor, 1972: 37).