• DOI:10.1086/425635
• Corpus ID: 145207595

Contemporaneity of Dorset and Thule Cultures in the North American Arctic: New Radiocarbon Dates from Victoria Island, Nunavut1

@article{Friesen2004ContemporaneityOD,
  title={Contemporaneity of Dorset and Thule Cultures in the North American Arctic: New Radiocarbon Dates from Victoria Island, Nunavut1},
  author={T. Max Friesen},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={2004},
  volume={45},
  pages={685 - 691}
}

• T. Friesen
• Published 1 December 2004
• Environmental Science
• Current Anthropology

The prehistoric cultural sequence in the eastern North American Arctic is divided into two major traditions. People of the earlier Palaeo-Eskimo tradition entered the eastern Arctic from Alaska about 4,500 years ago and then gradually changed and adapted, developing through a series of cultures which archaeologists have named Independence I, Saqqaq, Pre-Dorset, and Dorset. The Neo-Eskimo tradition followed, entering the western Canadian Arctic from Alaska around 1,000 years ago and proceeding to the east in the following centuries. Early Neo-Eskimo peoples in the eastern Arctic are known as Thule Inuit, and modern Inuit of Greenland, arctic Canada, and northern Alaska are their direct descendents (Maxwell 1985, McGhee 1996). In its broadest outline, most aspects of this cultural sequence have been firmly established. The most significant unresolved issue concerns the relationship between peoples of the final Palaeo-Eskimo culture, known as Late Dorset, and those of the earliest Neo-Eskimo Thule cultures. Until recently, most archaeologists working in the region accepted that Dorset society survived into the second millennium AD to meet and be displaced by Thule immigrants. This view was based primarily on the many radiocarbon dates attributed to