Sealing, whaling and caribou: the skeletal isotope chemistry of Eastern Arctic foragers
نویسندگان
چکیده
We obtained stable isotope signatures ( C, N) and AMS radiocarbon dates for a small set of Dorset remains, Thule-era burials from northwest Hudson Bay and proto-historic burials from Southampton Island to assess the importance of whaling in eastern Canadian Arctic economies. Classic Thule occupation of the Eastern Arctic (ca. AD 1000–1350) coincided with the Medieval Warm Period and was thought to have been facilitated by dog traction and open-sea hunting of bowhead whale. Despite the potential economic importance of whaling, dietary reconstructions for this period are based on the relative frequency of common prey types in midden faunal assemblages and rarely include bowhead whale skeletal elements, which often comprise the superstructure of Classic Thule residential dwellings. Although our findings are constrained by the paucity of Classic Thule burials at sites under study, they provide an empirically derived estimate of reliance on whaling for the Modified Thule, those who post-date AD 1350, indicating whaling accounted for approximately 12% of dietary intake. We also examine the relationship between Thule whaling and indicators of status and identify a Dorset-aged burial and three individuals with European diets among the proto-historic collection from Southampton Island. 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
منابع مشابه
Arctic greening from warming promotes declines in caribou populations
The migratory tundra caribou herds in North America follow decadal population cycles, and browsing from abundant caribou could be expected to counteract the current climate-driven expansion of shrubs in the circumpolar tundra biome. We demonstrate that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has provided a strong signal for climate-induced changes on the adjacent caribou summer ranges, outperform...
متن کاملPortuguese Sealing and Whaling Activities as Contributions to Understand Early Northeast Atlantic Environmental History of Marine Mammals
متن کامل
Antlers on the Arctic Refuge: capturing multi-generational patterns of calving ground use from bones on the landscape.
Bone accumulations faithfully record historical ecological data on animal communities, and owing to millennial-scale bone survival on high-latitude landscapes, have exceptional potential for extending records on arctic ecosystems. For the Porcupine Caribou Herd, maintaining access to calving grounds on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR, Alaska) is a central management concern. However, ...
متن کاملNitrogen isotopes suggest a change in nitrogen dynamics between the Late Pleistocene and modern time in Yukon, Canada
A magnificent repository of Late Pleistocene terrestrial megafauna fossils is contained in ice-rich loess deposits of Alaska and Yukon, collectively eastern Beringia. The stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope compositions of bone collagen from these fossils are routinely used to determine paleodiet and reconstruct the paleoecosystem. This approach requires consideration of changes in...
متن کاملClimate-Driven Effects of Fire on Winter Habitat for Caribou in the Alaskan-Yukon Arctic
Climatic warming has direct implications for fire-dominated disturbance patterns in northern ecosystems. A transforming wildfire regime is altering plant composition and successional patterns, thus affecting the distribution and potentially the abundance of large herbivores. Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are an important subsistence resource for communities throughout the north and a species that...
متن کامل