Back Pre-Dorset Spanish Pre-Dorsetcultuur Dutch

Pre-Dorset

The Pre-Dorset is a loosely defined term for a Paleo-Eskimo culture or group of cultures that existed in the Eastern Canadian Arctic from c. 3200 to 850 cal BC,[1] and preceded the Dorset culture.[2]

Due to its vast geographical expanse and to history of research, the Pre-Dorset is difficult to define. The term was coined by Collins (1956, 1957) who recognised that there seemed to be people that lived in the Eastern Canadian Arctic prior to the Dorset, but for whose culture it was difficult to give the defining characteristics.[3] Hence, for Collins and others afterward, the term is a catch-all phrase for all occupations of the Eastern Canadian Arctic that predated the Dorset. To Taylor (1968) and Maxwell (1973), however, the Pre-Dorset were a distinct cultural entity, ancestral to the Dorset, and that lived in the Low Arctic of Canada with a number of incursions into High Arctic.[1][4]

At the site of Port Refuge on the Grinnell Peninsula, Devon Island, McGhee distinguished two sets of occupations, one that he ascribed to the Independence I culture,[5] the other to Pre-Dorset.[6] Due to the often poor preservation of organic material and the fact that bones from marine mammals can appear older with radiocarbon dating than their actual age (the marine reservoir effect), it is typically difficult to date Arctic sites. But the Independence I settlement is several metres higher above sea level, and McGhee took this to mean that the Independence I settlement was roughly 300 years older than the Pre-Dorset one at Port Refuge. Indeed, assuming that settlers are always close to the water, because sea levels fell over the centuries, older sites are expected to lie higher above the sea. Most features that McGhee believed different between the Pre-Dorset and Independence I settlements of Port Refuge are problematic and cannot systematically be used to distinguish their cultural affiliation.[1] It has been suggested that Pre-Dorset and Independence I are parts of the same culture.[7]

  1. ^ a b c S. Brooke Milne; Robert Park (2016). "Pre-Dorset Culture". In M. Friesen; O. Mason (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199766956.013.39. ISBN 978-0-1997-6695-6.
  2. ^ Robert McGhee (15 December 2013). "Pre-Dorset Culture". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada.
  3. ^ Henry B. Collins (May 1956). "The T1 Site at Native Point, Southampton Island, NWT" (PDF). Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska. Original Series. 4 (2).
  4. ^ William E. Taylor, Jr. (1968). "The Arnapik and Tyara Sites: An Archaeological Study of Dorset Culture Origins". Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology. 22 (22): iii-129. JSTOR 25146698.
  5. ^ McGhee (1979), pp. 8–86, Chapter: Independence I Occupations at Port Refuge.
  6. ^ McGhee (1979), pp. 87–106, Chapter: The Pre-Dorset Occupation of Port Refuge.
  7. ^ Julia M. Ross (27 September 2017). "4.1. Peopling of the Eastern Canadian Arctic". In V.M. Kotlyakov; A.A. Velichko; S.A. Vasil'ev (eds.). Human Colonization of the Arctic: The Interaction Between Early Migration and the Paleoenvironment. Academic Press. pp. 341–363. ISBN 978-0-12-813532-7.

Developed by StudentB