Hello. As Curator of Palaeobiology, I spend much of my time working with fossils.
This includes subfossils: remains of dead organisms that haven’t been fully mineralized.
I’d like to tell you about some recent projects involving subfossils from Nunavut – and archaeology.
But first, a flashback. In 2015, I gave an Ignite presentation about archaeology invading the Canadian Museum of Nature.
You see, we don’t have an archaeology division,
and – with a background in zooarchaeology myself – I was prepared for a fight.
And our situation is unusual, particularly in North America. American natural history museums have long maintained anthropology
and archaeology happily coexists with palaeontology as part of the Canadian museum landscape as well. Why not us?
It turns out to be largely a quirk of history.
Our 19th-century origins in the Geological Survey of Canada saw anthropology and natural sciences together.
The GSC collected and exhibited fossils, minerals, and artifacts.
In the 20th century, The National Museum of Canada had two branches – natural history and human history.
These would become separate museums occupying the same building, then physically parting ways in 1989 with the opening of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Archaeology thus left us and moved across the river, but it re-entered the picture in 2014 when Nunavut designated us as the official repository for the territory’s archaeological holdings,
resulting in my being hired as the collections manager.
The archaeology invasion had begun, and in 2017 our beautiful Arctic Gallery opened with sections devoted to the languages and contemporary cultures of the North,
as well as cases displaying both prehistoric and historic artifacts from Nunavut.
In the Northern Voices Gallery, a special space devoted to temporary exhibits that highlight community adaptations to life in the Arctic,
anthropology, archaeology, history, and folklore reveal the many cultural relationships northern peoples have with the natural world.
Archaeology has therefore established a bridgehead in our exhibitions, so it’s time to advance elsewhere.
The museum has a long history of botanical, zoological, and mineralogical work in the Arctic, and now we can add archaeology to the list.
In 2018, in collaboration with the Arctic Centre of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands,
I began work on an archaeological project in the northern Foxe Basin between Baffin Island and the mainland, centred around the community of Igloolik.
Our first field season was at the site of Avvajja, located northwest of Igloolik Island. Here, we mapped and documented an early 20th-century
Inuit village, as well as excavated a Dorset-period Palaeo-Inuit feature dating to the 11th century AD.
We interviewed elders on site who lived at Avvajja as children before being relocated to Igloolik in the 1950s
and invited residents of Igloolik for a community feast during which elders related stories about life at Avvajja to their children and grandchildren.
As a zooarchaeologist, I analyzed the subfossil animal bones recovered from the Dorset feature.
You see here a breakdown of the vertebrate remains recovered, revealing a varied set of species dominated by seals and walrus.
In 2019, we began work at Uglit, an island south of Igloolik with substantial remains of Thule and historic Inuit winter houses and ceremonial buildings.
We also looked for traces of earlier, pre-Inuit occupation of the island.
The winter houses are associated with middens, deposits of animal bones discarded after butchery and cooking.
We targeted these for excavation as a means of better understanding the hunting practices and subsistence economy of the people who lived here.
Much activity at Uglit was focused on hunting these guys – walruses, and their bones are littered across the island.
They formed a very important component of the diet and a source of bone and ivory for making tools and artwork.
Such tools included bone needles, essential for making the warm, water-resistant clothing that permitted people to inhabit the north year-round.
We currently have a student examining microscopic wear traces on needles to better understand traditional sewing practices.
Another student project focuses on walrus genetics using DNA recovered from subfossil specimens in both the Nunavut Archaeology Collection and the national palaeontology collection.
Her research profiles the eight present day populations of Atlantic walrus and the two extinct ones shown here by red dots.
This genetic data will be combined with those from specimens in other museums to explore how hunting pressure
– by both indigenous groups and European whaling crews – influenced the current population structure of the Atlantic walrus.
So, the role of archaeology at the museum seems secure. Does the battle continue between dinosaur and artifact?
No, not at all. A truce has been declared, with subfossils bridging the two disciplines of palaeontology and archaeology to better explore our natural history and natural future.