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Iron Utilization by Thule Eskimos of Central Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

A. P. McCartney  and
D. J. Mack
A. P. McCartney
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas
D. J. Mack
Affiliation:
Department of Metallurgical and Minerals Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Abstract

Iron fragments located during 1969 by the Northwest Hudson Bay Thule Project at the Thuleage site of Silumiut have been subjected to spectrographic, microscopic, microprobe, and neutron activation analyses to determine their origin. Both meteoritic and terrestrial iron are represented and are presumed to have been traded from north-western Greenland. Meteoritic iron is widely spread around Melville Bay, and Norse iron was available from the same area by at least the twelfth century A.D. Norse iron from the Silumiut site is the most southerly known and the earliest radiocarbon dated in the central area. This iron and that from Naujan, Repulse Bay, indicate that native and European metal was an integral, albeit low frequency, part of the central Eskimo tool kit at least 400 yr before Hudson"s discovery of his bay.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , July 1973 , pp. 328 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1973

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