Patrick Charles Jolicoeur

PATRICK JOLICOEUR, then a graduate student at University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom, was awarded a grant in October 2016 to aid research on ‘Cultural Contacts and Exchange in the Eastern Arctic AD 700-1300,’ supervised by Dr. Colleen Batey. Between roughly AD 700 and 1300 the Late Dorset, an archaeologically defined culture living in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, used and exchanged metal. However, the extent and nature of their metal use remains largely unknown. This research attempts to answer not only those questions but also attempts to place Late Dorset metal use in its context and understand why and how the metal was being used in addition to more broadly understanding Late Dorset exchange networks. Material was sampled from Late Dorset sites across the Arctic held in three repositories in Canada. By analysing potential proxy indicators of metal use found on the organic objects that may have held a metal or stone blade, this project has shown that the extent of Late Dorset metal use has been underestimated when compared to the amount of lithic material that has been collected. While further analysis must be completed to assess the full significance of these results, a more detailed image of Late Dorset interaction networks can be seen. Moreover, this higher than expected amount of metal use opens up questions about what the material meant in the minds of the Late Dorset and how these Late Dorset exchange networks were affected (or not) by incoming populations such as the Inuit and the Norse.