Patrick Charles Jolicoeur

PATRICK JOLICOEUR, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, was awarded a grant in April 2021 to aid research on “Echoes of the Tuniit: Exploring Dorset-Inuit Interaction in Northern Nunatsiavut.” One of the longest-standing debates within Arctic archaeology is the nature of interactions between the early Inuit and a population that lived in the region prior to the Inuit referred to by archaeologists as the Dorset. The earliest Inuit arrive in the Eastern North American Arctic around the 13th century AD with the last Dorset disappear entirely from the region around this same time. The existing data in most regions is simply insufficient to confidently understand if these two groups co-habited in the same region at the same time or if the Dorset disappeared prior to the Inuit arriving. This project conducted excavations at Skull Island 1 in northern Nunatsiavut (Labrador Inuit lands) to understand the timing of the first Inuit and last Dorset and the nature of their possible interactions. The radiocarbon dates as well as the artifacts recovered during the 2022 field season indicate that the site was originally occupied around the 6th century AD with a second occupation around the 12th century. This second occupation represents the latest known Late Dorset period site in this part of northern Nunatsiavut. While there is no direct evidence of Dorset-Inuit interaction at the site, these data are crucial for understanding the regional contacts between these two groups.