demography and the reconstruction of social organization from thule wintering sites in arctic canada

DEMOGRAPHY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION FROM THULEWINTERING SITES IN ARCTIC CANADAAuthor(s): Robert W. ParkSource: Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie, Vol. 22, No. 2(1999), pp. 115-126Published by: Canadian Archaeological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41103359 .

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DEMOGRAPHY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL

ORGANIZATION FROM THULE WINTERING SITES IN ARCTIC CANADA

Robert W. Park ABSTRACT

The coastal wintering sites created throughout the Canadian Arctic and Greenland by the people of the Thule culture are increasingly attracting attention from archaeologists interested in exploring questions of social organization among Arctic hunter- gatherers. The sites vary considerably in size, consisting of anywhere from one to over 60 discrete semisubterranean houses. The larger sites are often assumed to have been aggregation sites with a large resident population, analogous to the large winter aggregations documented among the Inuit by explorers and ethnographers. This paper argues that the criteria presently used to evaluate the size of the resident population at Thule winter sites - the number of winter houses; their architecture; and the degree to which they cluster together - can plausibly be expected to vary both synchronically and diachronically, and are therefore inadequate for making demographic inferences without good chronological control.

RESUME Les archéologues intéressés par l'organisation sociale de chasseurs-cueilleurs arctiques se penchent de plus en plus sur les sites thuléens côtiers qui se trouvent dans l'Arctique canadien et au Groenland. La taille des sites varie de façon importante. On peut y trouver une structure de creusement isolée oujusqu 'à plus de 60 maisons semi-souterraines. On présume que les plus grands sites représentent les vestiges de sites d'agrégation ayant hébergé des populations résidentes élevées. Pour ce faire, on s'inspire d'obser- vations d'explorateurs et d'ethnographes. Dans cette article, nous suggérons qu'on peut s'attendre que les critères utilisés pour estimer la taille des populations résidentes de sites thuléens hivernaux (nombre de maisons semi-souterraines, l'architecture de cellec-ci, l'agglomération des maisons) peuvent variés de façons tant synchroniques que diachroniques. Ils sont donc inadéquats pour fins d'estimation démo- graphique sans avoir au préalable un bon contrôle chronologique.

INTRODUCTION people of the Thule culture were the

direct cultural and biological ancestors of the Inuit living today in Arctic Canada, North Alaska and Greenland. The Thule entered the Canadian Arctic approximately 1,000 years ago from the area of the Bering Strait where, over the preceding centuries, the culture had developed on the Alaskan and Siberian shores of the Chukchi Sea and on islands in the strait itself (Figure 1). What was so distinctive about the Thule culture was its development of dog trac- tion and its efficient technology for the open- water hunting of large sea mammals, most dra- matically the enormous bowhead whales that migrated into the region each year. The cause of the eastward expansion of some Thule into Arctic Canada and Greenland is not completely

understood (e.g., McGhee 1969-70; 1984b; Stanford 1976; Yorga 1980) but it was certainly facilitated by their ability to hunt these whales, especially since the Thule would have encoun- tered the eastern population of bowheads once they penetrated the Canadian Arctic archipelago.

The Thule way of life persisted throughout the Canadian Arctic for several centuries but the effects of a cooling climate ultimately led the Thule to adopt a new way of life, the one that would characterize their Inuit descendants in the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristics of that new way of life in many regions was their abandonment of whale hunting and their adoption of the practice of spending the winters in snowhouse communities far out on the sea ice, relying almost exclusively

Journal Canadien d'Archéologie 22, 1998 115



Park

Figure 1: Map showing the distribution of Thule culture sites (the shaded area) throughout the Arctic. on ringed seals hunted at their breathing holes for winter subsistence.

In contrast to the archaeologically invisible sea ice snowhouse camps, the coastal sites where the Thule migrants to Arctic Canada passed the long winters are among the most impressive archaeological remains in the North American Arctic. These wintering sites can contain the ruins of many discrete semisubterranean houses, each constructed of boulders, pieces of cut turf, skins, the enormous bones of bowhead whales and, in a few regions, driftwood logs. Due to per- mafrost, the foundations of the houses and any items their inhabitants left behind are often found perfectly preserved when excavated. That fact, combined with the very complex and interesting material culture of the Thule, has attracted archaeologists to these wintering sites since the 1920s although the logistical difficulties of archaeological research in the Arctic has limited the amount of fieldwork that could be done.

At least in part because of the great effort that would have been involved in their construction, Thule winter houses are generally pre- sumed to have been occupied continuously from

September or October until April or May (Morrison 1983:277-8; Park 1988:168-70; Taylor and McGhee 1979:115). Thus, the Thule appear not to have moved their homes periodically during the winter once the ringed seals in the immediate vicinity were killed off the way their Inuit descendants did. Consequently, given their residential immobility and the scarcity and scattered distribution of food resources in the central Canadian Arctic during the winter, archaeologists have concluded that the economic basis of these Thule winter sites must have been the consumption of a food surplus, obtained during the summer and autumn and then stored (e.g., Morrison 1983:246-79). The occupants of many sites appear to have hunted bowhead whales during the open-water season of late summer and autumn (e.g., McCartney and Savelle 1993), and the harvest of these enormous mammals must have provided huge quantities of food and fuel.

Explorers' and early ethnographers' accounts reveal that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Inuit groups in the Central Canadian Arctic generally followed a settlement pattern

116 Canadian Journal of Archaeology 22, 1998



Thule Wintering Sites involving dramatic summer population dispersal inland, and winter population aggregation in the sea ice snowhouse communities (Balikci 1984:422; Damas 1969b:47; 1984:399-400; 1988:102; Mary-Rousselière 1984:432-3). The highly mobile snowhouse communities varied considerably in size but averaged perhaps 100 people. Damas (1969b:51-2) has argued con- vincingly that both the desire for opportunities for wider social interactions, and the ecology of the ringed seals upon which these winter communities depended, made this pattern of winter population aggregation logical ecologically and socially.

An important question therefore becomes, did the Thule winter sites represent similar aggregations? However, researchers investigating Thule winter sites in the Canadian Arctic have been faced with a problem common to

archaeological research in many different parts of the world: how to determine the demographic and social nature of the groups that built and occupied the communities whose ruins we study. Thule winter sites range in size from just a single house to more than 60 (Figure 2; McCartney 1979a; 1980:525-6) and, not surprisingly, the usual size of the co-resident population at the large sites (defined quite arbitrarily here as sites with more than six houses) has become a matter of some disagreement. Some researchers have concluded that groups of between 20 and 50 per- sons normally wintered together, a population that might have required just four to six houses (e.g., Maxwell 1985:287-8; McGhee 1972:118; 1974:177; 1984a:80; Morrison 1983:252-4). Other researchers have concluded that a considerably greater number of people often wintered together at large sites (e.g., McCartney

Figure 2. Histogram illustrating the relative abundances of winter houses at 259 Thule sites in Canada, based on the data presented in McCartney (1979b). More winter sites have since been reported, including some very large ones, but no comparably compre- hensive list is available.


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Number of winter houses per site



Park 1980:525-6; Savelle 1987:229).

All these researchers readily acknowledge the extreme difficulty of establishing the contemporaneity of individual winter houses at large sites. But in the absence of conclusive evidence that the houses at a given Thule site derive from two or more separate occupational episodes, that latter perspective argues for a high degree of contemporaneity and therefore, a large population. Given the much smaller number of winter houses at some sites, it is evident that the Thule often wintered in small groups. We can therefore be reasonably certain that if the Thule did sometimes winter in quite large groups, this was by no means always the case. There is no inconsisten- cy in the Thule wintering in groups of quite different sizes. However, accepting that they did sometimes winter in small groups, along with the possibility that the houses at a particularly favoured location could have accumulated over time through the gradual abandonment of some houses and the construction of others, the size of the resident population at any given site cannot be assumed.

The demography of these Thule wintering sites is interesting and important for at least two reasons. First, Inuit have long figured prominent- ly in discussions of hunter-gatherer demography and organization (e.g., Binford 1978; Burch and Ellana 1994; Damas 1969a; 1969b; Kelly 1995; Lee and DeVore 1968; Smith 1981; 1985; 1991; Smith and Smith 1994). Most of the census data upon which these discussions have been and continue to be based were collected late in the last century or early this century among groups such as the Baffinland Inuit (Boas 1888; 1901), the Copper Inuit (Jenness 1922; Rasmus sen 1932; Stefánsson 1913) or the Netsilik (Balikci 1970; Rasmussen 1931). Given the dramatic social and demographic changes that all these groups went through around the time those data were collected (e.g., Damas 1988), it should be evident that archaeological data from this region provide the only possible source of historical context for the demographic data that form the basis for our understanding of traditional hunter- gatherer demography in the Arctic. Were the demographic groupings that those ethnographers recorded typical of Arctic foraging groups or were they already altering in response to

increased European penetration of the Arctic? Are the kinds of data recoverable from the archaeological record consistent with the general demographic models of Arctic foraging derived from those ethnographic data?

Second, our understanding of Thule adapta- tions, especially with respect to their hunting of bowhead whales, depends heavily on arguments concerning the minimum group size necessary to provide enough hunters to form whaling crews, the minimum number of whaling crews that would have been necessary to ensure consistent success in the bowhead hunt, and the kind of social organization necessary to coordinate whale hunting (Freeman 1979:282-3; McGhee 1984a:84). Ethnographic data collected in the nineteenth century from different parts of the North American Arctic provide a wide range of possible analogues for Thule whaling groups, from the very large and complex communities of north Alaska (e.g., Murdoch 1892; Spencer 1959) to the much smaller groups who lived on the Labrador coast (Taylor 1974). Thus, we undoubtedly need strictly archaeological criteria with which to evaluate the demography of Thule winter communities, and to determine whether individual winter communities would have had an adequate number of hunters or whether groups that wintered separately collaborated in bowhead hunts, as suggested by McGhee (1984a:93). In McGhee's scenario, the largest population aggregations would have taken place during the late summer and autumn at whaling camps, not at the winter sites we have been investigating so thoroughly.

Any robust answers to these important questions are, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper since we are just beginning to assemble the necessary archaeological data and techniques. For example, I have elsewhere demonstrated a promising new criterion for assessing winter house contemporaneity at extensively excavated sites (Park 1997). But in this paper I want to explore the demographic ramifications of a current trend in Thule research that seeks to explore complicated issues of social organization. Reconstructions of Thule Social Organization and Demography

Thule culture wintering sites are interesting in and of themselves but they are especially




Thule Wintering Sites interesting because of the potential they possess to tell us about the nature of Thule social organization. The study of variability in forager social organization, particularly differences in the degree to which egalitarianism is expressed both within and between societies, is an interesting area of current research (e.g., Ingold, et al. 1988; Kelly 1995). Cross-cultural studies and ethnographic analogy with Inuit throughout the North American Arctic and Greenland makes it plausible that interesting social differences might have existed between households within individual Thule winter communities, and our present level of knowledge about the Thule and their Inuit descendants suggests that there should be evidence of both continuity and change over time in these factors.

While recognizing the possibilities inherent in the kinds of data available from Thule winter sites, I am concerned that some of the most ambitious inferences presently being drawn about the social organization of the occupants of Thule winter sites (e.g., Dawson 1998; Grier and Savelle 1994; Savelle 1987; Stevenson 1997; Whitridge 1994) are based on classes of information obtained primarily from unexcavated houses and sites - i.e., with little contribution from excavation data. The increasingly sophisti- cated reconstructions of Thule social organization developed in these studies demonstrate the potential richness of Thule wintering sites as an archaeological resource and, in that context, they represent a welcome and appropriate development in Thule research, one that builds upon the impressive foundation of culture history and subsistence research assembled over many decades (Park 1998). However, these reconstructions of Thule social organization appear to be based implicitly or explicitly based on a particular model of site demography that I am not con- vinced is universally correct.

In the following sections I outline the three primary categories of data being used to make inferences about wintering site social organization and show how each has been interpreted plausibly in terms both of diachronic variability and synchronie variability in site population. In order to support my thesis - that our present ability to understand the social nature of Thule wintering sites is inadequate for many purposes due

to weak demographic control - I then outline some of the relevant factors pertaining to Thule wintering site establishment, growth, and abandonment.

Wintering Sites Archaeologists are currently drawing upon

three main categories of data, relatively easily available from unexcavated Thule wintering sites, as the basis for making inferences concerning aspects of the social organization (and, implicitly, the demography) of the groups of people who wintered there: (1) the number of winter houses at a site; (2) the architecture of the houses; and (3) the degree to which they are found clustered together.

In the following discussion I wish to docu- ment the fact that variability in each of these three criteria has been used to postulate the exis- tence of both synchronie and diachronic variability in the social/demographic nature of winter communities. In other words, two main axes of variability are recognized as contributing to the diversity that we observe in the archaeological record of Thule wintering sites: social or other kinds of differentiation within the group of people who lived at a wintering site during any given winter, and change over time in a wide range of factors. Although clearly interrelated, I will dis- cuss each of these criteria - number of houses at a site; the architecture of the houses at a site; and degree to which the houses at a site are clustered - separately.

The number of houses at wintering sites

Differences in the numbers of houses at Thule wintering sites have been interpreted as reflecting both synchronie regional differences and diachronic changes in the demography or settlement patterns of the groups creating the sites. Savelle (1987) and Savelle and McCartney (1988) compared the number of (mostly unexcavated) houses at several wintering sites in the Central Canadian Arctic and used those data to postulate both regional differences in settlement pattern and a decrease over time in the size of the groups who utilized the wintering sites. They justified their use of this approach on the following grounds: "Although absolute population lev- els cannot generally be determined archaeologi-




Park cally because of possible site reoccupation and/or reutilization (see Savelle 1987), relative estimates of maximum site population are com- parable if based on features of the same type and if the occupation span of each site is similar" (Savelle and McCartney 1988:41). They were also careful to acknowledge that all the houses at a wintering site would likely not have been occupied at the same time: Savelle (1987:229) assumed 80% contemporaneity between houses whereas Savelle and McCartney (1988:52-3) cited 80% as a maximum occupancy rate.

There are at least two potential problems with this approach. First, we have absolutely no idea if the occupation spans of different houses at a single site are similar, let alone at different sites. Various criteria might be brought to bear on this problem (e.g., the degree of midden development associated with each house; the degree to which a house shows evidence of refurbishment; the styles of associated artifacts, etc.) but the application of these criteria would require extensive excavation data. Second, comparisons of numbers of houses, even if carried out only to determine "maximum site population" clearly require most of the houses at a site to have been occupied contemporaneously - as argued below, that assumption may be unwarranted.

Winter House Architecture Differences in architecture between houses

at Thule wintering sites have been interpreted by researchers as reflecting both diachronic factors and synchronie social differences. Savelle (1987) and Savelle and McCartney (1988) used architectural differences to separate several wintering sites that they compared into two chronological groups. Savelle (1987:95) made the distinction that "relatively massive sod, stone, and locally wood or whale bone, semisubterranean dwellings with cold trap entrances" predate "shallower, qarmang structures lacking true cold- trap entrances and solid roofs." This con- clusion was supported by other archaeologists having used the same distinction elsewhere, plus a small number of generally consistent radiocarbon dates. Although qarmat are certainly known from the historic period, I question whether we have ever demonstrated that they were not used at the same time as the more massive type of winter houses which certainly continued in use

in at least a few areas until historic times (Mary- Rousselière 1979:60-2; Park 1988).

Other archaeologists have utilized finer architectural distinctions to subdivide the houses at individual sites or between sites. A distinctive architectural style in winter houses is associated with the early Ruin Island Phase of the Thule culture (McCullough 1989:78). Excavation data in the form of extensive radiocarbon dating and consistency of artifact styles would appear to confirm the distinctiveness and temporal place- ment of that house type. Schiedermann (1975:262-4; 1976:44-5) argued that winter houses with three sleeping platforms are younger than houses with fewer sleeping platforms and supported this assertion with artifactual evidence from the excavation of five such structures in Cumberland Sound. He also reviewed the artifactual evidence from three-platform structures excavated elsewhere to confirm his hypothesis.

Intrasite differences in architecture have also been explored. In both McGhee's (1984a) analysis of the 20-house Brooman Point site and in Whitridge's (1994) preliminary analysis of the 59-house Qariaraqyuk site, the differential pres- ence of whale bones was used to argue that those houses lacking whale bones had been stripped by later occupants of the site. Therefore, the stripped houses had been abandoned prior to at least the abandonment and probably the construction of others at the site. McGhee (1984a:77-9) concluded that several different "styles" of house were temporally successive at the Brooman Point site but, because the styles of the artifacts from his excavation of 10 houses appeared so uniform, he concluded that the whole Thule occupation of the wintering site could have spanned as little as one or two decades. Implicitly, therefore, he was arguing that architectural styles may have changed quite rapidly - faster than artifact styles, at any rate. Whitridge (1994) interpreted the differential distribution across the Qariaraqyuk site of six house "types" (defined statistically based on architectural characteristics identifiable from unexcavated houses since he had minimal excavation data) as due in part to changing architectural styles over time. However, he also ascribed architectural differences between house types that he concluded were contemporaneous to social differ-




Thule Wintering Sites enees between households.

Clearly, the conclusions of both McGhee and Whitridge are entirely plausible - the architectural differences that we observe today between houses at any Thule site could be due both to differences in the age of houses (i.e., change over time in architectural styles) or to differences in the social/economic position of individual households within the wintering community. Again we come back to the basic archaeological problem of determining contemporaneously occupied houses at any given site - this is where we need to focus at least some of our efforts when attempting to ascertain the socio-economic nature of Thule wintering communities and whether socio-economic differences existed within them.

Clustering of Houses at Wintering Sites

As with number of houses per site and house architecture, the degree and pattern of clustering of houses has been interpreted as reflecting both synchronie and diachronic differences. Several researchers have interpreted differences in intrasite clustering of houses as reflecting chronolo- gy. Following that approach, groups of contiguous houses within a large site are assumed to have been constructed and occupied at the same time. While explicitly acknowledging that the technique was "often little more than educated guesswork," Schiedermann (1975:55), assumed that separate clusters of winter houses within the 16-house Niutang site were internally contemporaneous. The same approach was also used by McCartney (1977:27) to argue that most of the houses at three wintering sites had been constructed at the same time. And on the basis of his preliminary analysis at the only minimally excavated Qariaraqyuk site, Whitridge (1994:7) concluded that "spatial proximity is a reasonable proxy measure of temporal proximity."

Grier and Savelle (1994) have interpreted differences in intrasite clustering of houses in a very different, synchronie way. They used differences in clustering at 18 Thule winter sites to dis- tinguish different degrees of socio-economic integration - in other words, rather than indicat- ing closeness in time, contiguity was seen as reflecting social closeness; conversely, "sites that are composed of autonomous kin-based families

should exhibit a less structured, or clustered, pattern" (Grier and Savelle 1994:99). Stevenson (1997:56-7) introduces yet another factor into the discussion by interpreting differences in clustering at five Thule winter sites as a response to differences in the need for defense against raid- ing from other groups - in other words, sites exhibiting tight clustering were more concerned about being raided than those exhibiting less clustering of houses. Both Grier and Savelle's (1994) and Stevenson's (1997) inferences obvi- ously require that most of the houses at each site were occupied concurrently.

These kinds of hypotheses have a clear grounding in Arctic ethnographic data, which reveal that social factors often played an important role in the distribution of houses within a community (e.g., Guemple 1988:132-3; Reinhardt and Dekin 1990:39). However, ethnographic data show also that social factors could produce distinctly non-contiguous patterning as well (Briggs 1970:40, 177; Stevenson 1997:188). Therefore, to utilize this criterion (clustering of winter houses) to assess the size of the resident population we again run up against to the basic problem of identifying those houses that were occupied contemporaneously at any given site.

Wintering site development Having made the case that differences in

these three factors have been interpreted plausibly as varying both synchronically and diachronically, I wish now to argue that research strategies based on (a) the comparison of the number of winter houses at several sites; (b) differences within a site in winter house architecture; or (c) differences in clustering within sites, and involving no more than minimal excavation, have been based implicitly or explicitly on just one model of Thule wintering site establishment, growth, and abandonment, perhaps stated most clearly by Grier and Savelle (1994:100-1). They argued that, "given the relatively short period of Thule occupation (approximately AD 1000-1400) of the region under examination [the central portion of the Canadian Arctic archipelago], we can expect a site development pattern whereby a site expands to a maximum size (reflecting maximum population), after which it is presumably gradually (or quickly?) abandoned." This state-




Park ment (and the analysis in which it is contained, which compares Thule social relations at 18 sites based on the clustering of winter houses) clearly presumes that few if any houses at a site would have been abandoned before the site reached its maximum population. Grier and Savelle (1994:100) support this position by arguing that "...semisubterranean dwellings are "high energy" features (i.e., requiring a considerable expenditure of energy and materials), and we can expect a relatively high proportion of dwellings to be reused." In other words, they see it as unlikely that anyone would build a new winter house if an unoccupied/abandoned one were available at the wintering site.

The abandonment of wintering sites is seen as following a similarly uncomplicated pattern, at least to the extent that subsequent house construction, if any, is not seen as obscuring or mod- ifying the data of house numbers and clustering. Further, both the growth and abandonment phas- es are considered to have little effect on the archaeological record of the sites since the portion of the occupation that is being studied is clearly (if implicitly) the period of time during which the maximum population was present.

I believe that this model of Thule wintering site establishment, growth, and abandonment may be inadequate or incorrect for many larger Thule wintering sites. Although I am in total agreement with the goals of the researchers attempting these analyses - the issues that they are raising need to be addressed and represent a logical use for the kinds of data available from Thule wintering sites - 1 do not believe that this particular model of Thule wintering site establishment, growth, and abandonment can be assumed for most sites. And if that model cannot be assumed, then our present inferences about the demographic nature, and hence the social organization of the groups who lived at the wintering sites, are simply speculation. We therefore need to develop criteria that will allow us to make robust statements about the processes and patterns of site growth and abandonment before we attempt to use the kinds of data discussed in this paper as the basis for statements about social organization.

Site growth We can conclude from the sizeable propor-

tion of known Thule winter sites with three or fewer houses that some wintering sites had quite small populations. The important question in the present context becomes, did some of the sites that today contain far greater numbers of houses start out equally small or did they contain numerous houses immediately from the year in which they were established? I believe, in the absence of independent criteria to assess house demography at large sites, that two contrasting scenarios are equally probable: One scenario would see the Thule sometimes wintering in small groups and sometimes in large groups, and the number of houses at a site would be directly proportional to the number of households that lived there most winters. Alternatively, it may be that the Thule usually wintered in small groups, and the wintering sites that today contain very large numbers of houses are the result of gradual house abandonment and new construction over a period of decades or, more likely, centuries. I suspect that the latter scenario happened often and that many of the sites that are today much larger probably never had a comparably large population.

Many interpretations of Thule wintering sites appear to be predicated on the assumption that anyone wishing to live in a winter house at a site would invariably have refurbished an abandoned house, if present, rather than going to the labour of constructing an entirely new house (e.g., Grier and Savelle 1994:100). We indeed have good ethnographic evidence of abandoned Thule house pits being refurbished into semisubterranean houses in the historic period (e.g., Boas 1888:141), so undoubtedly it could have happened in the past. The logic of that assumption is evident but its universal applicability appears to be challenged by archaeological evidence. At the Porden Point site on Devon Island at least six of the 14 houses present appear to have been abandoned before at least two of the remaining eight houses were constructed (Park 1997:280-1). In other words, the builders of at least two houses appear to have had at least six abandoned houses available to refurbish, yet chose to construct sub- stantial new houses from scratch. Those people salvaged construction materials (flat slabs and whale bones) from abandoned houses but they did not salvage the house pits themselves.

I can only speculate as to why this should be




Thule Wintering Sites the case but one possibility is that recently abandoned houses were less attractive for refurbishment/reoccupation than houses abandoned decades or centuries earlier. That could have been due simply to considerations of cleanliness (i.e., allowing enough time for organic materials left in a house to decay somewhat) or, more con- vincingly, due to social factors. I am persuaded that it would be a mistake to consider Thule winter houses simply as shelters from the elements- these structures undoubtedly had important social connotations in their own right and those connotations very well may have survived their abandonment. It is interesting to note that early in this century winter houses at Point Hope and Kittegazuit had individual names (Stefánsson 1919:309, 326), suggesting the importance and individuality of such structures. It certainly may be that the practice of refurbishing old Thule houses in the historic period was possible pre- cisely because the social connotations of individual houses had faded from memory following the deaths of their builders and of the other people to whom those connotations would have been important. Therefore, someone might ignore abandoned houses at a site and build a new one from scratch simply in order to respect or avoid the social connotations of the old house, and/or to make a deliberate statement about the builder's own social position.

CONCLUSIONS I believe that we will not be in a position to

make robust inferences concerning the social organization of the groups who wintered at large Thule wintering sites until we adopt research strategies explicitly designed to assess demographic issues. I submit that the criteria we are using to evaluate the size of the resident population and their social organization at these sites (the number of winter houses there; the architecture of the houses; and the degree to which they cluster together) can plausibly be expected to vary both synchronically and diachronically, and are therefore inadequate for making demographic inferences without good chronological control. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any shortcuts to obtaining the necessary chronological control - at present it is available only through extensive excavation at sites in the form of material for radiocarbon dating (e.g.,

Morrison 1989), artifacts for stylistic analysis (e.g., McGhee 1984a; Park 1994) and architectural data on house integrity/dismantlement (e.g., McCartney 1979b; Park 1997). Gratifyingly, these conclusions regarding Canadian Thule site demography are completely consistent with those of Dumond and VanStone (1995:99), who noted that the findings from their excavations at the Paugvik site "...should serve as reminders for archaeologists who make much of village size and population estimates based on nothing more than the surface appearances of southern Alaska archaeological sites."

I also believe that the simple model of Thule wintering site establishment, occupation and abandonment that has been implicitly adopted to circumvent the problem of inadequate demographic control does not take into account the probable complexities involved in the creation and abandonment of these sites. The numerous very small Thule wintering sites inform us that the Thule could and often did winter in small groups. It is surely possible, then, that some or many of the wintering sites containing many more houses were simply particularly successful wintering locations to which small groups returned repeatedly, periodically building new houses. I look forward to the time when we will have the necessary demographic information to evaluate this hypothesis.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Douglas R. Stenton offered several of helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper but I retain entire responsibility for all errors of commission or omission.

Robert. W Park Department of Anthropology & Classical Studies University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1 [email protected]. ca




demography and the reconstruction of social organization from thule wintering sites in arctic canada

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