Moravian and Inuit Encounters: Transculturation of Landscapes and Material Culture in West Greenland (original) (raw)
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In 2001, full-scale archaeological investigations were carried out in Nisbet Harbour, Labrador, at Hoffnungsthal, the site of the first Moravian mission station to the Labrador Inuit. When completed, the excavations had revealed several architectural features of the mission house, and uncovered thousands of artefacts dating to the few weeks in the summer of 1752 when the missionaries built and occupied the site. This thesis gives a history of the 1752 expedition, describes the archaeological findings made in Nisbet Harbour, then reconstructs the mission house based on available archaeological and historical data. F i n a l l y , Ho f f n u n g s t h a l ' s f o r m a n d d e s i g n i s d i s c u s s e d wi t h r e f e r e n c e t o its historical, architectural, and cultural context.
This archaeological project investigates the long-term economic and social impact of German Moravian missionaries on Labrador Inuit culture, by exploring changes in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Inuit material culture and architecture near the mission town of Hopedale, Labrador. My analysis archaeologically examines three sites in northern Labrador region that include Adlavik, a mid-eighteenth century Inuit sod house settlement, Anniowaktook, a late eighteenth century Inuit settlement, and the Inuit village associated with the mission at Hopedale, Avertôk. The research draws together archaeological, faunal, and ethnohistorical data to define changes in Inuit economic and subsistence strategies. This research examines whether changes to Inuit domestic space, subsistence practices, economic structures, and religious traditions during the Moravian period were due in part to earlier eighteenth-century organizational patterns. This dissertation evaluates the hypothesis that the Moravians disrupted an earlier Inuit social organization where Inuit leaders who could both trade with Europeans and coordinate local hunting groups experienced greater accessibility to desired trade goods. By offering Inuit easier access to desirable resources including European goods, the Moravians were able to challenge existing Inuit authority. Excavated Inuit sod houses were differentiated according to artifacts related to trade, hunting, and domestic production; however the lack of a marked differentiation between households with respect to the abundance of valued goods suggest that Inuit settlements followed a more egalitarian organization based on a division of labor. vi
The Prehistory of Inuit in Northeast Greenland
This article discusses recent archaeology fi eldwork campaigns in Northeast Greenland, with a focus on investigating prehistoric Inuit remains. The paper endeavors to increase an understanding of the history of the prehistoric occupation of this High Arctic region, prehistoric groups' responses to the distinct cooling throughout "the Little Ice Age" (sixteenth through nineteenth century), and their disappearance from the region. The article presents a critical review of earlier archaeological work and develops a relative chronology for the region. The fate of the Northeast Greenland Inuit is discussed with reference to subsistence and cultural constraints, concluding that a main reason for the discontinuity of human history in the region has to do with the geography that creates an isolating, island-like affect, factors causing severe demographic problems to the Inuit population through time.
Inuksuk, Sled Shoe, Place name: Past Inuit Ethnogeographies
Marking the Land, 2016
Inuit households moved through a complex and far-flung annual round, and individuals travelled even more widely, in pursuit of game and other resources, for trading opportunities and social contacts, to learn about the local landscape and monitor its changes, and as part of an ongoing personal, spiritual engagement with the world. The igluviak or snow house so emblematic of Eastern Arctic groups – a sophisticated winter travel structure that required practiced skills and technical environmental knowledge, though little in the way of equipment or raw materials beyond a snow knife and a snowdrift – neatly embodies this style of land use. In fact, a capacity for mobility was embedded in virtually every facet of Inuit culture. Portable travel technologies (including situational ones, assembled on the spot like the igluviak) involved an elaborate array of seasonally appropriate vehicles (including domesticated animals to provide traction), tools, clothing, knowledge and skills. Durable place markers – inuksuit – oriented travelers as they moved along trails or followed learned travel routes, and a network of semantically-dense place names archived spatial and historical information in a readily memorable form. The rapidity and spatial scale of Inuit exploration and colonization during the first few centuries of expansion out of the western Canadian Arctic (roughly AD 1200-1500) are particularly exceptional. The archaeological record reveals a sophisticated body of travel technologies and epistemologies – an Inuit ethnogeography - that have continued to evolve as novel things and practices (motorized transport, telecommunications, GIS, etc.) have been taken onboard. Travel remains at the heart of Inuit culture.
West Greenland Inuit Terrestrial and Maritime Ethnoarchaeology
ARGOS , 2022
The present contribution highlights the interest of the cultural remains that survive in the daily lives of the actual Greenlanders to understand the archaeological hunter and gatherer groups. The ethnoarchaeological fieldwork listed here was carried out in the summer seasons of 2012 and 2017. In the campaign of 2012, we lived with Inuit families from Nuuk, Kapisillit and Atammik and in 2017 campaign we visited the areas of Kangerslussuaq, Sisimiut, Sarfannguaq and Itilleq. It was possible to obtain data on the steps of the operative chain of hunting and processing of caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in summer, to study the general processing of the seal –Phocidae- and also get data on cod fishing and whaling among other species. In addition to technical processes, cultural and symbolic elements that influence the decision-making are studied.
A Nineteenth-Century Mackenzie Inuit Site near Inuvik, Northwest Territories
ARCTIC, 1986
A small collection of artifacts obtained from an aboriginal Mackenzie Inuit grave eroded by the Mackenzie River is described. The site appears to date to within the second half of the 19th century, following European contact but before acculturative processes and population decline, which brought about the extinction of traditional Mackenzie Inuit culture.
Journal of the North Atlantic, 2010
In this paper, contacts between the Moravian Brethren of French-speaking Switzerland, the Moravian missionaries, and the Inuit Christian converts in Labrador are described. The role of the missionary journals, the annual collection of gifts for the missions, and, more specifi cally, the role of Jean-Louis Micheli, philanthropist and member of Eglise évangélique de Genève are considered. It will be shown that interactions between these varied elements have been instrumental in the development of a number of scientifi c fi elds, in particular: meteorology, climatology, and phenology, as well as ethnography, and that important contributions to these fi elds resulted. The Labrador origin of certain items in the collection of the Musée d'Ethnographie in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, whose provenance has appeared unclear, is suggested on the basis of these historical and cultural interactions between Labrador/Nunatsiavut, the missionaries, and the Moravian Brethren in French-speaking Switzerland.