Dorset – Late Palaeoeskimo

The Palaeoeskimo representative of the late phase in Newfoundland, are the Dorset. They were first named in the 1920’s based on collections from Cape Dorset in the Canadian Arctic. Like the earlier Groswater Palaeoeskimo, these people were very much an Arctic adapted hunter and gatherer nomadic culture that occupied much of the central and eastern Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Newfoundland and Labrador, between approximately 2500 – 800 B.P. By around 2000 years ago, the Dorset Palaeoeskimo expanded their territory to the island portion of the province. Some researchers believe the Dorset replaced the possibly related Groswater culture, by means of gradually developing a new way of life, while others feel that there was an actual physical movement of people into the island and the previous occupants either became extinct or amalgamated.

Dorset sites can be located around the entire coast of Newfoundland, yet 800 years after they came here, like cultures before them, the Dorset disappeared from the island. One can only speculate why. Was it because a new Indian population appeared in the area at the same time, or is it possible the warming climate changed the ice conditions affecting the seal herds on which they were so dependent?

The Dorset Palaeoeskimo were noted for their carvings, such as this Polar Bear effigy excavataed from the Peat Garden North site in Bird Cove.

Dorset Palaeoeskimo endblades found in Peat Garden North.

Based on their material culture, diagnostic Dorset traits include an increase in the use of soapstone, completely ground and polished burin-like tools, microblades, concave based chipped stone endblades, diagnostic bone and ivory harpoon heads, bifacially worked knives, and an increase in the use of crystalline quartz and slate, and finally and abundance of carved objects.

As with the Groswater Palaeoeskimo subsistence finds at the Peat Garden site, the Peat Garden North site is shedding an interesting light on the food resources used by the Palaeoeskimo culture. In the Peat Garden site, shell middens have been discovered; the only shell middens found at a Dorset site anywhere in the world. This evidence adds more foods to the prehistoric menu for the Dorset and would indicate a spring-summer site.