Dorset culture

Dorset culture, prehistoric culture of Greenland and the Canadian eastern Arctic as far south as present-day Newfoundland. It existed from approximately 800 bc to ad 1300. Its name comes from excavations made at Cape Dorset at Baffin Island.

Several theories about the origin of Dorset culture have been posited: that it originated in Alaska or another part of the western Arctic, that it derived from or was strongly influenced by certain Archaic or Woodland cultures farther south, or that it was a fundamentally Eskimo (Inuit) culture that developed in place in the Canadian eastern Arctic from a culture called Pre-Dorset, with little external influence.

For subsistence, Dorset people depended primarily on sea mammals such as seals and walrus; they also fished and hunted land mammals and birds as the opportunity arose. At the time, dogs and dogsleds were unknown, so the people used small hand sleds to transport bulky materials. The bow-drill, a common Inuit tool, was not part of the Dorset tool kit. Dorset harpoon heads and foreshafts, knives, lamps, and chipped-stone implements were distinctive. Ornaments were made of bone, ivory, or wood, and occasionally engraved. Small ivory or bone animal and human figures, which were sometimes naturalistic and sometimes stylized or grotesque, may have been used as amulets or as a form of hunting magic.

Dorset settlements were located on coasts and generally consisted of semisubterranean houses and large meetinghouses. Skin-covered tents were probably used during the summer. Evidence suggests that the Dorset people were seasonal nomads who traveled in small groups.

It is not certain when Dorset culture disappeared, but it was after members of the Thule culture arrived from Alaska, for there are indications of contact between the two groups. Climatic changes, notably the onset of the Medieval Cool Period—a period of increased cold that occurred in the Northern Hemisphere from approximately ad 1250–1500—may have contributed to the decline of Dorset culture (see Holocene Epoch). The extent to which the Dorset people influenced the later indigenous cultures of Canada and Greenland is unclear; some later types of tools clearly derived from this culture, and a group of Inuit who survived in the area until 1903 may have been direct descendants of the Dorset people.