Connecting the present with the past: Traditional hunting methods and archaeozoological investigations in central west Greenland

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Kerstin Pasda
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2011 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 191277287

A series of interviews with Greenlandic hunters (26 to 86 years old) on caribou hunting and caribou utilization in central West Greenland in the area of Angujârtorfiup Nunâ provided a wealth of anticipated and unexpected information. The knowledge of the traditional forms of settlement patterns, hunting techniques and caribou exploitation, bone waste treatment, and role of meat caches, which is of special interest for zooarchaeological investigation, may be lost with the death of the generation of Greenlanders who visited the interior to hunt up to the middle of the 20th century.As recently as 1950 AD, almost all parts of the caribou were exploited intensively. In the following decades, numerous utilizations disappeared; a few new ones were added. A few Greenlanders reported that they had experienced the utilization of parts of caribou during their childhood that they had not used in the last decades. Some of the older hunters only had second-hand knowledge of various tasks and uses from members of their parents generation. Exact dates were seldom given so that only a rough time range of 40 to 60 years after 1950 AD can be given for the observed changes. The intensive use of fat and caribou skins disappeared, whereas the exploitation of caribou as a tourist attraction was new.During the interviews we got access to other interviews with hunters from the 1940s that hunted in the investigation area. In addition we were allowed to use diaries and notebooks of Greenlandic hunters from the beginning of the last century. The documentation of the Palaeo-Eskimo site of Angujaartorfik was completed in the summer of 2012. Radiocarbon and zooarchaeological analyses shall provide insight to the chronological development and the seasonal use of the extended Saqqaq site. In the summer of 2012 we documented a Thule hunting site (no. L42) in the interior of Angujârtorfiup Nunâ. The distribution of bones shall give information on activity areas in this widely used hunting camp.The results of the interviews and the written records will be applied to the spatial and osteological remains of sites of different time.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants