Late Dorset

• Main Authors: Appelt, Martin, Damkjar, Eric, Friesen, Max
• Other Authors: Mason, Owen
• Format: Book
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Ellesmere Island; Greenland; Dorset culture; Victoria Island
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199766956.013.36

Late Dorset culture represents the final manifestation of the long-lived Paleoeskimo tradition in the eastern Arctic. Late Dorset occupied an enormous region from Victoria Island to Northern Labrador, and resettled the High Arctic, bringing them to Ellesmere Island and northwest Greenland. Alongside these expansions, long-distance exchange networks were further developed and intensified, perhaps bound together by the aggregation sites located at places with a particular high concentration of seasonally available subsistence resources. Late Dorset aggregation sites are particular visible due to their rows of stone-built hearths and/or “longhouses.” Late Dorset cosmology is visible in several aspects of architecture, as well as through analysis of the more than 1,200 miniature carvings of animals and humans that are known from the period.