Engendering interaction : Inuit-European contact in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island

• Main Author: Gullason, Lynda.
• Other Authors: Morantz, Toby (advisor), Fitzhugh, William (advisor)
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: McGill University 1998
• Subjects: Inuit > Nunavut > Iqaluit > Antiquities; Inuit > Material culture > Nunavut > Iqaluit; Sexual division of labor > Nunavut > Iqaluit > History; Iqaluit (Nunavut) > Antiquities; Baffin Island; Cumberland Sound; Frobisher Bay; Nunavut; Baffin; inuit; Iqaluit
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35893

This thesis seeks to identify the mosaic, rather than the monolithic, nature of culture contact by integrating historical and archaeological sources relating to the concept of gender roles, as they influence response within a contact situation. Specifically, I examine how the Inuit gender system structured artifact patterning in Inuit-European contact situations through the investigation of three Inuit sites in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island. These date from the 16th, 19th and early 20th centuries and represent a variety of seasonal occupations and dwelling forms. The ethnographic data suggest that Inuit gender relations were egalitarian and complementary. On this basis I hypothesize that European goods and materials were used equally by men and women. Within each gendered set of tasks, European goods and materials were differently used, according to empirically functional criteria such as the nature of the tasks. Opportunities for and responses to European contact differed depending on the types of tasks in which Inuit women and men engaged and the social roles they played. Seasonality of occupation bears upon the archaeological visibility of gender activities. Sixteenth-century Elizabethan contact did not alter Nugumiut gender roles, tasks, authority or status but served primarily as a source of raw material, namely wood and iron. Based on the analysis of slotted tools I suggest a refinement to take account of the overlap in blade thickness that occurs for metal and slate, and which depends on the function of the tool. I conclude that there was much more metal use by Thule Inuit than previously believed. However, during Elizabethan contact and shortly afterwards there was actually less metal use by the Nugumiut than in the prehistoric era. Little archaeological evidence was recovered for 19th-century commercial whaling contact, (suggesting geographic marginality to European influence), or for 19th century Inuit occupation in the area. This is partly because of immigration to Cumberland Sound and because of subsequent structural remodelling of the dwellings by later occupants. By the early 20th century, the archaeological record showed not only equal use of European material across gender but a near-ubiquitous distribution across most activity classes, even though commercial trapping never replaced traditional subsistence pursuits but only supplemented them.