The influence of a lost society, the Sadlermiut, on the environment in the Canadian Arctic

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Viehberg, F., Medeiros, A., Plessen, B., Wang, X., Muir, D., Pienitz, R.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Nunavut; Canada; Southampton Island; Native Point
• Online Access: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5007873; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5007873_1/component/file_5007944/5007873.pdf

High latitude freshwater ecosystems are sentinels of human activity and environmental change. The lakes and ponds that characterize Arctic landscapes have a low resilience to buffer variability in climate, especially with increasing global anthropogenic stressors in recent decades. Here, we show that a small freshwater pond in proximity of the archaeological site “Native Point” on Southampton Island (Nunavut, Arctic Canada) is a highly sensitive environmental recorder. The sediment analyses allowed for pinpointing the first arrival of Sadlermiut culture at Native Point to ~ 1250 CE, followed by a dietary shift likely in response to the onset of cooling in the region ~ 1400 CE. The influence of the Sadlermiut on the environment persisted long after the last of their population perished in 1903. Presently, the pond remains a distorted ecosystem that has experienced fundamental shifts in the benthic invertebrate assemblages and accumulated anthropogenic metals in the sediment. Our multi-proxy paleolimnological investigation using geochemical and biological indicators emphasizes that direct and indirect anthropogenic impacts have long-term environmental implications on high latitude ecosystems.