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

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Viehberg, Finn A., Medeiros, Andrew S., Plessen, Birgit, Wang, Xiaowa, Muir, Derek, Pienitz, Reinhard
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
• Subjects: Article; Arctic; Canada; Native Point; Nunavut; Southampton Island
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8446097/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34531423; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97631-7

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.