Prehistory in the Dismal Lake Area, N.W.T., Canada

Abstract

Reports on the summer 1955 archeological survey of the Coronation Gulf area. Test diggings at three sites on Dismal Lake (1:a, 1:b, 2) and one at Kamut Lake yielded numerous chipped and flaked stone implements (knives, scrapers, poin.ts, burins, etc.). The large proportion of microlithic artifacts at Dismal-2 and Kamut Lake sites is noted and "the ancestral role of microlithic technology" in the American Arctic stressed. The central position of the Dismal-Kamut Lake complexes and the technological relationship of the microlithic Dismal-2 complex to the western sites of Engigstciak (AB. No. 46551), Anaktuvuk Pass and Cape Denbigh as well as east to the Sarqaq culture of West Greenland, Independence I & II in Pearyland (AB. No. 52343) and the proto-Dorset T-1 site on Southampton Island (AB. No. 44425, 50311) are discussed. Dismal-2 is related in some way to the Dorset culture, it shows traits of all stages from proto- to late Dorset. The ecology of the Dorset culture and its dual land- and sea-oriented economy are dealt with and the musk-ox considered an important game animal in the Dismal Lake area. In the "geographical funnel" of Alaska-northwest Canada, compounds of culture occur, attesting it an area where Old World impulses met, diffused and gave rise to New World complexes including the "Eskimo" traits found in archaic Indian cultures of the east coast from Labrador to Maryland.