4
Growing Up North: Exploring the Archaeology
of Childhood in the Thule and Dorset Cultures
of Arctic Canada
Robert W. Park
University of Waterloo
ABSTRACT
In late prehistoric times the Canadian Arctic was occupied sequentially by the peoples known to archaeologists as
the Dorset and the Thule cultures, the latter being the direct cultural and biological ancestors of the Inuit who
live there today. For archaeologists interested in exploring aspects of childhood, the Thule culture has three very
desirable characteristics: potentially magnificent preservation due to the effects of permafrost; a complex and varied
material culture; and, from their Inuit descendants, a rich and detailed body of ethnographic information that can
be drawn upon for analogy. With these advantages it is possible to identify a wide range of Thule items, especially
miniature versions of implements, specifically associated with children. These can be studied to explore the roles of
children in Thule society. Intriguingly, it is far more difficult to identify items associated with children of the Dorset
culture, despite their material culture s being equally complex and their sites being often almost as well preserved.
This chapter summarizes the results of research into childhood among the Thule and shows how the experience of
childhood for Dorset children may have been somewhat different from that experienced by their Thule successors.
Keywords: children, Inuit, Thule, Dorset, Arctic, miniatures
his chapter summarizes some of the research that I have tant in the excavation of Iroquoian sites in southern Ontario.
Tbeen carrying out into childhood among the precontact On one occasion a supervisor made the casual observation
inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic. However, before getting that he thought the reason so much of the pottery we found
to that I would like first to briefly explain what brought was so thoroughly fragmented was because of children his
me to do this research. My introduction to the archaeol- idea was that large fragments of broken pots would have
ogy of childhood came about quite by accident. In thinking been fun targets for young boys throwing stones. And fi-
back over all the years of my training as an archaeologist I nally, back in the lab during the analysis of pottery from
can remember just three occasions when children were even those sites, I was taught that some pots were identified by
mentioned by my teachers or field directors. The only oc- the rather odd designation juvenile pots they were con-
casion when the topic came up in the context of a course sidered to be young girls first attempts at manufacturing
involved looking at grave goods buried with children and pots. So in each of the contexts in which children were men-
then comparing them with grave goods buried with adults tioned, children and childhood were never the focus of the
of the same society. I was taught that if some children were archaeologist s interest. Instead, in the first case, children s
buried with grave goods as rich as those found with adults, graves were a means to learn about the (adult) political orga-
one could conclude that they came from a society in which nization of a society; in the second case children were seen as
high rank was inherited. The other two times I can recall a site-formation process affecting the material culture pro-
children being mentioned occurred when I was a field assis- duced by adults; and in the third case children were invoked
©
Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 15, pp. 53 64, ISSN 1551-823X. 2006 by the American Anthro-
pological Association. All rights reserved. Permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content via www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
54 Robert W. Park
as a means of separating out seemingly aberrant potsherds Alaska more than four thousand years ago (McGhee 1996;
so that they would not confuse the stylistic and other kinds Maxwell 1985). The adaptability and resourcefulness of
of analyses that were being applied to the remaining adult the Paleo-Eskimos in that daunting region is documented
potsherds. by their survival there for approximately three millennia.
With such a lack of exposure to even thinking about The last of the Paleo-Eskimos belonged to a culture known
children as a possible topic of interest in the archaeological as Dorset. Approximately one thousand years ago another
record, it is hardly surprising that when I was approached a group of Alaskan migrants arrived in Arctic Canada: the
few years ago to write and present a conference paper on the people known to archaeologists as Thule. There is no con-
archaeology of childhood in the Arctic, which had become vincing evidence for acculturation between the Dorset and
the geographic focus of my research, I initially declined. For- the arriving Thule and it is conceivable that the Dorset had
tunately I eventually reconsidered and agreed to do the paper. mostly or completely died out prior to the arrival of the Thule
It was well received, so I worked up and published a version (Park 1993, 2000). Whether or not the Dorset had died out,
(Park 1998). Shortly afterward I was asked to write a shorter it was the Thule who gave rise to the Inuit who inhabit the
version for a popular archaeology magazine. I was flattered region today from Alaska to Greenland the diverse Inuit
by the request and complied (Park 1999). However, when I groups who greeted Europeans when the latter eventually
received the galleys for that second article I was taken aback entered those regions were the direct biological and cul-
to discover that the editor had inserted into my introduction tural descendants of the Thule (e.g., Collins 1937; Dumond
the sentence Childhood is a magical time. I had not written 1987; McCullough 1989; McGhee 1972; Mathiassen 1927b;
anything like that and in subsequent bargaining with the ed- Morrison 1983; Taylor 1979). Thus, from an archaeological
itor the best I could manage was to get that addition altered perspective the archaeological sites in the Canadian Arc-
to Childhood can be a magical time. tic and Greenland derive from two chronologically distinct
I have recounted these anecdotes to make a point that cultural traditions that had developed separately from one
to me lies at the heart of any archaeology of childhood: that another for at least three thousand years. Further, despite
editor, despite having read both the scholarly and popular the fact that the Dorset and Thule inhabited the same re-
versions of my paper, implicitly but fervently believed that gion and thus must have faced many of the same ecological
we already understand exactly what childhood is all about. and social problems, the material culture produced by these
Even more significantly, that editor also believed that the par- two cultures is both easily distinguishable and often very
ticular experience of childhood with which we think we are well preserved as a result of the cold environment. Under
familiar is a human universal. That inference is of course those circumstances an obvious question is, can we iden-
incorrect (e.g., Aries 1962; Hirschfeld 2002:613). Ethno- tify any evidence in the archaeological record of the Thule
graphic research demonstrates that childhood can be defined and Dorset cultures for the kind of childhood documented in
differently from culture to culture, and therefore the expe- the extraordinarily rich body of ethnographic data available
rience of being a child undoubtedly varies as well. And if concerning the Inuit descendants of the Thule? To answer
synchronic variation is possible, then so of course is varia- that question this chapter will first summarize some of the
tion over time. Hence there is the need for an archaeology ethnographic data that might be expected to show up in or
of childhood, in which at least one goal should be to explore have a bearing upon the archaeological record of childhood
how and why childhood varied. I am not sure why my teach- among these cultures (for a more detailed review of these
ers and field directors were not interested in childhood as ethnographic data, see Park 1998).
a topic of archaeological research my guess is they either
shared that editor s belief or they felt childhood was one of
those things beyond the reach of archaeology. Whatever their The Concept of Childhood
reasons, I believe we should try to ensure that archaeologists
cannot get as far into their careers as I did without learning In traditional Inuit worldviews a child was not seen as an
that childhood is an important, interesting, and accessible entirely new or unique individual. A newborn infant would
topic for archaeology! be given the name of someone who had died recently and
it was believed that the child would gain, along with the
name itself, a name spirit that would imbue him or her
Childhood and Arctic Prehistory with some of the attributes of the previous owner or owners
of that name. Lee Guemple (1979, 1988) has written about
Archaeological research has shown that the first in- Inuit conceptions of childhood based on his research among
habitants of Arctic Canada and Greenland, collectively re- the Qiqiqtamiut Inuit of the Belcher Islands, but his inter-
ferred to as Paleo-Eskimos, migrated into that region from pretations seem consistent with ethnographic observations
Childhood in the Thule and Dorset Cultures 55
throughout the Inuit world. In the Belcher Islands a child re- Describing this stage in life among the Caribou Inuit, Kaj
ceived the spirit and its name when four days old. Therefore, Birket-Smith writes that
It is true that one does not notice Eskimo upbringing
From four days after birth a child possesses its entire life
much. No parent will ever beat his child. . . The children
potential in capsule form; and the business of socialisa-
are allowed to do practically as they like. Naturally they
tion becomes one of assisting the new member (who is
are not angels and, from the time when they become
really an old member) to realise the potential of his or
old enough to be naughty and until they understand that
her pre-established identity. It follows that there are not
they ought to be good between about three and seven
children in the self-formulated world of the Qiqiqtamiut,
years they are sometimes bad; but on the whole they
at least not in the Western empty vessel sense of what
are astonishingly obedient and well brought up. [Birket-
it means to be a child. [Guemple 1988:135]
Smith 1929:288]
This Inuit view of children and childhood is evident
The generally good behavior of Inuit children
in most ethnographic accounts and will become important
appears not to have come without considerable effort and
in evaluating the archaeological record of childhood in the
stress. Teasing and shaming helped eliminate inappropriate
Dorset and Thule cultures.
conduct among children (Briggs 1970; Guemple 1979:44).
Conversely, socially valued accomplishments would be
Stages of Childhood
publicly marked with positive comments, especially when
a child performed a task successfully for the very first time
Early childhood in traditional Inuit society was a time
(Guemple 1979:45).
of close and constant interaction between a child and his or
The education of children seems to have taken
her immediate family. Jean Briggs states that babies and
place mostly by observation (Honigmann and Honigmann
small children are the affectional center of the family; their
1953:39 40), entirely consistent with the Inuit conception
every need is attended to with immediate solicitude, and
of children described above. Guemple notes that
during most of their waking moments they are cuddled and
played with by any and all adults and older children who
Children are presumed to be socially whole and complete
may be present (Briggs 1974:266). Describing this stage
from shortly after birth and so are believed to require not
so much to be taught as to be guided and directed by
of childhood in southern Baffin Island in the 1880s, Franz
adults. What Europeans would undertake to invoke in
Boas noted that
children by teaching Inuit attempt to accomplish by
drawing out that which the child is believed already to
Young children are always carried in their mothers
know. [Guemple 1988:134]
hoods, but when about a year and a half old they are
allowed to play on the bed, and are only carried by
Elsewhere, he writes,
their mothers when they get too mischievous. When the
mother is engaged in any hard work they are carried by
If the Inuit adult attitude toward children includes the
the young girls. [Boas 1888:565 566]
view that they are nothing less than diminutive adults
with all the potentialities of adults, this view can only be
Children were, however, quite free to investigate their
sustained because there is no great burden of knowledge
immediate surroundings. Guemple observes that
to acquire that is not an ongoing part of the everyday
life of everyone in the community. Children do not
Infants and young children are allowed to explore their
need to be taught how to perform tasks which they
environments to the limits of their physical capabilities
can experience through observation and participation.
and with minimal interference from adults. Thus if the
[Guemple 1979:50]
child picks up a hazardous object, parents generally leave
it to explore the dangers on its own. The child is presumed
The relative freedom from responsibilities enjoyed by
to know what it is doing even if it is incapable of execut-
children in Inuit society eventually came to an end. Boas
ing its designs because of physical limitations. [Guemple
states that when about twelve years old they begin to help
1988:137]
their parents, the girls sewing and preparing skins, the boys
Once children became a little older they enjoyed almost accompanying their fathers in hunting expeditions (Boas
complete freedom to go and do as they wished, especially 1888:566). Guemple (1979:44) suggests that children start
during the summer (Briggs 1970:165 166; Honigmann performing these tasks considerably earlier, commencing by
and Honigmann 1953:43). Describing Copper Inuit life on the age of five or six. Briggs (1975:177) notes that there
Victoria Island, Diamond Jenness writes that generally can be considerable differences between groups in the age
speaking, boys and girls grow up like wild plants, without at which children begin to perform the tasks they will be
much care or attention from the time they can run about responsible for as adults, but that children 10 years old can
till they approach puberty (Jenness 1922:169 170). be expected to perform chores requiring some skill.
56 Robert W. Park
same way as the clothing of men (Boas 1888:571). Jenness
Childhood Activities
provides a little more detail concerning the manufacture of
Much of childhood in Inuit society was devoted to fun dolls and offers a rationale for why they were made this way:
and games and some activities that were just that: games. Girls make dolls out of scraps of skin, and clothe them like
These included various ball games, running races, hide-and- real men and women. Their mothers encourage them, for it
seek, a version of tag called Wolf and Raven among the is in this way that they learn to sew and cut out patterns
Copper Inuit and Caribou and Wolves among the Caribou (Jenness 1922:219).
Inuit, and even competitions to see who could keep quiet Children also played at hunting both land mammals and
the longest (Birket-Smith 1929:291 292; Boas 1888:570; sea mammals. Caribou were the most important land mam-
Jenness 1922:218 219). According to Boas, children also mal to most Inuit societies, and one common way to hunt
enjoyed telling one another fables and singing short songs. them was with bow and arrow. Jenness states that both
Comic songs making fun of any person are great favorites, boys and girls learn to stalk game by accompanying their
he notes (Boas 1888:572). Of course, most of these same elders on hunting excursions (Jenness 1922:170), and dur-
pastimes were indulged in by adults as well. One diver- ing the summer he observed children setting up rows of
sion that seems to have been done just by children was stones and turf, injukhuit, as for a caribou drive, and digging
the use of noisemakers, one called a bull roarer and the shallow pits, tallut, from which they launched their shafts at
other known as the buzz (Birket-Smith 1929:289 290; imaginary deer (Jenness 1922:219). Sea mammals, includ-
Jenness 1922:220). Spinning tops were also made (Nelson ing seals, walrus, and various species of whales, were also
1983 [1899]:341). A few items have been found archaeolog- of great importance to most Inuit societies. Birket-Smith
ically that have been identified as bull roarers and spinning notes that boys sometimes have a miniature harpoon head,
tops, and rounded pieces of wood are often identified as ikiortínguaq, according to what I have been told used in the
balls (e.g., McCartney 1977:406), but otherwise all these manner that the boy thrusts it into the seal killed and helps
kinds of activities are likely to be invisible archaeologically. to pull it ashore (Birket-Smith 1924:420). Boas also pro-
However, another class of childhood activities is potentially vides a detailed description of play hunting, specifically the
far more visible. Diamond Jenness captures this most suc- hunting of ringed seals through their winter breathing holes:
cinctly when he writes, One of their favourite pastimes is
to carry out, in miniature, some of the duties they will have
Boys play hunting seals. Each of them has a small har-
to perform when they grow up (Jenness 1922:170). For my
poon and a number of pieces of seal-skin with many
purposes it is convenient to break down these miniature ac- holes. Each piece of skin represents a seal. Each of the
boys also has a hip-bone of the seal. Then one boy moves
tivities into three broad categories: playing house, playing
the piece of skin which represents a seal under the hole
with dolls, and playing at hunting.
in the hip-bone, which latter represents the blowing-hole
Playing house was a common activity for all children.
in the ice. While moving the piece of skin about under
Jenness states that both boys and girls play at building
the bone, the boys blow like seals. Whoever catches with
snow houses. In summer, with only pebbles to work with, the little harpoon the piece of skin in one of the holes
retains it, and the boy who catches the last of the pieces
they simply lay out the ground plans, but in winter they
of skin goes on in turn with his seals. The little harpoons
borrow their parents snow knives and make complete
are made by the fathers of the boys, the pieces of skin are
houses on a miniature scale (Jenness 1922:219). Ethno-
prepared by the mothers. [Boas 1901:111]
graphers and archaeologists have reported finding such
small house foundations constructed of pebbles from Arctic
In light of the archaeological data outlined below, it may
Canada and Greenland (e.g., Birket-Smith 1929:289; David
be significant that the seal-hunting game described by Boas
1995:390 391; Hawkes 1916:122). Playing house also took
appears to have been limited to boys whereas Jenness says
place within the real house. Jenness observes that little
that both boys and girls participated in the caribou-hunting
girls often have tiny lamps in the corners of their huts
game.
over which they will cook some meat to share with their
playmates (Jenness 1922:170).
Miniature Material Culture
A specific kind of play apparently limited to girls (if
the ethnographers are to be believed) was making and play- What is so interesting and promising archaeologically
ing with dolls. According to Birket-Smith, dolls are the
about these kinds of childhood activities playing house,
favourite plaything of little girls (Birket-Smith 1945:213).
playing with dolls, and playing at hunting is that they
Boas states that dolls are made the same way by all tribes, a
are clearly associated with an extensive miniature material
wooden body being clothed with scraps of deerskin cut in the
culture. In addition to those already discussed, miniature
Childhood in the Thule and Dorset Cultures 57
versions of the following items are specifically mentioned To see an example of such a shaman s belt, see Balikci
in ethnographic accounts as having been used as toys: (1984:Fig. 18).
sledges, kayaks, umiaks, cooking pots, snow knives, and While shamans miniatures certainly might be found
sleeping platform mattresses (Birket-Smith 1945:214; Boas in houses and in midden deposits, it seems likely that they
1888:571). While miniature items of all these types and more should not be particularly common nor found in every house
have been found archaeologically at sites of the Thule cul- since likely only a few people in a community would have
ture, unfortunately we cannot automatically assume that all been shamans. Further, in light of what was said above about
these miniatures were toys and thus associated with chil- grave offerings, it seems plausible that those miniatures used
dren. On the basis of ethnographic accounts, miniature ver- by shamans would have been buried with them or they would
sions of full-sized items were made or used in two other dis- have been inherited and used by other shamans that is, in
tinct contexts: as grave offerings and as the paraphernalia of comparison with children s toys they might be expected to
shamans. be more subject to curation. Thus, in light of all the available
According to Knud Rasmussen, among the Utkuhikhal- ethnographic data, it is plausible to assume that most of
ingmiut, a dead man s property usually descends to his rel- the miniature implements and human figurines (i.e., dolls)
atives, if it is worth anything. Instead of his own possessions found in contexts other than graves were toys and thus were
they put into the grave small copies of the things they have associated with children.
inherited, these miniatures being carved in wood (Knud
Rasmussen 1931:507). Among the Copper Inuit he notes that
Miniatures in Arctic Archaeology
if among the deceased s weapons there are especially
valuable objects they may be substituted by less costly
In a 1927 monograph Therkel Mathiassen pioneered the
ones. Some implements may also be replaced by minia-
use of small size as a criterion for identifying toys among
ture imitations carved in wood. . . . Real articles such as
Thule culture archaeological finds. In that report he de-
ulos or cooking pots are never laid by a woman s grave,
miniatures being used instead. [Rasmussen 1932:46] scribed together full-sized and miniature implements of the
same type but he also included a separate heading for toys,
For the Netsilik he notes that
beneath which he wrote: In the foregoing, when describing
the various types of implements, various miniature objects
it is true that at the funeral itself no particular respect
have already been mentioned as having presumably been
is shown the body, and yet the patch of soil on which it
used as toys: harpoon heads, arrow shafts, baleen bow, snow
is laid seems to be looked upon as a kind of holy spot, to
knife and lamps (Mathiassen 1927a:75). Most subsequent
which they make offerings of meat or miniature imple-
ments such as weapons, kayaks and the like. [Rasmussen
site reports for Thule sites have similarly identified miniature
1931:263]
implements and human figurines as toys.
In a paper published in 1998 (Park 1998) I attempted
Thus, from an archaeological perspective, miniature
to use the data reported in all those site reports, plus data
items associated with burials are likely not toys, although
from my own excavations, in order to learn about child-
Boas (1888:613) does state that a child s toys would be buried
hood in the Thule culture. In that paper I argued that these
with him or her, and both Oswalt (1952:71) and Birket-Smith
data might be used to learn about the kinds of activities in
(1924:419) report children s graves containing dolls, pre-
which Thule children participated and how much they par-
sumably the possessions of the children buried there.
ticipated in them. Further, if children performed in minia-
Miniature items were also included among the parapher-
ture the tasks of adults, then it might be reasonable to ex-
nalia used by shamans (e.g., Burch 1988:102). According to
pect some sort of correspondence between the material cul-
Rasmussen, among the Iglulingmiut:
ture associated with the activities carried out by adults and
the material culture associated with the activities engaged
As soon as a young man has become a shaman, he must
in by children. To evaluate that simple hypothesis I as-
have a special shaman s belt as a sign of his dignity. This
sembled the data presented in Table 4.1 on the abundance
consists of a strip of hide to which are attached many
fringes of caribou skin, and these are fastened on by all of various full-sized and miniature artifacts from 31 sites
the people he knows, as many as he can get; to the fringes
(adapted from Park 1998:Table 1). It presents information
are added small carvings, human figures made of bone,
on 9,753 artifacts, including 369 miniatures. All were ex-
fishes, harpoons; all these must be gifts, and the givers
cavated from winter house ruins; none came from graves.
then believe that the shaman s helping spirits will always
For each functional type (e.g., harpoon head ) the table
be able to recognize them by their gifts, and will never
do them any harm. [Rasmussen 1929:114] contrasts the frequency of miniatures with the frequency of
58 Robert W. Park
Table 4.1. Quantities and relative abundances of miniature and full-sized artifact types from 30 Thule culture sites in Canada and
Greenland
Full-sized Miniature
n % of full-sized n % of miniatures
Harpooning
Harpoon head 474 5.1 16 4.3
Harpoon 13 0.1 10 2.7
Dart head 13 0.1 5 1.4
Harpoon ice pick 130 1.4 2 0.5
Harpoon socket piece 100 1.1 2 0.5
7.8% 9.5%
Archery
Bow 96 1.0 29 7.9
Arrow 4 0.0 19 5.1
Arrowhead 330 3.5 9 2.4
Arrow shaft 209 2.2 3 0.8
6.8% 16.3%
Fishing
Fish spear side prong 134 1.4 4 1.1
Fish spear 25 0.3 3 0.8
1.7% 1.9%
Transportation
Sled slat 55 0.6 17 4.6
Kayak 39 0.4 12 3.3
Paddle 7 0.1 10 2.7
Boat misc. 0 0.0 6 1.6
Whip handle 8 0.1 5 1.4
Umiak 10 0.1 4 1.1
Sled runner 43 0.5 3 0.8
1.7% 15.4%
Other men s activities
Man s knife 426 4.5 22 6.0
Sling handle 45 0.5 11 3.0
Throwing board 8 0.1 10 2.7
Lance 139 1.5 7 1.9
Snow knife 210 2.2 5 1.4
Bird dart 36 0.4 2 0.5
9.2% 15.4%
Women s and household activities
Lamp 160 1.7 23 6.2
Cooking pot 465 5.0 13 3.5
Ulu (woman s knife) 262 2.8 5 1.4
Dish/bowl/bucket 106 1.1 5 1.4
Snow beater 67 0.7 2 0.5
Snow shovel 25 0.3 1 0.3
Platform mattress 21 0.2 1 0.3
Needle case 7 0.1 1 0.3
11.9% 13.8%
Other
Doll/figurine N/A 99 26.8
Drum 13 0.1 1 0.3
Parka 8 0.1 1 0.3
Miscellaneous 5,696 60.7 1 0.3
60.9% 27.6%
9,384 100.0 369 100.0
Childhood in the Thule and Dorset Cultures 59
full-sized examples. The relative abundance of each minia- with all miniature items. However, the basic proportions re-
ture type is then expressed as a percentage of all the miniature main similar if the entire Other category is excluded.
artifacts; similarly, the relative abundance of each full-sized In all but the Other class, miniatures are at least
type is expressed as a percentage of all the full-sized arti- slightly more abundant than their full-sized counterparts,
facts. For example, 16 miniature harpoon heads were found but in three classes (Harpooning, Fishing, and Women s and
at the 31 sites, forming 4.3 percent of all the miniatures household activities) the differences are less than two per-
found, whereas 474 full-sized harpoon heads were recov- cent and therefore presumably insignificant. For example,
ered, forming 5.1 percent of all the full-sized artifacts that miniature harpoon parts form 9.5 percent of the miniature as-
were excavated. In this case the relative abundances of minia- semblage whereas full-sized harpoon parts form 7.8 percent
ture and full-sized harpoon heads are very similar, but the of the full-sized assemblage. Given all the possible com-
use of the frequencies of individual functional types (such plicating factors, this is remarkably close and completely
as harpoon heads) has some disadvantages. It has long been consistent with children playing at their future adult roles.
recognized that comparisons of the frequencies of individ- However, the disparity between the frequency of full-sized
ual Thule artifact types are complicated by the very large and miniature items associated with the Archery class is
number of types: much more substantial. This class forms just 6.8 percent
of the full-sized assemblage yet fully 16.3 percent of the
The statistical techniques of artifact comparison devel-
miniature assemblage. It is very tempting at this point to
oped for use in other archaeological areas are based on sit-
return to Jenness s (1922:170) statement that both boys and
uations in which one recovers large numbers of artifacts
girls were given bows and arrows and taught to use them by
which can be grouped into a few classes. In the Thule sit-
their fathers. Archery appears to have been overwhelmingly
uation, we have a large number of functional or stylistic
classes, with generally very small numbers of artifacts
a male activity among adults so the disparity that we see be-
in each class. Any attempt to measure statistical resem-
tween the full-sized and miniature assemblages may reflect
blance between such assemblages is highly influenced by
the fact that, among adults, only men owned and used bows
sampling error, and the resulting correlations are proba-
whereas both boys and girls had bows. Further, if I am not
bly not very useful. [Taylor and McGhee 1979:115]
reading too much into quotes by Birket-Smith (1924:420)
Therefore, a consideration for the research was identi- and Boas (1901:111) describing boys playing at seal hunt-
fying artifact categories that could reveal information about ing, only boys engaged in this activity, so the similarity in
childhood activities and that would contain large enough proportions of full-sized and miniature harpoon parts would
numbers of items that sampling error could be reduced to an likewise be consistent with the ethnographic record.
acceptable level. Turning to the Other men s activities class, miniatures
The approach adopted was to base comparisons on are somewhat more abundant than full-sized items. Much or
larger functional classes that better reflect activity sets based all of this disparity may be attributable to two hunting im-
on ethnographic information. Seven broad classes were cho- plements: sling handles and throwing boards. These too are
sen, of which three deal with distinctive techniques of ob- implements that, like bows and arrows, girls accompany-
taining food: Harpooning, Archery, and Fishing. A ing their fathers on hunting expeditions might have used,
Transportation class is followed by two classes containing although no specific references to this were found in the
diverse items whose various uses were conventionally (but ethnographic literature. The Transportation class exhibits
by no means universally) divided by gender: Other men s the largest disparity, forming more than 15 percent of the
activities and Women s and household activities. Lastly, miniatures and less than two percent of the full-sized assem-
an Other class contains dolls as well as a large number of blage. A probable explanation for the overrepresentation of
full-sized types for which miniature versions have not been miniatures in this class compared with their full-sized equiv-
found in the archaeological record; these are included un- alents is that some of the full-sized items, such as boat parts
der the Miscellaneous category. Dolls are included in this and sled parts, are considerably larger than all the other full-
class because they presumably were not used by adult women sized types used in this analysis and may simply be too large
and because there is no corresponding full-sized item. Their to be expected in the winter house ruins from which these
apparent importance as toys is, however, shown by the fact data were drawn.
that they represent over one-quarter of all miniatures. De- The first five classes in Table 4.1 are associated with
spite the large percentage of full-sized items falling into the activities that conventionally were part of the role of men
Miscellaneous category (i.e., over 60 percent), they were in Inuit society, so it may appear that boys toys are over-
included in the calculations in order not to artificially skew represented in the entire miniature assemblage. However, if
the results in other words, to compare all full-sized items dolls are added to the Women s and household activities
60 Robert W. Park
miniatures, then miniatures specifically associated with of sealskin. Similarly, the bows and arrows described in one
girls activities represent over 40 percent of all miniatures. of the Jenness quotes were toys used by children to shoot
And having demonstrated that girls appear to have used at imaginary deer (Jenness 1922:219), but clearly those
some of the hunting equipment at least bows and arrows toys functioned enough for the arrows to be launched.
and perhaps sling handles and throwing boards it appears And finally, as also described by Jenness (1922:170), chil-
that miniature material culture may have been approximately dren s fathers make bows and arrows for them suited to
evenly distributed between boys and girls. their strength. Those bows and arrows, while smaller than
These archaeological data, presented in greater detail the ones used by adults, clearly cannot be described as toys
in my previous publication (Park 1998), appear to docu- although they were associated with children.
ment the wide range of the miniature material culture used Thus my simple miniature/full-sized dichotomy was al-
by Thule children, as well as its patterned relationship to most certainly obscuring a great deal of interesting vari-
the full-sized material culture of Thule adults. They also ability in the material culture associated with Thule chil-
suggest that the Inuit practice of treating children simply dren, variability that had the potential of revealing much
as small adults (Guemple 1988:137) was characteristic of more about the various stages of childhood outlined above.
their Thule ancestors as well and that Thule children did in- Clearly, what needed to be done was to examine and measure
deed carry out, in miniature, the tasks they would come to all the miniature artifacts and all the full-sized artifacts of the
perform when they grew up. Thus, even though Bugarin (this same types in order to be able to document and quantify that
volume) rightly questions the automatic assumption some- variability. Doing so would be an ambitious project, how-
times made by researchers that child behavior can be taken ever, because the actual artifact assemblages are dispersed
as a miniature model of adult behavior, in the case of Inuit in several museums across Canada, the United States, and
and Thule culture the ethnographic and archaeological data in Europe.
support such an interpretation.
Dorset Childhood
Size Counts More Than Ever
But there was another avenue of this research that I also
At the conclusion of my research there were two di- wished to pursue: applying the same approach to the mate-
rections in which I hoped eventually to proceed. The first rial culture of the Dorset people. They also produced minia-
was based on the fundamental dichotomy that I had drawn ture versions of items, but Dorset assemblages contain pro-
between miniature and full-sized implements. In em- portionately many fewer miniaturized implements with the
ploying that simple distinction I had been constrained by the seeming exception of one artifact type: miniature harpoon
fact that many of the site reports from which I had assembled heads. The rest of their miniatures include a much wider
my data had employed that distinction. Far fewer than half of range of carvings of animals and humans than is seen in
the 9,753 artifacts in my database were actually illustrated or Thule. The Dorset miniatures have for many years been inter-
described with measurements in the site reports. Therefore, preted predominantly as the paraphernalia of shamans (e.g.,
I was forced to accept all those different scholars catego- McGhee 1976, 1987; Sutherland 1993:322; Taçon 1983;
rizations of artifacts as either functional (i.e., full-sized) or Taylor and Swinton 1967). Although intuitively I find that
miniature I could not develop my own independent cri- conclusion compelling for many of these items, it raises a
teria to do that. However, I was aware that the concepts of question that is very pertinent in the present context: where
miniature and toy probably encompassed several differ- are the toys? Did Dorset children have a similar and equally
ent functionalities. The very smallest miniatures are likely extensive miniature material culture that is simply invisible
playthings that functioned only in a child s imagination. within assemblages containing the many miniatures used by
Some of them would probably have been used with dolls shamans, or did Dorset children have different kinds of toys
while playing house and so forth. But many larger minia- or no toys at all? If they had different kinds of toys or no toys
tures were undoubtedly quite functional in an important at all, then the experience of childhood for Dorset children
fashion. These would be items simply scaled down in size must have been somewhat different from that of their Thule
enough so that children could use them. For example, the successors.
miniature harpoons whose use is described in the quotation Because I was already carrying out research into other
by Boas appear to have been functional that is, they worked aspects of Dorset culture I decided to pursue the avenue
for harpooning things. What made them toys was the fact that of childhood in that culture rather than attempt to track
they were used in a game to harpoon small perforated bits down and visit all the Thule assemblages in their dispersed
Childhood in the Thule and Dorset Cultures 61
We next explored a factor that we termed potential func-
tionality, that is, a harpoon head s ability to function as part
of a complete harpoon in that it can be mounted on a fore-
shaft, it can pierce the skin of an animal, and it can secure the
harpooned creature by means of the harpoon line. Leaving
aside all question of size, a potentially functional harpoon
head must exhibit three basic attributes: it must have a line-
hole or some other means of affixing the harpoon line; it
must be self-bladed (i.e., have a sharp tip) or have an end-
blade slot into which a sharp end-blade can be inserted; and
it must have either a closed or an open socket as a means of
being affixed onto the harpoon foreshaft. By these criteria,
Figure 4.1. Histogram of harpoon head length of 357 harpoon
heads from Dorset culture sites. several of the miniature harpoon heads in our sample were
not potentially functional because they possessed an inad-
repositories. One of my students at the time, Pauline equate socket or lacked one completely and thus could not
Mousseau, had become fascinated with the miniature har- have been affixed onto a harpoon foreshaft. But the socket-
poon heads we had excavated at two Dorset sites so we con- less examples we could examine were otherwise complete
centrated on just that artifact type (Park and Mousseau 2003). and often finely manufactured so there is no reason to infer
We assembled measurements on as many complete or es- that they were unfinished; we therefore concluded that they
sentially complete full-sized and miniature Dorset harpoon were never intended to be affixed onto a harpoon. These are
heads as we could from published site reports and from some the only harpoon heads for which it seems possible to as-
unpublished data: 357 harpoon heads in all. Minimally, we sert with confidence that they are either toys or shamans
hoped that doing so would allow us to determine whether the paraphernalia. If they are toys then they were used in imag-
harpoons heads classified in the literature as miniature and inary activities without a functioning socket they could
the ones classified (implicitly) as full-sized really could be not have been used in games such as the one described by
separated in a nonarbitrary fashion into those different cat- Boas. However, all the rest of the very small harpoon heads
egories. We attempted this based on the assumption that if could have been used as part of small but complete har-
full-sized harpoon heads had to be at least some minimum poons, and several harpoon foreshafts small enough to be
size in order to function successfully, this might manifest used with the smallest harpoon heads have been found. The
itself on a histogram of harpoon head length as a bimodal fact that there is no clear size distinction between these small
distribution. If so, such a finding would allow us to focus on but potentially functional harpoon heads and the full-sized
the miniatures and attempt to determine whether some were and therefore functional harpoon heads (i.e., harpoon heads
toys. Then we could proceed to do for those items what I had that would have been used to hunt seals or walruses) means
not been able to do for the Thule miniatures: see whether the that it is presently impossible to isolate with any confidence
different sizes of toys could be associated with different a subset of the Dorset harpoon heads that would contain only
kinds of childhood activities. children s implements or shaman s paraphernalia, let alone
Figure 4.1 presents a histogram of the lengths of all 357 identify a subset made up solely of items associated with
harpoon heads used in our study. Alas, it displays no apparent children.
bimodal distribution and, if our sample were not somewhat This was a somewhat disappointing finding in the
biased toward harpoon heads classified by their excavators present context, especially since the smooth transition in size
as miniature (Park and Mousseau 2003:262), the his- from the smallest to the largest Dorset harpoon heads might
togram might conform even more closely to a normal curve. be consistent with their having been manufactured in increas-
Dorset harpoon heads are subdivided by archaeologists into ing sizes as children grew up. But that is by no means the
a number of different types and, on the rationale that differ- only possible explanation for the size of these implements.
ent types might have different functions and therefore sizes For functional reasons the smallest harpoon heads would not
and that analyzing them all together as in Figure 4.1 might have been used to hunt seals or larger sea mammals they
be obscuring size differences within types, we performed are simply too small to permit a strong enough harpoon line
the same kind of analysis several times while restricting to be attached or too fragile to stand the force of restraining
ourselves to harpoon heads of a single type. Again, however, a large animal without the harpoon head breaking. But there
we found very little evidence of bimodal distribution in is no reason such smaller harpoon heads could not have been
harpoon head length (Park and Mousseau 2003:265 266). used by adults to harpoon smaller creatures. The existence
62 Robert W. Park
of robust foreshafts with small tangs indicates that some of small carvings known from Dorset, including animals and
these very small harpoon heads could well have been used many fabulous creatures. Or perhaps Dorset children did not
with adequately sized harpoons to hunt small creatures, es- have a material culture of their own at all.
pecially fish but perhaps birds as well. The research presented here is obviously incomplete. It
So with respect to childhood-associated material cul- has only scratched the surface of the potential of these data
ture, the Dorset remain as enigmatic as before, at least in for learning about the experience of childhood in these cul-
comparison with the Thule. There is actually one more com- tures, but it does suggest a number of avenues of research
plicating factor that should be mentioned. Dorset sites are that have great potential. I definitely intend to continue ex-
older than Thule sites and, because of that and some archi- ploring these questions, but there is a lot of work that needs
tectural differences between the houses of the two cultures, to be done. For example, even with all the advantages I have
artifact preservation at Dorset sites is often less complete listed for these Arctic archaeological data, it seems clear
than at Thule sites (although there are a number of excep- that one cannot a priori identify the subset of a society s
tions to this rule). This is most significant for items man- entire material culture that would have been associated with
ufactured of wood because some of the Thule miniatures children that can only be done by exploring the entire range
most convincingly identified as toys, including miniature of material culture and identifying culture-specific criteria
harpoon heads, are manufactured of that material. Almost that would allow one to do so. I have begun exploring size
all the small Dorset harpoon heads discussed here are man- and potential functionality for these Dorset and Thule cul-
ufactured of harder materials: bone, antler, or ivory. If there ture artifacts but there are obviously more criteria that could
were substantial numbers of Dorset miniature harpoon heads be investigated. It is my hope that readers of this volume will
made of wood, few of them have survived. But that, of course, be inspired to share some of that work, adding new questions
introduces another kind of data that should be systemati- and new approaches to archaeological research into child-
cally recorded for the Thule miniatures material to see if hood, including in the Arctic.
there are consistent differences in the material from which
full-sized and miniature implements of the same type were Acknowledgments
manufactured.
I would like to thank Patricia Smith and William Fox
for first encouraging me to think about the archaeology of
Discussion childhood in the Arctic by inviting me to present a paper
on that topic back in 1997. Similarly, I would like to thank
The archaeological data from the Arctic with which I Jane Baxter, organizer of the 2001 American Anthropologi-
am working exhibit a number of obvious advantages for ar- cal Association session in which I presented a portion of this
chaeological research into childhood. The combination of paper, for convincing me that I had something more to say
excellent preservation along with a technologically complex on the topic.
material culture and a rich and detailed body of ethnographic
information allows for kinds of analyses that are often go- References
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