Gendered Differences in the Consumption and Discard of Food in Arctic Alaska

Summary

Cape Espenberg, Alaska, provides a unique opportunity to directly compare two Thule-period (ca. AD 1400-1450) houses built at virtually the same time on the same beach ridge only one meter apart. The tunnels of these houses are identically built; however, their interior construction, use of space, and artifact types and manufacturing debris strongly suggest that one house was a traditional domestic structure and the other was a men’s house. Ringed seal, the dietary staple across the Arctic, dominates the domestic house (90%), but not the men’s house (50%). Rather the men’s house is comprised of 30% fish remains (primarily small, saffron cod), which make up less than 1% of the fauna recovered from the domestic house. In addition, there is a distinct pattern of discard in the men’s house, with all fish recovered from the tunnel. In Arctic cultures, women are responsible for the distribution of food, even in a men’s house. However, our understanding of this men’s sphere is poorly known outside the ethnographic record. This analysis is provides the first detailed study of a men’s house using zooarchaeology as a proxy for gendered use of space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Toward a Social Archaeology of Food in Northern North America

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16719