The Inglefield Land Archaeology Project in NW Greenland, 2004-16: Mitigating Cultural Resources in the Era of Climate Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

With support of the NSF Arctic Social Sciences program, we undertook seven field seasons (2004-2016) investigating the 4000-year history of human habitation of Inglefield Land, with particular attention to the Inughuit and their interactions with Euro-American Arctic explorers in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. We recorded over 2350 new archaeological features, excavated a dozen house structures across the region, and provided field experience for 20 Greenlandic and US students. The focus of our most recent field seasons has been on recovery of the rapidly eroding site of Iita; a location that is unique in the High Arctic for its buried stratified deposits recording the last 1000 years from Late Dorset, through Thule/Inughuit. It is this recent history that is the most vulnerable to declining permafrost and erosion, and thus we propose a model for mitigation of cultural resources in this region from the perspective of cultural heritage management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Accelerating Environmental Change Threats to Cultural Heritage: Serious Challenges, Promising Responses   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25336