More Than Just a Pot: The Social Life of Soapstone Vessels among the Southern Labrador Inuit

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Throughout the Canadian Arctic and Greenland soapstone (steatite) oil lamps and cooking pots were a common and crucial component of Inuit daily life. Maintaining a houseful involved elaborate behavior structured around the hearth and its technical and social components. Despite their importance and their ubiquitous presence in archaeological sites, soapstone vessels have received little scholarly attention. This paper featuring data from excavations at seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Inuit sites along the Quebec Lower North Shore explores material, social, and ritual aspects of this technology in a context of early European contact and culture change, when soapstone vessels were being replaced by copper and cast iron pots. Issues involved in this conversion include sourcing, manufacture, transport and exchange, mechanics of use, heat sources, breakage and repair, spiritual life, and ritual disposal. Soapstone cookware was expensive and highly curated; yet its end-of-life remains are common archaeological finds. While mostly focusing on the historical Southern Inuit, the use of soapstone vessels among Labrador Inuit, Thule, and Dorset cultures, and from Inuit oral history and ethnography, provide comparative perspective.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Social Archaeology in the North and North Atlantic (SANNA 3.0): Investigating the Social Lives of Northern Things   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32852