No Empty Landscapes: Livelihood, Agency, and Transformation in Early Inuit South Greenland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Kujataa—South Greenland—constitutes a verdant environmental niche and was one of the most populous regions in Arctic Greenland, occupied by the Norse between ca. AD 985 and 1450 and Inuit in the following centuries until today. Whereas Norse society has been much studied, Inuit archaeology and history in Kujataa has been somewhat overlooked. This paper reports on two ongoing projects that investigate the development and character of early Inuit society in the period ca. AD 1450–1900 across three different fjords. When and how rapidly was the region settled by the Inuit? How did the Inuit use resources in the landscape and did this change over time? How many people were there, and what were the impacts of cultural encounters? Preliminary findings suggest that, while Kujataa shared many social-ecological similarities with West Greenland, Inuit society in Kujataa did develop certain regional traits but also was in a constant state of change and development. Agency and social impacts likely played a bigger transformative role in these developments than climate change or environmental factors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36082.0