Two Balades in the Same Landscape: Perspectives of Oral History and Archaeological Survey on the Cultural Landscapes of the Dog Island Region, Nunatsiavut

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As part of an ongoing fieldwork program in the Nain region of Nunatsiavut (Newfoundland and Labrador), the authors worked together in 2022 on a survey of Inuit archaeological sites on Dog Island and Sculpin Island. Already-known archaeological sites were revisited and a number of new sites were documented (sod houses, tent rings, hunting blinds, caches, and lithic scatters). Three remarkable locations documented in the course of this survey will be discussed in this presentation. All three are, in many regards, typical of sites of their type and age, nevertheless all three were challenges to find and to interpret given their particular compositions and settings in the landscape. A lively discussion regarding these sites’ forms and functions developed between the authors; one with a formal archaeology training and the other, with extensive personal archaeological experience with archaeology and living on the land in the region, applying his own knowledge and his family’s oral histories. This presentation will describe these sites and contrast how the two authors viewed and interpreted them. The paths of these two archaeologies show important points of divergence and convergence that are informative for landscape archaeology and for the practice of community archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Research and Challenges in Arctic and Subarctic Cultural Heritage Studies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40048.0