Learning from the best: palaeo-Inuit novice flintknapping on southern Baffin Island
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Date
2022-03-31
Authors
Hood, Elenore Grace
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Abstract
This thesis investigates two aspects of Palaeo-Inuit lithic quarry use in the eastern Arctic. The first is the place of the LbDt-1 quarry in the established lithic reduction continuum on southern Baffin Island and to investigate how Palaeo-Inuit peoples structured their use of this site. The second is the social role of LbDt-1 as a place where novice flintknappers had their first opportunity to gain practical experience breaking rocks.
A multi-method approach that combines individual attribute and aggregate analyses is applied to the lithic debitage from LbDt-1. The results indicate that lithic activities at LbDt-1 were limited to the earliest stages of the lithic reduction and a high frequency of novice mistakes point to use of the site by inexperienced flintknappers. Comparison of the LbDt-1 debitage assemblage to extant data from four Pre-Dorset habitation sites located in the interior and on the coast (Milne 2003) indicates a higher frequency of novice errors at the quarry and the two interior sites compared to the coastal sites. This suggests that the LbDt-1 quarry, and the interior region more generally, was the preferred location for novices to gain experience in flintknapping. Further, the debitage patterns identified at LbDt-1 represent only the earliest stages of lithic reduction and lack evidence of tool production. In this way, the LbDt-1 assemblage does not resemble a typical quarry, and contradicts the expectation of the field processing model that a quarry located at a significant distance from habitation sites would have debitage from the full reduction sequence (see Beck et al. 2002). Lithic activities at LbDt-1 did not emphasize efficient chert extraction, but rather the social decisions made by Palaeo-Inuit people, who had determined that the interior was the appropriate place for teaching novices to flintknap (Milne 2014:110). The abundance of chert available in the interior compared to on the coast was no doubt a significant determinant in the association of the interior region with chert procurement and novice learning (Milne 2003, 2005, 2014).
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Keywords
Baffin Island, lithic quarry, chert, novice, flintknapping, field processing model, Palaeo-Inuit, Pre-Dorset, Dorset, lithic, quarry, apprenticeship