Nelson River is a Thule Tradition site, located on southern coast of Banks Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Banks Island is separated from the Canadian mainland by the Amundsen Gulf. It is the earliest Thule occupation known to date east of Alaska, and hence evidence of the dating of the Thule migration.
Excavations conducted in the 1990s revealed a single wooden framed structure, with two rooms joined at a common tunnel entrance. The rooms had a plank and pole floor; the larger room included a raised earthen platform that may have represented a sleeping platform.
An exterior cooking area was marked by charred fat and boulders. Pottery, Sicco, Natchuk and Thule 2 harpoon heads, and faunal remains including arctic fox, caribou and muskox were also discovered at the site.
Although the original investigations suggested a date of about 1000 AD, new radiocarbon dates at Nelson River taken on terrestrial bone and sedge matting support a revised date about 200 years later, between AD 1150-1200.
Sources
See the Thule Tradition article for more information.
Friesen, T. M. and Charles D. Arnold 2008 The Timing of the Thule Migration: New Dates from the Western Canadian Arctic. American Antiquity 73 (3):527-538.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
