IDNO

P.86326.PAT

Description

An expedition member kneeling investigating a recess in the ground amongst stones of what is possibly part of an Inuit house ruin.

Place

N America; Arctic; Greenland; McCormick Bay

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Paterson, Thomas Thompson

Date

14 August 1937

Collection Name

Paterson Collection

Source

Paterson, Erik T.

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Related Image: Same image mounted in James Wordie’s 1937 album with the number and caption:
“August 14. McCormick Bay.”
“516 - 519. A party went in a baneu [sp?] search for fish to the head of the bay, while Wordie, Drever & Feachem walked along the edge, over vast bolders, past some recent & unproductive sites.”
“519. Feachem”
See Related Documents File. [Jocelyne Dudding 7/3/2008]

Bibliographical Reference: J. M. Wordie; H. Carmichael; E. G. Dymond; T. C. Lethbridge, ‘An Expedition to North West Greenland and the Canadian Arctic in 1937’ in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 92, No. 5. (Nov., 1938), pp. 385-418.
Text on p. 392 and p. 394 includes:
“The ship meantime proceeded on August 9 to the Cary Islands to see if balloon flights were possible from this mid-water position”.
“We were not surprised therefore to find that there had been old Eskimo villages both on the south side of North West Island and at the ship anchorage at Isbjorn Island. At the former there were the remains of at least five huts, but they had been partly excavated by some previous visitor and only a few whale bones were present. It seems certain that this was the site visited by Markham in 1851, and the chance of making any study of these huts had gone. The anchorage site on the other hand had never been disturbed, and we found two umiak rests and five long houses, each accommodating several families. Whale bones were visible jutting through the turf of the longest house, and the turf was therefore stripped to expose a complete framework of rafters of whale bones. The house was three-roomed, two short walls projecting and acting as rests for the long whale-bone girders ; an interesting peculiarity was the symmetrical arrangement of whale scapulae. Measurements were made, but the bones were left untouched just as they were found and no excavations undertaken at this large hut, though digging was done at a smaller house alongside for comparative purposes”.
[JD 12/2/2007]

Biographical Information: Lethbridge, T. C., 1939. ‘Archaeological Data from the Canadian Arctic’ in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

P.86084.PAT to P.86583.PAT were found wrapped in the card now numbered C446/1/.

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Jocelyne Dudding 20/12/2006]