IDNO

P.86328.PAT

Description

Stony beach and bay of possibly Isbjørn Harbour? with a stone umiak rest in the left foreground, consisting of a raised circular area of stones.

Place

N America; Arctic; Greenland; Carey Islands; ?Isbjørneø [Isbjørn Island]; ?Isbjorn Harbour

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Paterson, Thomas Thompson

Date

9 - 12 August 1937

Collection Name

Paterson Collection

Source

Paterson, Erik T.

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

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.
Text on p. 188 includes:
“A second settlement was found on Isbjorn Island, beneath a preciptious crag which supported a large colony of Brunnich’s Guillemots. There were again five huts. These huts were placed on the raised beaches, which here ascend in terraces from the shore of the strait. The huts were neither confined to any particular one of the terraces, nor were they so close together as in the other settlement. No graves were seen, but there were stone rests for two umiaks, and several meat caches which were very neatly built in a bee-hive manner. One of the umiak-rests, which was just above the little cliff at the edge of the sea, stood on what was undoubtly the site of a very ancient hut, and there was the faint hollow of another a little way along the shore. There two huts are thought to be as old as (or older than) anything noted on the Isbjorn Expedition. They were distinguishale as lsight hollows in the old beach surface, which only supported a very little grass and lichen. It may be of value to note that these ancient huts stood lower and nearer to the sea than any of the later ones”.
[JD 14/3/2007]

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]