At the edge. High Arctic Walrus hunters during the Little Ice Age

• Autores: Bjarne Grønnow, Hans Christian Gulløv, Bjarne Holm Jakobsen, Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen, Laura Hauch Kauffmann, Aart Kroon, Jørn Bjarke Torp Pederson, Mikkel Sørensen
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 85, Nº 329, 2011, págs. 960-977
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A multi-disciplinary study of settlement in north-east Greenland found that life in this High Arctic zone was actually favoured by the climate brought in by the Little Ice Age (fifteenth-nineteenth century). Extensive ice cover meant high mobility, and the rare polynyas - small patches of permanently open coastal water - provided destinations, like oases, where huge numbers of migrating marine mammals and birds congregated. One such place was Walrus Island on Sirius Water, a veritable processing plant for walrus, where every spring Thule people stocked up meat supplies that would get the rest of the region through the winter. It was a further drop in the temperature in the mid nineteenth century that led to the region being abandoned.