Over the course of the 19th century, many European explorers sailed in search of a Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. These journeys brought them into territory occupied by Inuit, who both traded with the explorers for various goods and interacted with the material that they left behind. The Inuit then sometimes altered these goods to suit their own needs and the alterations had the potential of ascribing new meaning to the material that was different from what the European manufacturers intended. In this research, I will examine the remains of two ship’s boats from three sites on King William Island (NgLj-2, NgLj-3, and NgLj-8) that were abandoned by members of the Franklin expedition and subsequently found and altered by an Inuit sub-group called the Netsilik to reveal the motivational factors behind their actions. By combining the conceptual frameworks of entanglement and salvage, it appears that Inuit utilized these boats in a manner that reflects (1) their environment, (2) what the material afforded, (3) their past experiences with Europeans and European material, and (4) their intended uses of the material.

Junius Bird's 1934 Hopedale Area Survey saw excavations conducted at Avertok and four other sites in Labrador's Hopedale region. The project, and its focus on Inuit sod-houses, became a foundation to much of the archaeology that followed in Labrador. However, today there are questions regarding how 1930s ideas may have led to poor methodological choices, such as the intentional discard of European-derived artifacts, and thus ultimately inaccurate conclusions. Beyond their place in the history of archaeology, these sites remain culturally important to local Inuit populations because of their roles in the region's 17th and 18th century whaling, trade, and early Moravian presence. As part of the Tradition & Transition Research Partnership (T&T) between Memorial Univeristy (MUN) and the Nunatsiavut Government (NG), MUN's Archaeology Department began the Avertok Archaeology Project (AAP), fulfilling local requests to preform achaeological reassessments at two of Bird's five sites in the summer of 2017. This presenation intends to (1) discuss Bird's original conclusions and the means by which he reached them and (2) to evaluate which of these conclusions are now understood to be inaccurate and in what ways. Along with this, the multiple streams of data used including those specifically designed to assess Bird's methodologies and achieve this re-evaluation will be discussed.

The Neoeskimo Thule, or the Thule Inuit, occupying the North American Arctic from Alaska to Greenland approximately 1000 AD to 1400  - 1500 AD, are ancestors of today’s Iñupiat, Inuit and Kalaallit/Greenlanders. They hunted marine mammals, caribou, and birds, at times using weapons tipped with iron from Greenland’s Cape York meteorite or with smelted iron from sources outside North America circulated via their extensive trade networks. Evidence from the last thirty years has challenged the chronology of the Thule Migration from Alaska to Greenland and earlier understanding about iron that was available to the Thule. The reassessment has benefitted from recent excavations; longterm, interdisciplinary projects; new technologies; cut mark analysis; and spatial analysis enabled by GIS-based data from government-maintained archaeological databases.