Although the study of Thule harpoon heads has produced important seriations, datings and technological reflections during the last century, a lack of fundamental knowledge about these weapons is still occurring. An attempt is made to document the different contexts surrounding the use of these artifacts. Technological, social and symbolic investigations are made on the occupants of the Skraeling Island site (High Arctic, Canada) and the Clachan site (Coronation Gulf, Canada) in order to build a complete understanding of the harpoon head morphological attributes. Using the hierarchical cluster analysis (SPSS), groupings have been statistically formed, underlying the meaningful dimensions of variation of the objects. It is then found that technological, social and symbolic mechanisms are systematically responsible for different aspects of Thule harpoon head morphology, and by comparing the two archaeological assemblages, we conclude that these mechanisms operate in the same direction, even if resulting in different harpoon head styles.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.83102 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Gadoua, Marie-Pierre |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Anthropology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002227466, proquestno: AAIMR12720, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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