Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 20, 2007

RESOLUTE - Four Resolute youth got to delve into their past this summer, digging for artifacts left behind by their Thule ancestors.

Moses Aronsen uses a trowel while doing excavation work this summer just outside of Resolute. The 15-year-old wanted to get involved "because I had never done it before."

Led by McGill University PhD student Sarah Hazell, the four high school students were hired to aid in research on early Thule migration. Between July 10 and Aug. 8, the students worked with a trio from McGill, excavating one-and-a-half Thule house sites.

This summer was the first of a two-year project. Hazell is studying why and when the Thule people came to the Canadian Arctic. She's trying to discern whether migration occurred 1,000 years ago, motivated by a warming trend, where the Thule would have followed bowhead whale stocks, or, alternatively, if migration occurred 800 years ago, a result of an increase in the iron trade.

"It was a good way for kids to learn about their heritage, which is a very rich one," Hazell said of involving the four Resolute youth. "It was a fantastic way to have the community involved."

For the students the job offered a chance to unearth their past and learn new skills. They heard about the opportunity through their high school principal.

Sixteen-year-old Inootiq Manik explained that the tools of the trade included a trowel, bucket, dustpan and screen. One-metre by one-metre squares were outlined in the ground and then the four amateur archaeologists would remove the first layer of sod and put it through a screen. They would dig down until they hit gravel.

"We found harpoon heads, fish barb, some braided rope, two dolls, a carving of a polar bear, a scraper or an earlier ulu with the blade still intact, an arrowhead, microblades, and a piece of an ulu," Manik rhymed off.

The two dolls were wooden figurines of people found close together in the ground. The crew also found a lot of whale and seal bones.

"I don't know what it was, but I think it was a scraper or an ulu," 17-year-old Sylvia Kalluk said of the neatest artifact she dug up.

Moses Aronsen, 15, had never done this type of work before. He was surprised at what the group found buried among the Thule houses.

Aronsen was unsure of how old the artifacts were. Hazell is just commencing the radiocarbon dating part of the research now that she has returned to Quebec.

While it was a fun way to spend a summer, the four students are unsure if archeology is the profession for them. Patrick Manik, 16, is going into Grade 10, and while he knows he wants to attend college or university upon completing high school, he is still unsure of what he wants to study.

The three researchers from McGill "were trying to get me to be an archeologist, but I'm still going to be a pilot," Inootiq Manik said.

Kalluk said that the project was a good experience and when asked if she would want to study archeology, she replied, "probably, it was fun."

Hazell will be back next summer to continue the excavation work and plans to employ high school students again. The Thule houses are accessible to community members and visitors, who are able to sit inside of them and imagine what life was like in a bygone era.