Sealing, whaling and caribou revisited: additional insights from the skeletal isotope chemistry of eastern Arctic foragers

Research reported here is the second phase of a bone collagen stable isotope and radiocarbon study of eastern Arctic diets. Seventy-five directly dated burials from the Native Point Sadlermiut mortuary collection and two Thule sites, Kamarvik and Silumiut in northwest Hudson Bay, were added to an existing data set of 81 individuals. Thule foragers dated to a 2σ range of AD 1047–1700 and subsisted on diets comprised of ca. 80% marine taxa, primarily ringed seal and bowhead whale. The Native Point Sadlermiut dated later in time, AD 1289–1896, and relied more heavily on high tropic level marine taxa, ringed seal and seabirds. Three dietary trends are apparent coincident with Neo-Boreal cooling (AD 1400). In addition, both Thule sites were abandoned at commencement of the Little Ice Age (AD 1600), which coincides with European contact, raising intriguing questions about the effects of climate change on high latitude foraging strategies and the possibility that epidemic disease was introduced in the Hudson Bay region as early as 1613.