Thule tradition
The Thule tradition refers to a significant cultural phase in Arctic history, emerging around 900 CE from earlier Birnik culture in northern Alaska. This Inuit people were adept at Arctic whaling, particularly of the bowhead whale, and engaged in fishing, seal, walrus, and caribou hunting. Archaeological findings have revealed a wealth of artifacts from Thule sites, including sophisticated harpoon heads, umiaks (skin boats), and various tools, indicating a rich, sustainable lifestyle comparable to other non-agricultural societies. The Thule culture thrived during a period of climatic warming between the 10th and 15th centuries, which facilitated their expansion eastward across subarctic Canada and into Labrador and Greenland, where they may have interacted with the declining Dorset culture and encountered Norse settlers. By the 15th century, the Thule tradition had established itself throughout these regions, leading to the development of the Inuits known to later history. This extensive cultural footprint reflects the Thule people's resilience and adaptability in one of the world's harshest environments.
Subject Terms
Thule tradition
Category: Prehistoric tradition
Date: c. 900-1450
Location: Bering Sea, northwestern Alaska, northern Canada, islands of the Beaufort Sea, Labrador, Greenland
Cultures affected: Aleut (Atka, Aleut, Unalaska Aleut), Inuit (Eskimo)
Archaeological evidence on the Thule tradition was assembled initially by Therkel Mathiassen, Knud Rasmussen, Henry Collins, Diamond Jenness, and James Ford between 1900 and the mid-1950’s. Their studies, along with later contributions by James L. Giddings, Jr., among others, identified the principal cultural characteristics of the pre-Eskimo Thule tradition and provided it with an accurate historical context. These same archaeologists loosely borrowed the name Thule from the ancient Greek’s designation of the world’s northernmost lands to depict the climactic phase of late prehistoric Inuit development in the subarctic.
Excavations of sites along the Bering Strait have made possible the construction of an eight-stage chronology beginning before 2000 b.c.e. with Okvik and Old Bering Sea cultures—the Arctic small tool tradition—which were superseded by the Birnik, Punuk, and then Thule cultures. From these, in turn, arose both the Prehistoric Recent and Modern Eskimo cultures. Certainly by 900 c.e. a Thule tradition had emerged from Birnik culture in northern Alaska. Composed of an Inuit people originally living along the Bering Strait, the Thule culture was marked by a sophisticated adaptation to Arctic whaling (particularly of the bowhead whale), fishing, and seal, walrus, and caribou hunting.
Artifacts yielded by the excavation of Thule sites across thousands of miles of the subarctic include skillfully crafted, often elegant, harpoon heads, umiaks (skin boats), cutting tools, snow goggles, eating utensils, fishhooks, throwing sticks, bow drills, saws, female fetishes, and the remains of elaborate pit houses, sustaining Robert McGhee’s conclusion that the Thule enjoyed an abundant, secure economy and a quality of life as rich as any other in the nonagricultural and nonindustrial world.
An extended period of climatic warming from the tenth through the fifteenth century presumably allowed Thule culture to spread rapidly eastward (during the same centuries when sustained warming allowed the Norse to move westward into Iceland and then Greenland), doubtless following whales and seals among the relatively ice-free islands and straits of the Beaufort Sea. By the eleventh century, the Thule tradition had extended itself 2,600 miles east from its origins in northern Alaska and the Bering Sea islands across subarctic Canada and into Labrador and northwestern Greenland, perhaps overlapping or displacing the indigenous Dorset culture, but more likely filling in areas vacated by the earlier collapse of the Dorset tradition. There is ample archaeological evidence that by the fifteenth century, the Thule had firmly established their culture throughout these eastern coastal regions, where some evidence indicates they encountered the Norse. There, in the east, Thule culture subsequently underwent regional adaptations or tribal specializations, from which sprang the Inuits or Eskimos known to historic times.