ARCUS 17th Annual Meeting and Arctic Forum 2005

Survey at 78 Degrees: Archaeological Investigations in Inglefield Land, Northwest Greenland

John Darwent¹, Christyann Darwent², Genevieve LeMoine^3
1Anthropology, University of California, Davis, USA
²Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
³The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, Bowdoin College, 9500 College Station, Brunswick, ME, 04011-8495, USA, Phone 207-725-3304, glemoine@bowdoin.edu

The Inglefield Land archaeology project (ILAP) is a long-term archaeological research project led by Christyann Darwent of the University of California, Davis, and Genevieve LeMoine of The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College, collaborating with Hans Lange, of the Greenland National Museum and Archives, and David Qaavigaq, of the Thule Museum in Qaanaaq.

Located at the northern end of the North Water polynya, Inglefield Land has been an attractive place for maritime hunters to live for millennia. Its prehistoric role as the ‘gateway to Greenland’ and its historic role as a base for Euro-American exploration parties, as well as the destination of the one of the few documented Inuit long-distance migrations, means it is well-suited for studying the complex interactions of cultures in a changing environment.
Here we describe the results of the first year’s fieldwork at two locations along the coast of Inglefield land, Force Bay and Marshall Bay. In this early stage of research our work focused on systematic archaeological survey, documenting the rich archaeological resources of this region.