The Frozen Saqqaq Sites of Disko Bay, West Greenland

Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa are the only known sites of the Early Arctic Small Tool tradition in the Eastern Arctic, where all kinds of organic materials wood, bone, baleen, hair, skin are preserved in permafrozen culture layers. Together, the sites cover the entire Saqqaq era in Greenland (c. 2400900 BC). Technological and contextual analyses of the excellently preserved archaeological materials from the frozen layers form the core of this publication. Bjarne Gronnow draws a new picture of a true Arctic pioneer society with a remarkably complex technology. The Saqqaq hunting tool kit, consisting of bows, darts, lances, harpoons, and throwing boards, as well as kayak-like sea-going vessels, is described for the first time. A wide variety of hand tools and household utensils as well as lithic and organic refuse and animal bones were found on the intact floor of a midpassage dwelling at Qeqertasussuk. These materials provide entirely new information on the daily life and subsistence of the earliest hunting groups in Greenland. Comparative studies put the Saqqaq Culture into a broad cultural-historical perspective as one of the pioneer societies of the Eastern Arctic.