Pre-Dorset

Owing to its vast geographical expanse and the relatively short history of research, the Pre-Dorset is difficult to define. The term was coined by Collins (1956, 1957), who recognised that there seemed to be people who lived in the Eastern Canadian Arctic prior to the Dorset but for whose culture it was difficult to give the defining characteristics. Hence, for Collins and others afterward, the term is a catch-all phrase for all occupations of the Eastern Canadian Arctic that predated the Dorset. To Taylor (1968) and Maxwell (1973), however, the Pre-Dorset were a distinct cultural entity, ancestral to the Dorset, who lived in the Low Arctic of Canada with a number of incursions into High Arctic.

At the site of Port Refuge on the Grinnell Peninsula, Devon Island, McGhee distinguished two sets of occupations, one that he ascribed to the Independence I culture, the other to Pre-Dorset. Owing to the often poor preservation of organic material and the fact that bones from marine mammals can appear older with radiocarbon dating than their actual age (the marine reservoir effect), it is typically difficult to date Arctic sites. But the Independence I settlement is several metres higher above sea level, and McGhee took this to mean that the Independence I settlement was roughly 300 years older than the Pre-Dorset one at Port Refuge. Indeed, assuming that settlers are always close to the water, because sea levels fell over the centuries older sites are expected to lie higher above the sea. Most features that McGhee believed different between the Pre-Dorset and Independence I settlements of Port Refuge are problematic and cannot systematically be used to distinguish their cultural affiliation. It has been suggested that Pre-Dorset and Independence I are parts of the same culture.

Chronology

Maxwell divided the Pre-Dorset into four phases, a scheme refined by Murray:

• Early Pre-Dorset 4450 to 3650 ¹⁴C BP (c. 3350-2950 to 2200-1900 cal BCE)
• Middle Pre-Dorset 3650 to 3250 ¹⁴C BP (c. 2200-1900 to 1650-1450 cal BCE)
• Late Pre-Dorset 3250 to 2750 ¹⁴C BP (c. 1600-1450 to 900-850 cal BCE)
• Terminal or Dorset Transitional Pre-Dorset 2750 to 2450 ¹⁴C BP (c. 1000-850 to 750-400 cal BCE)

It is typically difficult to ascribe a Pre-Dorset site to one of these four phases without relying on radiocarbon dates.