Comer's Midden was a 1916 archaeological excavation site near

Thule Thule ( grc-gre, Θούλη, Thoúlē; la, Thūlē) is the most northerly location mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography. Modern interpretations have included Orkney, Shetland, northern Scotland, the island of Saar ...

(modern Qaanaaq), north of Mt. Dundas in

North Star Bay North Star Bay ( da, North Star Bugt), also known as Thule Harbor and Wolstenholme Bay, is a bay off the mouth of Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland. The bay is named after HMS ''North Star''. Thule Air Base is located at the edge of the bay. There ...

in northern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...

.Thule Forum, 2006 It is the find after which the

Thule culture The Thule (, , ) or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people o ...

was named. The site was first excavated in 1916 by whaling Captain

George Comer Captain George Comer (April 1858 – 1937) was considered the most famous American whaling captain of Hudson Bay, and the world's foremost authority on Hudson Bay Inuit in the early 20th century. Comer was a polar explorer, whaler/ sealer, ethno ...

, ice master of the Crocker Land Expedition's relief team, and of members of

Knud Rasmussen Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (; 7 June 1879 – 21 December 1933) was a Greenlandic–Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" (now often known as Inuit Studies or Greenlandic and Arctic Studie ...

's Second Danish Thule Expedition who were in the area charting the North Greenland coast.

Excavation phases

;1916 With his ship ice-bound, Comer made use of his time through an archaeological excavation just south of Arctic Station of Thule unearthing, amongst other things, a kitchen-midden made by

paleo-Eskimo The Paleo-Eskimo (also pre-Thule or pre-Inuit) were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka (e.g., Chertov Ovrag) in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the arrival of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) and rel ...

s. The site is named in honor of Comer and the midden that he found. ;1920s Anthropologist Therkel Mathiassen accompanied Rasmussen's 5th Thule Expedition (1921–1924) that included a return to the Thule site. In Mathiasen's monumental works of the 1920s and 1930s, he described Comer's Midden as "the only substantial find of pure Thule culture in Greenland". ;1930s and 1940s The site was excavated by

Erik Holtved Dr. Erik Holtved ( Greenlandic nickname: ''Erissuaq''; translation: "Big Eric") (21 June 1899 in Fredericia, Denmark – 1981 in Copenhagen, Denmark) was a Danish artist, archaeologist, linguist, and ethnologist. He was the first university ...

in 1935 to 1937, and again in 1946 to 1947.

Archaeological finds

;Habitation periods The site shows signs of having been inhabited from the 14th to the 20th century although Holtved reports that the 17th and 18th centuries are poorly represented. ;Ruins The site contains about 26 house ruins and several middens distributed over an area of about in width and stretching over inland with the midden which Comer excavated located at its south end. The majority of the houses were more or less rounded, typically around across and most likely residential. One house was rectangular , with narrow platforms along two of the walls, was probably a "qassi" or "men's house" and was probably used as a workshop and for social gatherings. ;Artifacts Subsequent to the initial finds, additional artifacts pertain to the

Dorset culture The Dorset was a Paleo-Eskimo culture, lasting from to between and , that followed the Pre-Dorset and preceded the Thule people (proto-Inuit) in the North American Arctic. The culture and people are named after Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) in ...

, as well as items of Norse origin.Holtved (1944), vol. II, p. 26. The vast majority of harpoon heads found are of the open socket type typical of the Thule culture.

Re-settlement

In 1910, Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established a private trading post as Cape York and a settlement area named

Uummannaq Uummannaq is a town in the Avannaata municipality, in central-western Greenland. With 1,407 inhabitants in 2020, it is the eighth-largest town in Greenland, and is home to the country's most northerly ferry terminal. Founded in 1763 as Omenak, t ...

was established near it by local

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

, although it was known as Dundas in English. In 1953, Dundas and nearby

Pituffik Pituffik is a former settlement in northern Greenland, located at the eastern end of Bylot Sound by a tombolo known as ''Uummannaq'', near the current site of the American Thule Air Base. The former inhabitants were relocated to the present-day t ...

were converted into Thule Air Force Base and their residents relocated to Qaanaaq.

Notes

References

* *Birket-Smith, Kaj (1925). "Physical Anthropology, Linguistics, and Material Culture" in Rasmussen, Knud; Birket-Smith, Kaj; Mathiassen, Therkel; Freuchen, Peter ''The Danish Ethnographic and Geographic Expedition to Arctic America. Preliminary Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition''.

Geographical Review The ''Geographical Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge on behalf of the American Geographical Society. It covers all aspects of geography. The editor-in-chief is David H. Kaplan (Kent State University). H ...

, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 535–49.

American Geographical Society The American Geographical Society (AGS) is an organization of professional geographers, founded in 1851 in New York City. Most fellows of the society are Americans, but among them have always been a significant number of fellows from around the ...

. * *Gulløv, Hans Christian (2004). "Nunarput, vort land. Thulekulturen." in Gulløv, Hans Christian (ed.) ''Grønlands forhistorie''. Gyldendal. . *Holtved, Erik (1944). ''Archaeological Investigations in the Thule District, vol I. Descriptive part''. Meddelelser om Grønland, vol. 141, no. 1. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. *Holtved, Erik (1944). ''Archaeological Investigations in the Thule District, vol II. Analytical part''. Meddelelser om Grønland, vol. 141, no. 2. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. *Holtved, Erik (1954). ''Archaeological Investigations in the Thule District, vol III. Nûgdlît and Comer's Midden''. Meddelelser om Grønland, vol. 146, no. 3. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. *Mathiassen, Therkel (1935). ''Eskimo Migrations in Greenland''. Geographical Review, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 408–22. American Geographical Society. *Meldgaard, Jørgen (1996). "The Pioneers: The Beginnings of Paleo-Eskimo Research in West Greenland" in Grønnow, Bjarne; Pind, John (eds.) ''The Paleo-Eskimo Cultures of Greenland – New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology''. Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center. . *Rasmussen, Knud (1919). ''The Second Thule Expedition to Northern Greenland, 1916–1918''. Geographical Review, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 116–25. American Geographical Society. * * *Wissler, Clark (1918)
''Archaeology of the Polar Eskimo''
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 22, part 3, pp. 105–66. {{Abandoned sites in Greenland Populated places established in the 14th century Archaeological sites in Greenland Inuit history Prehistory of the Arctic Former populated places in Greenland