The Maritime Archaic is a

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

n cultural complex of the Late Archaic along the coast of

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

, the

Canadian Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% o ...

and northern

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

. The Maritime Archaic began in approximately 7000 BC and lasted into the 18th century. The culture consisted of sea-mammal hunters in the

subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of humid continental regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Scandinavia, Siberia, and the Cairngorms. Genera ...

who used wooden boats. Maritime Archaic sites have been found as far south as

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...

and as far north as Labrador. Their settlements included

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often re ...

s, and boat-topped temporary or seasonal houses. They engaged in long-distance trade, as shown by white

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...

from northern

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

being found as far south as Maine. The Maritime Archaic is one cultural complex among several of the Archaic stage for North American peoples. It had been long postulated that the most likely direct descendants of the Maritime Archaic culture were the Beothuk of Newfoundland. The latter, through susceptibility to Eurasian diseases, conflict with neighbouring native groups, and malnourishment after European persecution pushed them inland and away from the fish and marine mammals that had been a staple of their diet, succumbed to erosion of their population base, small to begin with, and disappeared in the 19th century as a distinct tribe Archaeogenetic research in 2017 established, however, that the Maritime Archaic people had nothing genetically in common with the

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 Territorie ...

, nor with the Beothuk, who later inhabited the same area after the climatic conditions changed. A study published in ''Current Biology'' compared the

mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...

of 74 individuals, 19 Beothuk, 53 Maritime Archaic, and two Paleo-Eskimo, and found that these populations were not at all related. Another significant Maritime Archaic find are the " Red Ochre Culture" burials throughout the Northeast United States (their attribution to MA is not generally accepted). They may represent the last phases of the Maritime Archaic, as they contain significant finds of white chert artifacts common to other Maritime Archaic sites. This issue is currently debated among scholars. If the hypothesis of the Red Ochre as the last state of the Maritime Archaic period is accepted, then the latter is best known from a

mortuary A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cu ...

site in Newfoundland at Port au Choix. This site revealed over 100 graves embellished with red ochre. The graves contained many elaborate artifacts, including barbed bone points; daggers of ivory, antler, or bone; toggling harpoons; shell-beaded clothing; and a burial suit made from more than 200 skins of the now-extinct

great auk The great auk (''Pinguinus impennis'') is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus ''Pinguinus''. It is not closely related to the birds now known as penguins, wh ...

. These finds indicated a

stratified Stratification may refer to: Mathematics * Stratification (mathematics), any consistent assignment of numbers to predicate symbols * Data stratification in statistics Earth sciences * Stable and unstable stratification * Stratification, or st ...

society with trade and some level of social complexity (Tuck, 1976).

References

* Fagan, Brian (2005): ''Ancient North America'': 188-189. Thames & Hudson, London.

See also

References

Further reading