Comer's Midden was a 1916 archaeological excavation site at Uummannaq, known as Dundas in English, north of Mt. Dundas in the Thule area of

North Star Bay North Star Bay (), also known as Thule Harbor and Wolstenholme Bay, is at the mouth of Wolstenholme Fjord in north-west Greenland. The Dundas Peninsula, terminating in the mesa-like Mount Dundas, is at the north-eastern end of the bay. Two large ...

, in northern

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

.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 1000 AD and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the ...

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, ethn ...

, ice master of the

Crocker Land Expedition The Crocker Land Expedition took place in 1913. Its purpose was to investigate the existence of Crocker Land, a huge island supposedly sighted by the explorer Robert Peary from the top of Cape Colgate in 1906. It is now believed that Peary fraud ...

'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 Studies) ...

's Second Danish Thule Expedition who were in the area charting the

North Greenland The Northern Inspectorate of Greenland (), also known as North Greenland, was a Danish inspectorate on Greenland consisting of the trading centers and missionary stations along the northwest coast of the island. History West Greenland was di ...

coast.Rasmussen, p. 117. "With the aid of Captain Comer, of the Crocker Land Expedition, a large kitchen-midden was dug out in Umanaq."

Excavation phases

First

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 meaning ''"old Eskimos"'', also known as, pre-Thule people, Thule or pre-Inuit, were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Chukotka (e.g., Chertov Ovrag) in present-day Russia across North Am ...

s. The site is named in honor of Comer and the midden that he found.

Subsequent

Anthropologist

Therkel Mathiassen Therkel Mathiassen (5 September 1892, in Favrbo, Denmark – 14 March 1967) was a Danish archaeologist, anthropologist, cartographer, and ethnographer notable for his scientific study of the Arctic. Career Mathiassen and Peter Freuchen took par ...

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". 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.

Twentieth-century settlement

In 1910, Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen established a private trading post as " Cape York". Local

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

established a settlement area named "Uummannaq" near it. The settlement was called "Dundas" in English. In 1953, Dundas and nearby

Pituffik Pituffik is a former Inughuit settlement in North Star Bay, near Mount Dundas at the eastern end of Bylot Sound in northern Greenland. The area is now occupied by the U.S. Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base. The Inughuit inhabitants wer ...

were converted into

Thule Air Force Base Pituffik Space Base ( ; ; ), formerly Thule Air Base (), is a United States Space Force base located on the northwest coast of Greenland in the Kingdom of Denmark under a defense agreement between Denmark and the United States. 150 United Stat ...

and their residents relocated to

Qaanaaq Qaanaaq (), formerly known as New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. The town has a population of 646 as of 2020. The population was forcibly relocated from its former, traditiona ...

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). ...

, 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 United States, Americans, but among them have always been a significant number of fellows f ...

. * *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 ''Meddelelser om Grønland'' ("''Communications on Greenland''") is a Danish scientific journal, scientific periodical which publishes scientific results from all fields of research on Greenland. It was established by Frederik Johnstrup and publi ...

, 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. * * * {{coord, 76, 34, N, 68, 50, W, region:GL, display=title Avannaata Populated places established in the 14th century Archaeological sites in Greenland Inuit history Prehistory of the Arctic Former populated places in Greenland Thule people