Nadlok and Its Unusual Antler Dwellings

Abstract

Nadlok, or "crossing-place-of-deer" in Bathurst Inuit dialect, is an island camp and herd interception site found in 1982 by Douglas Stern 100 km south of Bathurst Inlet, Northwest Territories. In the "Little Ice Age" (1450-1700 A.D.), a few families of coastal Copper Inuit appear to have abandoned a declining seal resource on the coast for predictable and available inland caribou hunting at Nadlok. A simple tent camp, as seen in the architecturally sterile bottom level dating 1400 A.D., evolved into 15 sturdy stone and antler dwellings occupied in winter. ... Scattered between the floors were late prehistoric Copper Inuit tools, art and trade goods. Men's and women's tools include an ornately engraved antler knife handle, ulus, harpoons, arrows, copper fishhooks with bone lures, needle cases, whittling knives, engraved pendants, fire-starting kits and awls. There were some 40 000 bones, mostly the remains of caribou, but also of birds, fish and muskox. ...