Dorset Culture and the Disappearance of Arctic Paleo-Inuit Communities

Record summary

Dorset communities occupied much of the eastern Arctic for roughly two millennia and are recognized through distinctive houses, tools, carvings, and hunting adaptations. Their disappearance from many regions around the time of Thule expansion has generated historical traditions and archaeological debate about interaction, competition, disease, climate, and demographic change. The lead matters for comparison because oral traditions about Tuniit or Tunit should be examined alongside settlement chronologies and paleoclimate evidence, not treated as straightforward eyewitness records. The causes and timing of regional disappearance were not uniform.