Hearth rows, hierarchies and Arctic hunter-gatherers: the construction of equality in the Late Dorset period

Abstract

Around 1000 years ago, the eastern North American Arctic was occupied by people known to archaeologists as Late Dorset, who exhibited a high degree of sedentism, reliance on storage and in some regions a relatively high population density. At the same time, the Late Dorset archaeological record has yielded evidence for a well-developed artistic tradition, construction of elaborate communal structures in many regions and a widespread trade network. This package of traits is often associated with inegalitarian ‘complex hunter-gatherers’, a category represented in its most extreme form by recent First Nations of the Northwest Coast of North America. In the Late Dorset case, however, a number of attributes appear to be more consistent with egalitarian social relations. Most importantly, prominent communal structures in many Late Dorset regions known as ‘longhouses’ and ‘hearth rows’ are best interpreted as overt symbols of equality and homogeneity among Late Dorset individuals and groups. In attempting to understand why Late Dorset groups would invest so much labour in reinforcing a message of equality, a key contrast can be seen between the ‘core’ of the Late Dorset world, in Foxe Basin, and other regions to the west, north and east. The core does not contain longhouses and hearth rows, but does contain apparently high population densities and at least the beginning of a tradition of formal burials; in other regions, population densities are probably lower, longhouses and hearth rows are ubiquitous and burials are virtually unknown. Thus, the prominent egalitarian symbols in peripheral regions may have developed not simply as a reflection of existing social relations, but rather as a form of resistance to, or masking of, increasing social complexity in Late Dorset society as a whole.