Nothing is wasted: The ideal “nothing is wasted” and divergence in past and present among caribou hunters in Greenland

Abstract

The 75 year old Greenlandic huntress Agnethe Rosing, is one of the last living persons who went hunting far inland in her youth. In 2003 she told about the ideal concept that “nothing is wasted” of a hunted caribou, and she demonstrated how the meat and the bones were handled as it was done “in the old days”. For the bones it meant that they were smashed to small pieces and cooked afterwards. It was possible to recognise this ideal in the surface bone distribution at numerous Thule archaeological sites in central West Greenland. However, this paper also shows that the ideal has not always been applied, and that “the old days” were not always the same. A test excavation in a midden at the site L 14 dated to 1600–1700s AD contained whole intact spinal columns and many complete, not smashed bones, and bones in anatomical order, suggesting a departure from the ideal and a dramatic change in hunting and economic strategies.