Background

Recent research in archaeology has drastically improved our perception of the prehistory and history of the Arctic. These advances have demonstrated that Arctic peoples possess rich, interconnected and complex histories.

Movement is regarded as an important concept both for describing changes in human societies and for understanding human relationships with the natural and social environment. Firstly, the concept of movement encompasses human actions ranging from seasonal mobility constituted by small-scale movements within a region, to long-term, inter-regional migrations. Secondly, it refers to the movement of resources and cultural artefacts through trade and exchange between regions that serves to level out uneven resource distribution in both space and time, and it can also symbolise social connections. Participation in regional and interregional communication networks is also central to long-term Arctic history, as rational choices can only be made with access to information about the social and natural environments outside the local and regional areas. These networks may be embedded in trade or exchange, or based on ideological or social connections and alliances. The ultimate objective of the project is to bring about an understanding of the dynamic strategies of movement, communication, and other social actions that Arctic peoples generate when interacting with their social, cultural, and natural environments. These strategies can operate at multiple levels, including individual agents, families or households, local groups, and all people of a given cultural tradition. In particular, connections between these levels are expected to be important in identifying the multifarious life-strategies employed by individuals and societies.

In cold climates, sources of heat have necessarily been of major importance. In large areas of Greenland soapstone was used in order to make lamps and other containers that were used for heating food as well as providing light for the dwellings.

The western coast of Greenland was primarily settled by members of the Saqqaq culture at around 2500 BC and initially driftwood was used for heating dwellings. However, when primary sources for fuelling fire were exhausted, people started to make soapstone lamps filling them with bladder oil from seals. Soapstone is abundant in the Nuuk region of Western Greenland, and of high quality while only a few quarries have been identified in other parts of Greenland, and consequently soapstone became an important commodity for exchange. It has been ascertained that raw material was exchanged over long distances since we know that special metamorphic slate, killiaq, was extensively used in the Nuuk region for making tools although the source is located in Disco Bay some 650 km to the north.

In 2005 a project was initiated with the purpose of developing a new and more integrated understanding of Arctic cultural history. The intention was to promote an international orientation for the project based on the composition of the group of research members and to strengthen the development of an internationally based education and exchange programme on Arctic prehistory and history.

The point of departure for this project is to initiate archaeological investigations of the Nuuk area’s renowned but under-documented steatite quarry sites. The ambition is to combine the substantial historical and ethnographical source material to develop a number of solidly founded models for the historical trade and exchange in soapstone and to trace its imprint in the archaeological record. The main commodity in this study is soapstone but other raw materials such as minerals for making tools as well as a variety of reindeer products have been of importance in longterm as well as short-term exchange networks.

Today the traditional use of soapstone for vessels, lamps and weights for line fishing is all but obsolete, the mineral now having quite a different use as a material for artists to carve figures, which are attractive for tourists to buy.

There is also an interesting gender perspective related to soapstone. According to local oral tradition, prior to the historic period which dates from 1722 when the first Danes settled in Greenland, soapstone was known to be a raw material pertaining to women on account of the fact that it was the women who formed the soapstone items and subsequently kept the profit from soapstone trading for themselves.

The title of the project is “The Steatite Objects Analysis Project” (S.O.A.P.). The initiative became one of the sub-projects under the International Polar Year project “Dynamics of Social Strategies in Arctic Environments: Long-Term Perspectives on Movement and Communication”.

Previous fieldwork

In 2005 the fieldwork mainly involved surveying for soapstone quarries. Soapstone quarries had been observed at a number of sites along the coastline of the entire Nuuk fjord. These sites were visited and the quarries documented in order to look for suitable sites for further investigation. The fieldwork in 2006 was concentrated to the inner part of the Nuuk fjord with a calving glacier just a few kilometres away. Traces of a settlement were identified at Nassatsiaq on a small cape damaged by the heavy currents that are caused by the pronounced variation of the tide. In the nearby mountains several soap-stone outcrops and quarries were documented. Diagnostic extraction marks after quarrying lamps and pots suggested that most of these sites were used intensively during the 18th century, but also show evidence of activity from the very earliest presence of the Thule people (the ancestors of present-day Inuit) in the area in the 14th century. During the excavation of one of the quarrying sites a small hearth was found in lower layers of soapstone waste. Dating of charcoal from the hearth indicated quarrying activities at this site had already been initiated by the Norse (Viking) settlers in the area as early as in the 11th century. This is not surprising since the Nassatsiaq site is located in the hearth of the Norse Western settlement, hosting the remains of more than 100 farms.

On the small cape immediately below the quarries, excavations revealed the presence of substantial occupation layers and dwelling features. The lowermost layer belonged to the Saqqaq culture and a fireplace located at this settlement dated the earliest settlement of Western Greenland to about 2500 BC. Thick “pockets” of talcum (soapstone-dust) in connection to the dated hearth clearly indicates that lamps were manufactured on the site by the Saqqaq-people. Finds and waste from other layers show that the manufacture of soapstone artefacts was carried out well into the 17th and 18th centuries. Several types of artefacts from these later layers indicate that Inuit connected to the Moravian Mission station – called Uummannaq and located some 40 km from Nassatsiaq – may well have quarried the soapstone. A partly preserved wooden and turf house can still be seen at the site. The house was built in the early 1950s by a well-known reindeer hunter and soapstone carver and subsequently abandoned sometime during the 1970s.

Fieldwork

In 2007 the project reached its full potential with a total of some 25 members from Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and Greenland. A small fjord, Ujarassuit pavat, a tributary fjord of the large Nuuk fjord, became the main area of research since information existed about a soapstone quarry in the inner part of the small fjord. By surveying the area a considerable number of quarries were identified and later documented. This area holds the largest outcrops of soapstone in all Greenland, most of which have been extensively quarried, leaving large heaps of waste and the extracted area partly filled with water. At a few locations traces of the use of a chain saw proved that the quarries were still in use.

On the other side of the fjord a Norse farm named Anavik is located. This is one of the largest farms in the Western Settlement, with several houses including a pack house and a church. The church is one of only four churches in the Western settlement, and provides evidence of the prominent position of the Anavik farm. This is further supported by the presence of the heavily built pack house, otherwise referred to in Greenlandic archaeology as “safety deposit boxes”, as they are thought to have been used for storing especially valuable commodities. This type of pack house is rare in Greenland. The farm is located just a few kilometres from the inland ice and the limited area suitable for grazing is surprising given the seemingly high status of the farm. However, a large ice-free region immediately north of Anavik suggests that reindeer hunting and fur-animal trapping, for example arctic foxes, have been of major importance, as was the case until recent years. Furthermore, it is possible that the farm’s position close to soapstone sources may also have been important. Excavations at some of the soapstone quarries show that large blocks have been extracted by the Norse that were suitable not only for vessels, but probably also for building material. In some quarries almost all soapstone has been extracted by the Norse, while members of the preceding Thule culture (1000–1700 AD) restricted quarrying to removing soapstone in the exterior part of the soapstone crops. As vessels of soapstone in many cases replaced the clay vessels familiar in Iceland and northern Scandinavia, the Norse extraction may well have been highly profitable for the members of the Anavik farm.

At a site close to the coastline and below the quarries, heaps of soapstone refuse were found. Preforms and broken pieces of soapstone show that intensive manufacture of lamps and vessels was in progress during the Thule culture and probably during periods of the Dorset culture (500 BC–AD) and Saqqaq culture (2500–800 BC). A site from the latter culture was found at a cape (know by local inhabitants as Putukkut Nuua) about 1 km away although the only artefact made of soapstone was a preform of a lamp. Finds include a number of arrowheads that attest to Puttukut Nuua’s use as a special-purpose camp combined with reindeer hunting. The same cape has later been used for different purposes. A wall of stone may belong to a Norse building and close to it three graves were documented, one containing two individuals from the Thule culture. Even in spite of climate change, localities with a good position in relation to different resources have been used over long periods of time. At the site of a river estuary close to our camp a considerable number of stone rings, the remains of supports for tents, were visible. The removal of stones from such circles proves that the site has been inhabited during the reindeer hunting season for a large number of generations. Parts of tents and modern equipment show that it is now used for recreational hunting.

The information accumulated over the three years of work has been substantial and has changed our perception of parts of the cultural history of this region. The project has also given rise to important theoretical and methodological considerations on how to bridge archaeology with other scientific disciplines, as well as revealing various uses of the landscape over time. The next step is to analyse all the data – a task that will be significantly inspired by the multi-facetted approaches represented by the international mixture of professors and students from six countries.