THULE WINTER SITE DEMOGRAPHY IN THE HIGH ARCTIC

The people of the Thule culture, who entered the Canadian Arctic appro ximately 1,000 years ago and eventually became the Inuit who today inh abit that region, spent the long winters living in impressive semisubt erranean houses constructed of boulders, skins, pieces of cut turf, an d the bones of bowhead whales. Most sites contain fewer than 10 houses , but some contain many more, lending to disagreement among archaeolog ists concerning Thule settlement patterns. This paper reviews the crit eria archaeologists have used to identify contemporaneous houses at la rge Thule sites and identifies a new criterion rested at a site in the High Arctic. The 14 houses at the Porden Point site appear to have ac cumulated gradually through the abandonment of some houses and the con struction of others. Therefore, the impressive appearance today of man y Thule sites may not reflect their actual social/demographic nature.