Dorset Bear Figurine- Nunavut, Canada

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Institution: Canadian Museum of History

Territory: Nunavut

Object: Figurine

Era: Woodland Period

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The Dorset, an early Artic culture, carved this polar bear between 800 to 1000 years ago. It was recovered from the Sleeper Islands, which were inhabited by The Dorset until the 1100 CE.

The Dorset most likely made this figurine during the Medieval Warm Period when there was less sea-ice and walruses were a less significant food source. Hunters also spent a significant amount of time observing polar bear behavior. Most carvings depict polar bears in the aquatic stalking position, a movement used to hunt seals.

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Sources:

• Betts, Matthew W., Mari Hardenberg, and Ian Stirling. "How Animals Create Human History: Relational Ecology and the Dorset-Polar Bear Connection." American Antiquity 80, no. 1 (2015): 89-112.

• Friesen, T. Max, Sarah A. Finkelstein, and Andrew S. Medeiros. "Climate variability of the Common Era (AD 1–2000) in the eastern North American Arctic: Impacts on human migrations." Quaternary International 549 (2020): 142-154.

• LeMoine, Genevieve M., and Christyann M. Darwent. "The walrus and the carpenter: Late Dorset ivory working in the High Arctic." Journal of Archaeological Science 25, no. 1 (1998): 73-83.

• Zságer, L. "Miniature Carvings in the Canadian Dorset Culture: the Paleo-Eskimo Belief System." Perspectivas Colombo Canadienses 3 (2010): 111-124.

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