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Cache Point, Mackenzie Delta (Max Friesen, Permit #99-883)
The summer of 1999 marked the final field season of the Qilalugaq Archaeology Project, a three-year study of the Cache Point site on Richards Island in the Mackenzie Delta, Northwest Territories. Max Friesen of the University of Toronto was joined by a crew of seven, including six students from Tuktoyaktuk and Toronto, as well as Rose Scott, the conservator from the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. During the summer, the crew was visited by many travellers who passed the site on the busy Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk boating route, and by a film crew from the Inuvialuit Communications Society.
During the three years of the project, the Cache Point site was mapped and four houses were completely excavated, including entrance tunnels, middens (garbage heaps), and kitchen structures. The artifacts and animal bones from the houses are currently being studied, and a detailed picture of early Inuvialuit lifeways in the Mackenzie Delta is being formed. Three of the four excavated houses were occupied during a fairly brief period, probably between about 500 and 600 years ago.
These houses all contain very similar sets of artifacts, including plain pottery fragments, many fish hooks, and arrowheads of a special type known as "ringed tang" because of a carefully manufactured ring which allowed the arrowheads to be attached to wooden shafts. Trade goods are abundant, with both copper and soapstone occurring in high frequencies. The fourth house contained quite different artifacts. Much of its pottery contained intricate circular designs known as "Barrow curvilinear", and the arrowheads were also different. This house is earlier than the others, probably by about 200 years.
1. A well-preserved sod house at the early Inuvialuit site of Cache Point. The main room of the house, with driftwood floor, is in the centre of the photograph; the entrance tunnel is at the bottom and the round kitchen depression is to the right of the tunnel.
Inuvialuit living at Cache Point lived in substantial driftwood houses excavated into the earth, usually with a single bench at the rear. These houses were entered through very deep entrance tunnels, and cooking was often performed in separate kitchen tents, accessed through special tunnels from the floor of the main house. Beluga whales and fish formed the mainstay of the diet, with other food sources such as caribou, seals, and migratory birds being less important. The early Inuvialuit of Cache Point also maintained active networks of trade and social ties with their neighbours, as indicated by the trade goods. In sum, Cache Point must have been a thriving Inuvialuit community with a rich social and economic life 500 years ago. The site was eventually abandoned, probably because beluga whales no longer ventured up the Mackenzie River as far as Cache Point.
