The Frozen Saqqaq Sites of Disko Bay, West Greenland: Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa (2400 – 900 BC)
Authors: Grønnow Bjarne 
Published: October 2024

Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa are the only known archaeological sites of the Early Arctic Small Tool tradition (Early ASTt) in the Eastern Arctic, where the entire suite of organic materials – wood, bone, baleen, skin, etc. – are preserved in permafrozen culture layers. Analyses of a comprehensive artefactual material resulting from excavations at the Saqqaq site of Qeqertasussuk in southernmost Disko Bay and substantial contextual information form the basis of this publication. An assemblage from Jørgen Meldgaard’s investigations of the stratified Qajaa site in Kangia (Jakobshavn Isfjord), where up to three metres of frozen Saqqaq culture layers are present, supplements the analyses of the Qeqertasussuk material. The two sites overlap in time, and together they cover the entire Saqqaq era in Greenland (c. 2400–900 BC).
New detailed insight into Saqqaq technology is provided through analyses of hundreds of preserved artefacts, most of them parts of composite tools, and large amounts of different waste materials. A complex Saqqaq hunting tool kit, consisting of bows, darts, lances, harpoons with accessories and throwing boards, as well as kayak-like sea-going vessels, is described for the first time. Likewise, the finds provide insight into a wide variety of hand tools, household utensils and other material remains from daily life, including knives, scrapers, burins, sewing kits, wooden bowls and spoons, blubber lamps and drum frames. Skin fragments, including the foot of a stocking, show the advanced sewing techniques of the Saqqaq, and baleen and skin thongs document a variety of knots. Saqqaq raw material utilization and working techniques are studied through dynamic technological analyses of organic waste and preforms. It is concluded that Saqqaq material culture, even if it belongs to a highly mobile, true pioneer society, was extremely complex from the beginning, based on highly specialized tool kits targeted for special tasks, and guided by normative designs and raw material selections.
Settlement at Qeqertasussuk is divided into five chronological horizons, H5–H1, based on detailed analyses of stratigraphies and suites of radiocarbon dates. Each of the earliest horizons (the ones with organic preservation), H5–H2, probably represent a number of short-term settlement episodes within a time frame of c. 2350–1750 BC, whereas the latest phase at the site, H1, is an accumulation of lithic artefacts from settlements after c. 1500 BC. Radiocarbon dating of the layers at the huge Qajaa site shows that settlement here lasted until the very end of the Saqqaq culture, c. 900 BC.
Horizon 4 at Qeqertasusuk represents a shortterm settlement episode, which resulted in architectural and artefactual remains in meaningful contexts. This original settlement surface was carefully investigated through preparation of an 8 m by 5.5 m excavation area. Spatial analyses of stone-built features like midpassages and hearths, in combination with turf platforms, wooden poles, artefacts and all sorts of waste, resulted in a detailed description of different activity areas inside and around a dwelling. It is concluded that this Feature A8 probably represents the floor of a single cold-season settlement at the site.
Morphological studies and aDNA analyses of human remains from Qeqertasussuk, including five limb bones and a number of hair tufts, take us close to the Saqqaq person him- or herself and to the genetic roots of the Saqqaq culture. Studies of various artefact types and styles and ornamentation on them provide some glimpses of the early palaeo-Eskimo social organization and cosmology.
Comparative studies, involving Saqqaq sites in Greenland and evidence from Independence I and Pre-Dorset sites in Canada, place the two frozen sites in a broad Eastern Arctic perspective.
Comparisons of the organic components in the material culture of these three Early ASTt groups show even closer relations between them than deduced from the lithic inventories, and studies of architecture, organization of space within dwellings, as well as camp types and settlement patterns, underline the close connections between Early ASTt groups over vast distances.
Qeqertasussuk and Qajaa are viewed as belonging to the pioneer phase settlement of the Eastern Arctic. Analyses of screened and calibrated radiocarbon dates of Pre-Dorset and Independence I sites conclude that the two sites in Disko Bay are representatives of a remarkably fast and comprehensive initial settling of easternmost Arctic Canada and Greenland around 2400 BC following a ‘stand-still’ of the Pre-Dorset expansion (about 500 years) in western and central Canadian Arctic.
Finally, a holistic picture of Saqqaq life and settlement patterns in Disko Bay is drawn. This is achieved by combining the archaeological results with results of analyses of the comprehensive faunal material from the sites, insect remains, pollen and macrofossils published earlier by researchers of the Qeqertasussuk team.