Arctic Region from Alaska to Greenland, Thule culture, ca. 1200 to 1700 CE. A fossilized bone harpoon point with a knapped slate blade. The bone is from a marine mammal, based on similar known examples. The bone handle is long, with a drilled hole where it widens. This created a socket, that allowed the harpoon to be rigid when thrown, and then bend when it struck the prey. This type of tool was a crucial technological development on the part of the Thule, who subsisted on marine mammals. The slate blade is triangular and thin, set into a carved groove in the narrow end of the bone. A nice example that would have been used to hunt seals and walruses. Size: 2.4" W x 10.5" H (6.1 cm x 26.7 cm)

The Thule people were the ancestors of the modern Inuit whose advanced culture and technology made them a part of the global economy during what those in the West call the medieval period. This piece was carved during a dynamic time in Thule history; recent research indicates that sometime after ca. 1200 CE, perhaps in a span of just a few years, the Thule people spread from their Bering Strait homeland all the way to Greenland, likely driven by the search for iron, both from meteoric deposits they may have heard about from the Dorset people to their east and from trade. They traded with the Chinese to their west - metal beads and a belt buckle of Chinese manufacture and dating to 1100 to 1300 CE have been found in in the Seward Peninsula - and interacted with the Vikings to their east, who describe them in the Vinland Saga as the Skraelings.

Provenance: private Newport Beach, California, USA collection

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#145249

Small chips to peripheries of slate blade, with a few stable hairline fissures on wooden haft, otherwise intact and very good. Great patina to haft and stone blade. Find site of "St. Lawrence Island" written in gold ink on one side of blade.