Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland

This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by working closely with a community in Greenland that builds kayaks and practices traditional hunting skills. Although kayaking is no longer a primary mode of subsistence, the community finds meaning in the persistence of the skill because it is an important mechanism of intergenerational experience, and because it contains types of cultural and environmental knowledge that can only exist through practice. The community is specifically focused on the physicality of enskilment – the process through which individuals develop unique capacities for awareness and response through environmentally situated practice. Through enskilment, kayakers attune their senses to subtleties and nuances of the environment which would not otherwise be apparent, and they embody a heritage of resilience and creative responsiveness in both the natural and social environment. Drawing on three field seasons of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, I document the process through which individuals become skilled kayakers and explore the constitution of the kayaking community through practice. As demonstrated in this dissertation, the acquisition of skill in kayaking is not a passive process where knowledge is simply handed from one generation to the other. This is an important observation for archaeologists who study the past through the interpretation of material culture. It will be argued that understanding the impermanence and inherent creativity through which environmentally situated knowledge is re-grown in the experiences of each generation allows for more nuanced archaeological narratives which emphasize skilled practice on the part individuals as causative agents at work in the deeper history of Inuit culture.Ph