Spin yarn unspun: Research upends theory that Vikings taught Inuit fibre skills
New research is upending old assumptions about what the ancestors of today’s Inuit learned from Viking settlers.
And the techniques researchers have developed to show that ancient Dorset and Thule people knew how to spin yarn centuries before the Norse were thought to have taught them could change the way archeologists think about Arctic history.
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” said Michele Hayeur Smith of Brown University in Rhode Island and lead author of a recent paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Hayeur Smith and her colleagues were looking at scraps of yarn, perhaps used to hang amulets or decorate clothing, from ancient sites on Baffin Island and the Ungava Peninsula.