Sarah Dresscher is one of three archaeologists who joined the polar expedition to the Norwegian island of Edgeøya on the eastern side of Spitsbergen. The team focused primarily on Dresscher's research topic:the Pomors, an ethnic group of hunters that lived in Russia's White Sea region. In the eighteenth century they moved to Spitsbergen to hunt for walruses and reindeer.
For her PhD research, Dresscher mainly looks at how and where the Pomors lived and why they chose that location. What does the landscape look like and what are the possibilities for the people? “I seized the opportunity to do fieldwork on location and to investigate the living conditions of the Pomors,” says Dresscher.
No polar bears? Go!
She went on a polar expedition, which departed from the Netherlands on August 19. Today the researchers are back again. There were 55 scientists from all kinds of disciplines on board, as well as a few artists and tourists. The time the archaeologists had for fieldwork was therefore limited. Dresscher:“In the end we were only able to complete three full field work days of thirteen hours. We were dropped and left alone for hours because our research sites were not suitable for other researchers or tourists. We didn't have dinner until eleven o'clock in the evening.”
Polar bears live in the research area and all researchers had to stay on the boat if they were present. “We did have a schedule, but because of polar bears and pack ice, we couldn't reach all the sites we wanted to investigate. But seeing polar bears in the wild was fantastic. I've seen two on land and a mother polar bear swam with her two cubs along the boat, great!"
Phosphate indicates blood and poo
The archaeologists ended up investigating two sites:Dolrittneset near Kapp Lee and Krausbukta. In the late 1980s, Norwegian researchers excavated, measured and reconstructed the hunting lodges of the Pomors.
“They mainly looked at the huts themselves, while we are interested in the activities outside the hut,” explains Dresscher. “It was striking that there was a lot of vegetation on one side of the hut and nothing on the other. Tundra vegetation is very sensitive to animal material. It grows even fifty years faster if a reindeer has died. We therefore suspect that most activities took place in the part where there is a lot of vegetation. Here the Pomors slaughtered and processed the catch. We want to confirm this assumption with our soil samples. We will examine it at home for the presence of phosphate, which indicates human faeces and blood. Based on this research, we hope to find out a little more about how the hunters lived because we know very little. For example, were there latrines present or did they just poop in the bushes?”
The research material is up for grabs with Kapp Lee. The walruses rest there on land or ice floes and the Pomors have completely wiped out such a colony. Dresscher:“This is a real kill field :the bones are scattered over the sand. This location is therefore very vulnerable, especially because the place has already been visited fairly often. This influences the research results. I can now plot the distribution of the bones, but a lot has happened there since the Pomors left. Bones and wood have been dragged, people have walked there. This has disrupted the site. The phosphate samples should show whether the spread of the bones, as we see it now, is realistic. Hopefully that works. The fieldwork was a pilot study. The question is whether you can get good results from phosphate at such low temperatures at all.”
Difficult to survive
Dresscher did fieldwork on Spitsbergen in 2007 and 2008 as a student, but that was a very different experience than this polar expedition. “That location was a lot busier, every day boats with tourists sailed out. This time I saw the real wilderness and experienced problems that the Pomors also encountered. Although it is now summer, we could not reach certain places because of the ice. In winter, the problems are even greater. The experience of being here was not only a rich experience but also very important for my research. During the trip I talked a lot with the researchers who wintered on Kapp Lee in 1968. I learned a lot from this and it allows you to ask other research questions. And now that I've seen on the spot the limitations you encounter, for example pack ice and polar bears, I realize that the pressure on the hunters was higher than I thought. To make a profit, they had to catch 90 walruses within three months. That was very difficult under these circumstances.”
Dresscher already suspected that life was hard for the Pomors and this expedition has confirmed that image. Unlike other northern areas such as Canada and Alaska, Kapp Lee was isolated and food supplies were limited. Dresscher:“Previous research reports contained almost no mention of bone remains, even though the site was completely full of bones. The hunters had even tried to extract the bone marrow to eat. This is important information about the survival process. There were no bones in other test sites. What does that mean? Was the bone material collected and taken there, but not reported or did other activities take place here? I have to think about this carefully.”
Why the Pomors eventually left is unclear. Dresscher also looks at this:“Around 1850 the Norwegians took over the hunt, especially for fur animals. Existing research is from the Norwegians' perspective. But I look at the Russian perspective. For example, what did the Tsar want? Peter the Great set up a whaling fleet in the eighteenth century, with a monopoly on hunting. Perhaps this drove the Pomors from their Russian hunting grounds and moved to northern Spitsbergen. The whaling companies proved not very successful and did not last long. That could have been a reason for the Pomors to start hunting again in Russian areas further south.”
Painting
In addition to doing research, an important goal of the trip was to collaborate with other disciplines. “We had help from other scientists and tourists in the fieldwork,” Dresscher says. “This was very instructive because they look at the site from a different perspective and ask different kinds of questions, which made us think again.”
Dresscher experienced the trip as intense, educational and enjoyable. “It was very intense. The four of us slept in a hut so you were never alone and there were cameras everywhere for research purposes. On land you had to constantly watch out because of the polar bears. The program itself was also full of course and if you couldn't get ashore because of polar bears or ice floes, there were lectures and in the evening everyone told what they had done that day. You were really lived from early in the morning until late at night. I'm dead tired now. But it was a lot of fun and all this new knowledge and experiences made the trip very instructive. And the environment is so very beautiful! It was not at all annoying to have to wait until the ship was anchored and the zodiacs had turned off. Every look at the environment was like a painting. Then waiting won't feel like wasted time.”