The DORSET LONGHOUSES in UNGAVA
Plummet wrote a report in 1982 giving a description of the longhouses known around Ungava Bay and he summed up excavation data for five of them.
DESCRIPTION
"Excavations as well as analytical data for UNG-11B longhouse [located on the north tipe of the east coast of Ungava Peninsula] show that interior space is divided into two series of linearly juxtaposed family zones on both sides of the axial zone. In the latter are stone boxes, pits, and lighting spots. Each family area is characterized by two activity poles: a fireplace on a stone in a niche inside the ridge would be the focus of domestic activities; facing this the arrangement of the axial zone would be related to collective activities.
The general organization of a longhouse follows the same principle, perhaps partly symbolic, as those observed in other Dorset houses. In the Ungava Bay area as well as on Ellesmere or Victoria Islands, longhouses for which we have a description present essentially the same group of typical attributes.
"A comparison of Ungava longhouses - technical features, chronological setting, functional, and morphological indices, settlement pattern - with other presumably long habitations- Kostenky I and IV, Maritime Archaic, Iroquois, Naskapi -does not reveal either influence or borrowing of technical traits." (Plummet, 1982)
