Prehistory of Newfoundlandhunter‐gatherers: Extinctions or adaptations?

The island of Newfoundland was occupied by a series of aboriginal cultures, beginning with the Maritime Archaic Indians (c. 4500–3200 bp), followed by the Groswater Palaeoeskimos (c. 2800–1900 bp), Dorset Palaeoeskimos (c 2000–1200 bp), Recent Indians (c. 2000–300 bp) and ending with the historic Beothuk Indians (European contact to ad 1829). In an early and influential paper Tuck and Pastore (1985) suggested that Newfoundland's long occupation sequence was a series of extinctions which they linked to the limitations of the Newfoundland island ecosystem. Although the extinction model was presented as a hypothesis it has since become the predominant interpretive framework for insular Newfoundland prehistory. This paper presents an alternative model which suggests that prehistoric hunter‐gatherers would have ameliorated the unpredictability of the insular Newfoundland resources by maintaining connections with related groups in mainland Labrador. Thus the discontinuities in the archaeological record are interpreted as population shifts rather than extinctions.