Comer's Midden

Comer's Midden was a 1916 archaeological excavation site at Uummannaq, known as Dundas in English, north of Mt. Dundas in the Thule area of North Star Bay [1]. It is the find after which the Thule culture was named [1]. The site was first excavated in 1916 by whaling Captain George Comer, ice master of the Crocker Land Expedition's relief team, and of members of Knud Rasmussen's Second Danish Thule Expedition who were in the area charting the North Greenland coast [1]. The site was excavated by Erik Holtved in 1935 to 1937, and again in 1946 to 1947 [1]. The site shows signs of having been inhabited from the 14th to the 20th century although Holtved reports that the 17th and 18th centuries are poorly represented [1]. The site contains about 26 house ruins and several middens distributed over an area of about 120 metres in width and stretching over 400 metres inland with the midden which Comer excavated located at its south end [1]. The vast majority of harpoon heads found are of the open socket type typical of the Thule culture [1].