Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/149

In the unpleasant transitional periods autumn and spring many Eskimos use a number of forms of dwellings which with a collective Eskimo title are called qarmat, or autumn houses, as it is principally in the autumn that they are used. They consist of a wall (qarmaq) which may be of earth, stone, whale skulls, ice or snow, and a roof (ulinga) consisting of the tent-sheet and supported by the tent poles.

The qarmat of stones, earth and whale skulls are often built upon the sites of old winter houses of the Thule culture period, as here the material is right at hand. The qarmaq is distinct from the old winter house in that it is a purely temporary dwelling, built much less solidly, and in having a skin roof, whereas the winter house has had a roof of earth and stones. supported by whale bones. I have seen qarmat built on the sites of old winter houses at Kûk, Southampton Island (five, only about two years old), Naujan (one, also quite recent) and at several places at Ponds Inlet (Qilalukan, Mitimatalik, Qaersut, Iterdleq). At Igiulik it can be seen that five of the ruins are relatively recent and built into earlier house ruins, the walls of which have been partly preserved on the outside in the form of low earthern mounds; it was presumably these bone houses which Parry^[1] found inhabited in the autumn and the first part of the winter with roofs, first of skin, later of snow. I have seen similar old qarmat built into old house ruins at Pingerqalik and Tikerâq. Presumably it is these which Parry^[2] mentions on Calthorpe Island. The Eskimos themselves differentiate between the old house ruins, which they call iglorssuit, "big houses", and the autumn houses, qarmat.

As the type of these more solidly built qarmat, built of stone, earth and whale bones, I will take the one which the Aivilik Patdloq built in the autumn of 1920 on the site of an old house ruin at Naujan in Repulse Bay (Fig. 82). It is built into a slope. The walls reach 80 cm above the platform and are built of stones, turf and seven whale skulls; moss is filled in between the stones. The platforms are covered with flat stones; the door is 1 m wide and a half metre high; it is covered over with a flat stone. Over the door a whale rib has formed the upper frame for a gut-skin window; the tent sheet served as a roof. The whole plan and construction is very near to the qarmat described by Boas^[3] from Cumberland Culf.