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The 1845 British polar expedition in search of a northwest passage through the Canadian Arctic under the command of Sir John Franklin resulted in the greatest loss of life event in the history of polar exploration. The names of the 129 officers and crew who sailed and died on the catastrophic voyage are known, but the identification of their skeletons found scattered along the route of their attempted escape is problematic. Here, we report DNA analyses from skeletal remains from King William Island, where the majority of the expedition fatalities occurred, and from a paternal descendant of a member of the expedition. A match was found between an archaeological sample and a presumed descendant sample using Y-chromosome haplotyping. We conclude that DNA and genealogical evidence confirm the identity of the remains as those of Warrant Officer John Gregory, Engineer, HMS Erebus. This is the first member of the 1845 Franklin expedition whose identity has been confirmed through DNA and genealogical analyses.

The southern Baffin Island chert provenance project was initiated in 2007 to investigate the effects on Palaeo-Eskimo mobility and technological organization of the differential distribution of chert sources in this area of the eastern Arctic. Initial characterization of chert artifacts and sources by secondary ion mass spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) indicated exploitation of both local inland and exotic chert sources by Palaeo-Eskimo toolmakers. Subsequent reanalysis of chert artifacts by ICP-MS demonstrates that data acquired using these techniques cannot be directly compared. ICP-MS trace element data collected from two primary chert sources documented in 2013 showed promise for characterizing these sources. Subsequent reanalysis of source samples demonstrates that initial results were affected by contamination during sample preparation at an external laboratory and should not be used in future studies.

The 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin in search of a northwest passage through the Canadian Arctic resulted in the loss of all 129 officers and crew. The skeletal remains of a number of these individuals have been recovered from King William Island, Nunavut, and one positive and several tentative identifications have been made using DNA, isotopic, and archaeological evidence, and facial reconstruction. The aim of this study was to apply oxygen, strontium, and lead isotope analysis to tooth enamel samples obtained from twelve unidentified individuals to investigate their possible identity by comparing information on geographic origins derived from the isotope data with place of birth data obtained from historical documents. The oxygen isotope data provide little insight into the birth place of the individuals in our sample. In contrast, the strontium isotope data point to a large number of possible identifications and a number of exclusions. The lead isotope data indicate that all individuals in the sample derived their lead from British ore sources.

We combine chert provenance and least cost path analyses to investigate Palaeo-Eskimo mobility on southern Baffin Island, in the eastern Canadian Arctic. ICP-AES trace element analysis links chert artifacts from coastal and inland sites to quarries in the interior of the study area. Using a multi-criteria cost surface, we model least cost paths between quarry and occupation sites linked by the results of provenance analysis. These pathways will be used to structure a future program of pedestrian survey in the area between the coast and interior of southern Baffin Island.

Southern Baffin Island has been occupied for several millennia, but its enormous size, coupled with scarcity of identified inland archaeological sites that can be confidently linked to coastal occupations, makes modeling ancient seasonal mobility across the region through traditional cost-surface least-cost pathway approaches impractical. We present a method that combines weighted multi-criteria cost surface analysis with a watershed function to create a “mobility-shed” of non-winter travel pathways covering the study area. We evaluate the predictive utility of the resulting pathways for future archaeological survey by assessing their spatial relationships to known archaeological sites. The results of this comparison suggest that elevation and land cover criteria should be augmented with ethnographic and resource availability data to model mobility in this region.

Inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) trace element analysis was used to characterize raw chert from one secondary (LeDx-42) and two primary (LbDt-1 and LdDx-2) sources on southern Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. Raw chert trace element data are compared to ICP-MS trace element data for chert artifacts from a nearby Palaeo-Eskimo archaeological site (LeDx-42). Geochemical consistencies identified among the analyzed samples support the inference that Palaeo-Eskimo toolmakers at LeDx-42 exploited LdDx-2 and LbDt-1 as chert source locations.

In the summer of 1845, under the command of Sir John Franklin, 128 officers and men aboard Royal Navy ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror sailed into Lancaster Sound and entered the waters of Arctic North America. The goal of this expedition was to complete the discovery of a northwest passage by navigating the uncharted area between Barrow Strait and Simpson Strait. Franklin and his crew spent the first winter at Beechey Island, where three crewmen died and were buried. In September 1846, the ships became stranded in ice off the northwest coast of King William Island, where they remained until April 1848. At that time, the crew, reduced to 105, deserted the ships and retreated south along the island’s western and southern shores in a desperate attempt to reach the mainland and via the Back River, to obtain aid at a Hudson’s Bay Company Post. Sadly, not one individual survived. Previous analyses of bone, hair, and soft tissue samples from expedition remains found that crewmembers’ tissues contained elevated lead (Pb) levels, suggesting that Pb poisoning may have contributed to their demise; however, questions remain regarding the timing and degree of exposure and, ultimately, the extent to which the crewmembers may have been impacted. To address this historical question, we investigated three hypotheses. First, if elevated Pb exposure was experienced by the crew during the expedition, we hypothesized that those sailors who survived longer (King William Island vs. Beechey Island) would exhibit more extensive uptake of Pb in their bones and vice versa. Second, we hypothesized that Pb would be elevated in bone microstructural features forming at or near the time of death compared with older tissue. Finally, if Pb exposure played a significant role in the failure of the expedition we hypothesized that bone samples would exhibit evidence of higher and more sustained uptake of Pb than that of a contemporary comparator naval population from the 19th century. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed bone and dental remains of crew members and compared them against samples derived from the Royal Navy cemetery in Antigua. Synchrotron-based high resolution confocal X-ray fluorescence imaging was employed to visualize Pb distribution within bone and tooth microstructures at the micro scale. The data did not support our first hypothesis as Pb distribution within the samples from the two different sites was similar. Evidence of Pb within skeletal microstructural features formed near the time of death lent support to our second hypothesis but consistent evidence of a marked elevation in Pb levels was lacking. Finally, the comparative analysis with the Antigua samples did not support the hypothesis that the Franklin sailors were exposed to an unusually high level of Pb for the time period. Taken all together our skeletal microstructural results do not support the conclusion that Pb played a pivotal role in the loss of Franklin and his crew.

Prior to the discovery in 1999 of an archaeological site near Cape Southwest, on southern Axel Heiberg Island, little was known about the movements of the ill fated 1930 German Arctic Expedition, led by Hans K.E. Krüger. What was known was based on the content of three cairn documents that spanned a period of just thirteen days. This paper presents new information that expands our knowledge of the expedition's route using catalogue labels found with geological specimens collected by Krüger and recovered from the site. The movements of the expedition over a period of 43 days are reconstructed, ten additions are made to the known itinerary, and an approximate date of the group's arrival at Cape Southwest is presented. The data show that despite concerns about the health of both Krüger and his Danish assistant, and about the weight of equipment being transported, the expedition had made good progress prior to reaching Cape Southwest.

In 1999 a team of geologists discovered an archaeological site near Cape Southwest, Axel Heiberg Island. On the basis of its location and the analysis of two artifacts removed from the site, the discoverers concluded that it was a hastily abandoned campsite created by Hans Kruger’s German Arctic Expedition, which was believed to have disappeared between Meighen and Amund Ringnes islands in 1930. If the attribution to Kruger were correct, the existence of this site would demonstrate that the expedition got farther on its return journey to Bache Peninsula than previously believed. An archaeological investigation of the site by the Government of Nunavut in 2004 confirmed its tentative attribution to the German Arctic Expedition but suggested that it is not a campsite, but the remains of a deliberately and carefully constructed cache. The finds suggest that one of the three members of the expedition may have perished before reaching Axel Heiberg Island, and that the survivors, in order to lighten their sledge, transported valued but heavy items (including Kruger’s geological specimens) to this prominent and well-known location to cache them, intending to return and recover them at some later date.

Two documents were recovered from a cairn located at the northern extremity of Nettilling Lake, Baffin Island. They record the details of J. Dewey Soper's winter expedition to Foxe Basin in 1926 and the travel itinerary of an Inuit hunting party. Key words: arctic exploration, Baffin Island, archaeology, cairns, Dewery Soper, Nettilling Lake