Therkel Mathiassen (5 September 1892, in
Favrbo,
Denmark[1] – 14 March 1967) was a Danish archaeologist, anthropologist, cartographer, and ethnographer notable for his scientific study of the
Arctic.
Mathiassen and
Peter Freuchen took part in the Fifth Danish Thule Expedition led by
Knud Rasmussen.[2] During his travels, Mathiassen gave out
thimbles to local
Inuit, thus earning the
Inuktitut nickname, Tikkilik ("the one with the thimbles"). In 1922, Mathiassen began an archaeological investigation at a site he called "Naujan" (
Naujaat); the first archaeological excavation in
Canada's Arctic.[3] This was also the second ever
Thule culture archaeological excavation, following the 1916
Comer's Midden in North Greenland. Mathiassen was able to manually excavate through peat, sod, and gravel, portions of 12
sod houses and a
kitchen-midden.[3]
Mathiassen was a member of the initial Danish committee of Societas Arctica Scandinavica, dedicated to Scandinavian research in Arctic humanistic and natural sciences.[6] He was a prolific author of works, which have later been described as monumental and as marking the beginning of the professional period in Arctic archaeology.[7][8] His works of the 1920s and 1930s introduced the concept of the Thule culture but also dismissed the theory of a
Stone Age people in Greenland as first described on a scientific basis by
Ole Solberg in 1907.[7][9] In the 1950s, the existence of such a people was established through the use of
radiocarbon dating.[10]
— (1945), Report on the expedition, Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel,
OCLC9618080
— Holtved, E.; Calvert, W. E. (1936), The Eskimo archaeology of
Julianehaab district, with a brief summary of the prehistory of the Greenlanders, København: C.A. Reitzel,
OCLC1156849
— (1936), The former Eskimo settlements on Frederik VI's coast,
OCLC1158412
Collins, Jr., Henry B. (January–March 1946), "Anthropology during the War. II. Scandinavia", American Anthropologist, 48 (1): 141–144,
doi:10.1525/aa.1946.48.1.02a00340,
JSTOR662818.
Grønnow, Bjarne (1996), "Brudstykker af Baade og forarbeidede Steensager — Arktisk arkæologi", in Thisted, Kirsten (ed.), Grønlandsforskning, historie og perspektiver (in Danish), Det Grønlandske Selskab,
ISBN87-87925-38-9
Mathiassen, Therkel (October 1930), "An Old Eskimo Culture in West Greenland: Report of an Archeological Expedition to Upernivik", Geographical Review, 20 (4), Geographical Review, Vol. 20, No. 4: 605–614,
doi:
10.2307/209014,
JSTOR209014.
Meldgaard, Jørgen (1996), "The Pioneers: The Beginnings of Paleo-Eskimo Research in West Greenland", in Grønnow, Bjarne; Pind, John (eds.), The Paleo-Eskimo Cultures of Greenland — New Perspectives in Greenlandic Archaeology, Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center,
ISBN87-90369-02-5