While the C-14 method of dating has perhaps been the most importat tool ever developed for prehistorians, the results of this technique have not been an unmixer lessing. This is especially true in the far north where wood charcoal, the standard medium for determina tions in most other areas, is only infrequently recovered. Other substances-bone ory, blubber, and skin from sea mammals; sod, grass, and peat; bone and antler from terrestrial mammals, and occasionally driftwood or locally available twigs either burned or unaltered-have been submitted for radiocarbon analysis in the hope of unraveling the complex relationships between man and nature in the Arctic through the development of accurate absolute chronologies of events which characterized Eskimo prehistory during the last four or five thousand years.