The term was coined by Collins (1956, 1957) who recognised that there seemed to be people that lived in the Eastern Canadian Arctic prior to the Dorset, but for whose culture it was difficult to give the defining characteristics.
[3] Hence, for Collins and others afterward, the term is a catch-all phrase for all occupations of the Eastern Canadian Arctic that predated the Dorset.
[1][4] At the site of Port Refuge on the Grinnell Peninsula, Devon Island, McGhee distinguished two sets of occupations, one that he ascribed to the Independence I culture,[5] the other to Pre-Dorset.
Most features that McGhee believed different between the Pre-Dorset and Independence I settlements of Port Refuge are problematic and cannot systematically be used to distinguish their cultural affiliation.
This is a mid-passage dwelling in Solbakken, Hall Land, just across from the Nares Strait, separating Canada from Greenland.