Quartz was an important and widely used lithic material in the prehistory of circumpolar Eurasia. While ethnographic and other data indicate that quartz has been invested with special qualities and meanings in various cultures around the world, archaeological studies in circumpolar Europe have tended to discuss quartz use in exclusively practical and technological terms. This article takes a “nontechnological” approach to quartz finds from the boreal zone of northeastern Europe. We identify spatiotemporal variations in quartz use and explore how quartzes were perceived and signified in the cultural and cosmological context of Stone Age eastern Fennoscandia, concentrating particularly on what we call “high-quality quartzes.” More specifically, we analyze and interpret patterns of quartz use in relation to the Neolithization of northern Eurasia. We discuss our findings against the animistic-shamanistic cosmologies of circumpolar communities and especially in regard to the emerging Neolithic worldview in the north.
{"title":"Beneath the Surface of the World: High-Quality Quartzes, Crystal Cavities, and Neolithization in Circumpolar Europe","authors":"Teemu Mökkönen, K. Nordqvist, Vesa-Pekka Herva","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.94","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.94","url":null,"abstract":"Quartz was an important and widely used lithic material in the prehistory of circumpolar Eurasia. While ethnographic and other data indicate that quartz has been invested with special qualities and meanings in various cultures around the world, archaeological studies in circumpolar Europe have tended to discuss quartz use in exclusively practical and technological terms. This article takes a “nontechnological” approach to quartz finds from the boreal zone of northeastern Europe. We identify spatiotemporal variations in quartz use and explore how quartzes were perceived and signified in the cultural and cosmological context of Stone Age eastern Fennoscandia, concentrating particularly on what we call “high-quality quartzes.” More specifically, we analyze and interpret patterns of quartz use in relation to the Neolithization of northern Eurasia. We discuss our findings against the animistic-shamanistic cosmologies of circumpolar communities and especially in regard to the emerging Neolithic worldview in the north.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"110 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.94","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41537346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Letting Ingold and Turnbull set the scene, in this paper I visualize how “relations” trace the lived experience of being, learning, and understanding the world. I do so comparatively by drawing upon my research and travels in Greenland and Iceland, exploring how place, identity, and social relations reflect lived relations, amplifying how mobility, narratives, knowledge, and locality are closely entwined and cannot be delineated alone. This entwinement symbolizes strikingly similar allusions of the perception and movement of two northern worlds—spatially distant, yet comparatively close. This comparative approach, while emphasizing diversity, highlights similarity in the ways in which people live in and tell stories about the world. Traveling through the cultural landscapes of these two settings, the narratives embedded within them, it is amplified that one’s world is never complete but continuously under construction, retracing a path through the world of others.
{"title":"Place, Identity, and Relations: The Lived Experience of Two Northern Worlds","authors":"A. Lennert","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.83","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.83","url":null,"abstract":"Letting Ingold and Turnbull set the scene, in this paper I visualize how “relations” trace the lived experience of being, learning, and understanding the world. I do so comparatively by drawing upon my research and travels in Greenland and Iceland, exploring how place, identity, and social relations reflect lived relations, amplifying how mobility, narratives, knowledge, and locality are closely entwined and cannot be delineated alone. This entwinement symbolizes strikingly similar allusions of the perception and movement of two northern worlds—spatially distant, yet comparatively close. This comparative approach, while emphasizing diversity, highlights similarity in the ways in which people live in and tell stories about the world. Traveling through the cultural landscapes of these two settings, the narratives embedded within them, it is amplified that one’s world is never complete but continuously under construction, retracing a path through the world of others.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"83 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.83","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46240695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yamal peninsula is the largest center of reindeer herding in the Arctic, and Nenets historically and recently succeeded in maintaining their economic and ethnocultural potential. However, environmental challenges, such as the formation of a widespread ice crust across the Yamal Peninsula in the winter of 2013–2014 and the outbreak of anthrax in the summer of 2016, have provoked a discussion on Nenets herding “crisis” that allegedly implies the overgrowth of herds and the overgrazing of pastures. Biologists and administrators emphasize the necessity to significantly reduce the Yamal reindeer population “for the sake of environmental safety.” The author of this article presents an alternative approach focused on a system of movement: skillful herd-navigation and quick maneuvering is the basis of Nenets’ traditional rule ya puna hayoda (land after us remains). Conversely, the consequences of sluggish and stationary behavior, including huddling around camp for a long time, is reflected in another Nenets proverb: yadata habei (“land is turned upside down”).
{"title":"Challenges to Arctic Nomadism: Yamal Nenets Facing Climate Change Era Calamities","authors":"A. Golovnev","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.40","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.40","url":null,"abstract":"Yamal peninsula is the largest center of reindeer herding in the Arctic, and Nenets historically and recently succeeded in maintaining their economic and ethnocultural potential. However, environmental challenges, such as the formation of a widespread ice crust across the Yamal Peninsula in the winter of 2013–2014 and the outbreak of anthrax in the summer of 2016, have provoked a discussion on Nenets herding “crisis” that allegedly implies the overgrowth of herds and the overgrazing of pastures. Biologists and administrators emphasize the necessity to significantly reduce the Yamal reindeer population “for the sake of environmental safety.” The author of this article presents an alternative approach focused on a system of movement: skillful herd-navigation and quick maneuvering is the basis of Nenets’ traditional rule ya puna hayoda (land after us remains). Conversely, the consequences of sluggish and stationary behavior, including huddling around camp for a long time, is reflected in another Nenets proverb: yadata habei (“land is turned upside down”).","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"40 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.40","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46364686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We focus on Tundra Yukaghir reincarnation cosmology and its workings in the current ethnic revival by examining rebirth accounts from the Lower Kolyma. In Sovietized Siberia, the atheist state fought against everything that was “religious” and thus contributed to the wane of reincarnation ideology and related ritual practices. In addition, the state suppressed a distinct Yukaghir ethnicity it had partly constructed itself. In the 1990s, rebirth returned to public discourse, which coincided with the time of a vibrant ethnic revival movement. We shall explore how today Yukaghir elders, who fear their people will die out, link the idea of individual reincarnation with the trope of “the rebirth of a people.” In this particular sociohistorical context, they juxtapose the trajectories of personal and collective becoming through the notion of recognition, as both gaining full personhood and full peoplehood depends on being acknowledged by others (the living and the dead) as well as by oneself.
{"title":"The Rebirth of a People: Reincarnation Cosmology among the Tundra Yukaghir of the Lower Kolyma, Northeast Siberia","authors":"Laur Vallikivi, Lena Sidorova","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.24","url":null,"abstract":"We focus on Tundra Yukaghir reincarnation cosmology and its workings in the current ethnic revival by examining rebirth accounts from the Lower Kolyma. In Sovietized Siberia, the atheist state fought against everything that was “religious” and thus contributed to the wane of reincarnation ideology and related ritual practices. In addition, the state suppressed a distinct Yukaghir ethnicity it had partly constructed itself. In the 1990s, rebirth returned to public discourse, which coincided with the time of a vibrant ethnic revival movement. We shall explore how today Yukaghir elders, who fear their people will die out, link the idea of individual reincarnation with the trope of “the rebirth of a people.” In this particular sociohistorical context, they juxtapose the trajectories of personal and collective becoming through the notion of recognition, as both gaining full personhood and full peoplehood depends on being acknowledged by others (the living and the dead) as well as by oneself.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"24 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.24","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48684197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Contrary to popular belief, Greenlandic students do not always study in Denmark because they have no other choice. Many choose to study abroad and regard their time there (in Denmark and beyond) as part and parcel with their education, stating that education is not only for their own social mobility but also contributes to Greenland’s future of independence from Denmark. The article is based on a small survey and follow-up ethnographic interviews in 2011 and 2012. Through the analytical lens of cultural citizenship and “the right to be different,” this article explores how students navigate the field of tension between stereotypes about Greenlanders and Danes, belonging, distance, (im)mobility, and the future of a nation. It argues that students’ assertion of their own difference can be seen as a rejection but also an embrace of Danish, as well as Greenlandic, cultural and legal citizenships.
{"title":"Different from All the “Others”: Mobility and Independence among Greenlandic Students in Denmark","authors":"J. Flora","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.71","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.71","url":null,"abstract":"Contrary to popular belief, Greenlandic students do not always study in Denmark because they have no other choice. Many choose to study abroad and regard their time there (in Denmark and beyond) as part and parcel with their education, stating that education is not only for their own social mobility but also contributes to Greenland’s future of independence from Denmark. The article is based on a small survey and follow-up ethnographic interviews in 2011 and 2012. Through the analytical lens of cultural citizenship and “the right to be different,” this article explores how students navigate the field of tension between stereotypes about Greenlanders and Danes, belonging, distance, (im)mobility, and the future of a nation. It argues that students’ assertion of their own difference can be seen as a rejection but also an embrace of Danish, as well as Greenlandic, cultural and legal citizenships.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"71 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.71","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47967138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article is dedicated to the dramatic history of the small tribe of Eyak Indians during the period when Alaska belonged to the Russian Empire. The article was written with the use of archival data, published documents, notes of contemporaries, the use of statistics, materials of field research of ethnographers, native legends, and a broad circle of scholarly literature in the Russian, English, and German languages. The article examines controversial questions on the topic, and erroneous, from the author’s point of view, versions are critiqued. The work presented to the reader is the most complete outline of the ethnic history of the Eyak, who were a kind of “Mohicans” of Alaska, the last full-blooded representative of which died in 2008.
{"title":"The Fate of the Eyak Indians in Russian America (1783–1867)","authors":"Andrei V. Grinëv","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.52","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.52","url":null,"abstract":"This article is dedicated to the dramatic history of the small tribe of Eyak Indians during the period when Alaska belonged to the Russian Empire. The article was written with the use of archival data, published documents, notes of contemporaries, the use of statistics, materials of field research of ethnographers, native legends, and a broad circle of scholarly literature in the Russian, English, and German languages. The article examines controversial questions on the topic, and erroneous, from the author’s point of view, versions are critiqued. The work presented to the reader is the most complete outline of the ethnic history of the Eyak, who were a kind of “Mohicans” of Alaska, the last full-blooded representative of which died in 2008.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"52 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.52","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46067010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper shows the use of oral history for contributing to larger debates on the making of memory, the particular role that anthropologists have in the social construction of memory, and ultimately to identity construction projects in the field sites we work. Combined with anthropological fieldwork, oral history allows us to reveal new facets and principles of memory negotiation. Biographical narratives from a multiethnic fishing village established by Stalin’s relocation policy help us develop a fine- grained understanding of awareness between the individual and the public sphere of memory that Hamilton and Shopes (2009) identified as important. Taking the debate on collective memory one step further, we suggest that there is more than a duality between the personal and the general sphere. We conclude that collective memory in its multivocal character crucially shapes human sense of belonging to groups, drawing meaning from the diverse interpretation of their past.
{"title":"The Ethnography of Memory in East Siberia: Do Life Histories from the Arctic Coast Matter?1","authors":"F. Stammler, Aytalina Ivanova, Lena Sidorova","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"This paper shows the use of oral history for contributing to larger debates on the making of memory, the particular role that anthropologists have in the social construction of memory, and ultimately to identity construction projects in the field sites we work. Combined with anthropological fieldwork, oral history allows us to reveal new facets and principles of memory negotiation. Biographical narratives from a multiethnic fishing village established by Stalin’s relocation policy help us develop a fine- grained understanding of awareness between the individual and the public sphere of memory that Hamilton and Shopes (2009) identified as important. Taking the debate on collective memory one step further, we suggest that there is more than a duality between the personal and the general sphere. We conclude that collective memory in its multivocal character crucially shapes human sense of belonging to groups, drawing meaning from the diverse interpretation of their past.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.2.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47996209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1974, William S. Laughlin, who had been excavating on Anangula Island, one of the earliest prehistoric sites in the Aleutian Islands, invited Aleksei P. Okladnikov, the grand master of archaeology in Northeast Asia, to visit and take part in fieldwork. Okladnikov managed to get permission to come to the USA bringing along four researchers, mostly his former Ph.D. students. One of those, Aleksandr K. Konopatsky, kept a diary of their travels and impressions of the Western Hemisphere, a land and people rarely viewed by those behind the Iron Curtain. The diary tells of the Russians’ experience at the village of Nikolski on Umnak Island and their excavations alongside Americans at the sites on Anangula and Umnak islands.
{"title":"“The Russians Are Coming”: U.S.–Soviet Collaboration in the Study of the Prehistory of Beringia during the Cold War—Joint Excavations in the Aleutian Islands, 1974","authors":"Aleksandr K. Konopatsky, Y. Kuzmin, R. Bland","doi":"10.3368/AA.54.1.72","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/AA.54.1.72","url":null,"abstract":"In 1974, William S. Laughlin, who had been excavating on Anangula Island, one of the earliest prehistoric sites in the Aleutian Islands, invited Aleksei P. Okladnikov, the grand master of archaeology in Northeast Asia, to visit and take part in fieldwork. Okladnikov managed to get permission to come to the USA bringing along four researchers, mostly his former Ph.D. students. One of those, Aleksandr K. Konopatsky, kept a diary of their travels and impressions of the Western Hemisphere, a land and people rarely viewed by those behind the Iron Curtain. The diary tells of the Russians’ experience at the village of Nikolski on Umnak Island and their excavations alongside Americans at the sites on Anangula and Umnak islands.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"72 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/AA.54.1.72","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47254464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper honors the memory of Dorothy Jones (1923–2015), an Alaska scholar who conducted ethnographic research in the Aleutians between 1969 and 1976. The authors contextualize Jones’s and their own work within the history of ethnography in the Aleutians which began with Ioann Veniaminov’s 1840 Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District to the autoethnographic perspective of indigenous students and scholars today. Using Jones’s work as a point of departure, the paper critically examines changes in the enterprise of ethnography and the contemporary limits of the methodology. Jones’s work, in particular, exposes why anthropologists currently face those limitations but also highlights the important historical record created by past ethnographers.
{"title":"Aleut Ethnography in Transition: In Memory of Dorothy Jones","authors":"Katherine Reedy, M. Lowe","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.1.61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.1.61","url":null,"abstract":"This paper honors the memory of Dorothy Jones (1923–2015), an Alaska scholar who conducted ethnographic research in the Aleutians between 1969 and 1976. The authors contextualize Jones’s and their own work within the history of ethnography in the Aleutians which began with Ioann Veniaminov’s 1840 Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District to the autoethnographic perspective of indigenous students and scholars today. Using Jones’s work as a point of departure, the paper critically examines changes in the enterprise of ethnography and the contemporary limits of the methodology. Jones’s work, in particular, exposes why anthropologists currently face those limitations but also highlights the important historical record created by past ethnographers.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"61 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.1.61","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69574836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article reexamines the binary structural approach proposed by McGhee (1977) in his studies of Thule culture. First, using data generated from the Okvik, Kukulik, and Nukleet assemblages in Alaska, which cover Okvik, Old Bering Sea, Punuk, and Thule cultures over 1,900 years, the paper examines whether the binary structures were encoded in the technology and materials of the Northern Maritime tradition. Second, McGhee’s (1977) archaeological and ethnographic data are reassessed, which does not support the existence of gendered oppositions but rather may relate to spiritual and symbolic relationships between human and nonhuman.
{"title":"Ivory versus Antler: A Reassessment of Binary Structuralism in the Study of Prehistoric Eskimo Cultures","authors":"Feng Qu","doi":"10.3368/aa.54.1.90","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3368/aa.54.1.90","url":null,"abstract":"This article reexamines the binary structural approach proposed by McGhee (1977) in his studies of Thule culture. First, using data generated from the Okvik, Kukulik, and Nukleet assemblages in Alaska, which cover Okvik, Old Bering Sea, Punuk, and Thule cultures over 1,900 years, the paper examines whether the binary structures were encoded in the technology and materials of the Northern Maritime tradition. Second, McGhee’s (1977) archaeological and ethnographic data are reassessed, which does not support the existence of gendered oppositions but rather may relate to spiritual and symbolic relationships between human and nonhuman.","PeriodicalId":45997,"journal":{"name":"Arctic Anthropology","volume":"54 1","pages":"109 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3368/aa.54.1.90","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45335147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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