This chapter provides description and interpretation of the two major, well-documented episodes of Arctic-wide migrations. The Paleo-Inuit (also called Paleoeskimo or Arctic Small Tool tradition) migration began around 3,200 B.C., with penetration of the central Arctic by highly mobile, small-scale hunter-gatherer groups. By around 2,500 B.C., the entire eastern Arctic had been peopled by cultures known as Pre-Dorset, Saqqaq, and Independence I. The Thule Inuit migration began around A.D. 1200, when complex maritime-oriented groups from the western Arctic initiated an extremely rapid population movement, spanning the North American Arctic within a generation. The chapter considers the timing and nature of each migration episode, as well as the motivating factors which have been proposed for them, including climate change, social or economic hardship, and acquisition of specific resources such as bowhead whales or metal.
Global Climate Change and the Polar Archaeological Record; Tromsø, Norway, 15–16 February 2011; A workshop was held at the Institute of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Tromsø, in Norway, to catalyze growing concern among polar archaeologists about global climate change and attendant threats to the polar archaeological and paleoecological records. Arctic archaeological sites contain an irreplaceable record of the histories of the many societies that have lived in the region over past millennia. Associated paleoecological deposits provide powerful proxy evidence for paleoclimate and ecosystem structure and function and direct evidence of species diversity, distributions, and genetic variability. Archaeological records can span most of the Holocene (the past ∼12,000 years), depending upon location, and paleoecological records extend even further. Most are largely unstudied, and, although extremely vulnerable to destruction, they are poorly monitored and not well protected. Yet these records are key to understanding how the Arctic has functioned as a system, how humans were integrated into it, and how humans may have shaped it. Such records provide a wide range of data that are not obtainable from sources such as ice and ocean cores; these data are needed for understanding the past, assessing current and projecting future conditions, and adapting to ongoing change.
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