February 2007 www.mnh.si.edu/arctic Number 14

Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History

Newsletter

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR

By Bill Fitzhugh

Once every fifty years or so the world engages in a fit of

‘arctic hysteria’ known as the International Polar Year. This

March we begin the fourth installment, IPY-4, which runs

until March of 2009. As we watch temperatures climbing,

Arctic sea ice

melting, and animals

and peoples

adjusting to the

effects of global

warming, what better

time could there be

for scientists to

investigate, and

laymen to learn

about, one of the

most dramatic earthchanges to come

along in the past

thousand or so

years?

The Arctic

Studies Center has

taken IPY-4 by the

horns and

anticipates a full

platter of research

and educational

programs. During the

past year we

launched an exhibit

titled “Arctic: A

Friend Acting

Strangely,” a joint venture with NOAA, NSF, and NASA that

explored relationships between climate, environment, and

people in the North. The exhibit illustrated the physics and

biology of the unprecedented warming trend of the past

three decades on arctic plants, animals, sea ice, and humans,

and the interrelationships and processes involved. While

there is no doubt that a significant earth change is

underway, the root causes – CO2 rise, natural cycles, solar

changes, etc. and predictions of outcomes, continue to be

debated and remain unclear. Whatever the cause, humans

are having a pronounced effect, and calls for concerted

action are being heard from every direction.

The SI has taken a lead in IPY-4 planning on both

national and international levels. In addition to our exhibit

and the website version (www://forces.si.edu/arctic) which

launched in January 2007, the Smithsonian will host a

research conference titled “Smithsonian at the Poles” on 3-4

May. Coordinated by Michael Lang and an SI-wide steering

committee, with assistance from Under Secretary David

Evans, the symposium will feature research papers on

historical legacies of Smithsonian IPY research and

collecting from 1880 to the present as well as current

research in polar anthropology, biology, mineral sciences,

and astrophysics. Small

exhibits and public

events are planned, and

scholarly proceedings

will be published in 2008.

The Smithsonian

conference is only the

beginning. Federal

agencies have garnered

resources to promote a

massive agenda of polar

research and educational

programs through 2008,

and for the first time

national and international

activities will have

significant participation

from the social sciences

and northern resident

communities. Igor

Krupnik has taken a

major role in securing a

center-stage position for

human sciences through

his role as a member of

the international Joint

Committee for IPY-4.

The ASC has had a

productive year in other activities also. Aron Crowell and

Dawn Biddison have nearly finalized plans for the new ASC

facilities and exhibits at the Anchorage Museum, and a loan

agreement for exhibit and study of nearly 650 Smithsonian

Alaskan anthropological objects has been signed. Twothirds of these will be from NMNH Anthropology collections

and one-third from NMAI. This past spring the groundbreaking ceremonies took place, a new website was launched

(alaska.si.edu), and a small prototype exhibit about our

Alaska Collection Project opened in Anchorage, attended by

Anthropology Chairman, Dan Rogers. The new galleries are

set to open in 2010.

This year also saw an expansion of our Mongolia

research programs and presentation of a lively Mongolian

festival, “Chinggis Khaan: 800 Years of Mongolian

The Sharing Knowledge Case at the Anchorage Museum
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ASC Anchorage...............................................................3

Alaska Exhibitions and Anchorage Museum Expansion

The First Annual Alaska Native Artists Summit

New Results of the Kenai Coast Archaeology Project

Objects and Stories: The St. Lawrence Island Disaster,

1878-80

St. Lawrence Island Archaeology and the Market:

Conference Panel in Juneau

Sharing Knowledge Web Launch

Alaska Collections Project Welcomes New Staff

Exhibits.............................................................................................8

Arctic Climate Change Exhibit Displayed at the SI

Online Exhibit at http://forces.si.edu/arctic/

Research..........................................................................11

International Polar Year 2007-2008

‘Jesup-2’ Update

The Search for a Past

Summer internship at the Smithsonian

Fulbright Comparative Education Project

Future Swedish Research Project

Recognizing the Reality of a People: the Goro collection

Models of Complex Societies in Inner Asia

Kurile Island Biocomplexity Project 2006

Chemical Analysis of Arctic Food Container Residues

The Mysterious (ever-loyal) Periwinkle

Outreach.........................................................................23

Thinking About Caribou House: An Innu Heritage

Initiative

Conservation Workshop in Mongolia

A Boreal Forest Exhibit Initiative

Collections............................................................................................26

Studying the MacFarlane Inuvialuit Collection

Public Programs..............................................................28

Ocean Hall Update

Ramah Redux

Canadian Inuit Culture Unveiled in Mongolia

Culture on Cloth: Reaching Around the World

800 Year Mongolian Celebration at NMNH

Woodrow Wilson Center Seminar

Mongolia at 800

Fieldwork...................................................................... 34

Digging and Diving at the Mecatina Basque Site

Fieldwork in Mongolia..............................................................36

Mongolia Deer Stone Project: Field Report 2006

Horses and Khirigsuurs Past and Present: Ritual

Landscapes

Botany Team Travels North of Shishged Gol in East

Taiga

Bronze Age Mounds and Ancient Hominids

3D Scanning Mongolia’s Ancient Deer Stones

Shamanism and Traditional Plant Knowledge

Bergy Bits.....................................................................45

Transitions......................................................................50

Publications.............................................................................................52

ASC Staff Publications.....................................................53

Thanks to Our Sponsors...................................................54

Statehood,” at NMNH in early October, timed to coincide

with the celebration of Mongolia’s anniversary. A wonderful

musical program, “Sounds and Colors of Mongolia,” and

historically-based fashion show called “The Great Story of

the Mongols” organized by Gankhuyag Natsag entertained

an overflow crowd in Baird Auditorium, and during the

weekend Mongolian musicians, artists, exhibitions, and films

entertained throngs of museum visitors throughout the

weekend. As part of the program we co-hosted a seminar

titled “Mongolia Matters: the Legacy of Chinggis Khan and

Mongolia’s Great Empire” with the Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars, organized by Alicia

Campi.

Despite a heavy dose of educational programs, we

maintained steady progress in our field research in

Mongolia, Alaska, Quebec, Labrador, and Sweden. Together

with fieldwork, conferences, film projects, intern-training,

preparation of publications, and fund-raising, we barely

found time for answering our website email. And speaking of

webs, check out our new offerings, including a report on

Martin Nweeia’s exciting biological research on sensory

aspects of the narwhale tusk, based on field and lab studies

conducted with the assistance of Baffin Inuit. No doubt 2007

will be even busier.

Welcome aboard, friends! The ASC’s IPY Express is

about to depart for the circumpolar North...

Unsung Heroes saluted by the ASC

Don Hurlbert

Vincent Florence

Charles Noble

Paul Rhymer

Deborah Rothberg

Tom Savoy

Randy Scott

Lena Sharp

Carolyn Thome

AND, the ever-helpful staff of the MSC. Hat’s

off to you all.

Here’s our chance to conspicuously acknowledge the people

who have made the accomplishments of the ASC possible.

Sincerest thanks to all of our...
ASC ANCHORAGE

ALASKA EXHIBITIONS AND ANCHORAGE

MUSEUM EXPANSION

By Aron L. Crowell, Alaska Director, Arctic Studies Center

Several milestones marked this year’s progress toward the

2010 opening of new Arctic Studies Center exhibition

galleries and offices in the expanded Anchorage Museum. A

modest show entitled Sharing Knowledge: Alaska Native

Peoples and the Smithsonian Collections opened in the

museum’s atrium on April 30, 2007 for a one-year run,

offering a preview of much bigger things to come.

Mirroring the design and concept of the full-scale ASC

exhibition that will be constructed in the museum’s new

wing, Sharing Knowledge presents fourteen extraordinary

Alaska Native objects

from the collections of the

National Museum of

Natural History (NMNH)

and National Museum of

the American Indian

(NMAI). Among the

exhibited pieces are an

Iñupiaq feast dish with

ivory carvings of sea

mammals, an exquisite

Unangan hunting hat, a

masterfully carved Tlingit

war helmet, and a brightly

beaded Gwich’in dog

blanket. In the spirit of the

full-scale project, these

and other heritage pieces

are interpreted within the

contexts of tradition,

identity, and contemporary

life. The exhibit is

contained with a single

floor to ceiling glass case,

flanked by a computer

kiosk with the project web

site and a series of short films that feature elders’

discussions of the objects.

One purpose of the preview exhibition is to test design

concepts for the larger project, including an innovative pole

and bracket mounting system that will allow objects to be

removed from their cases for examination and discussion

with Alaska Native experts. Senior ethnographic

conservators Greta Hansen (NMNH) and Marian Kaminitz

(NMAI) came to Anchorage to work on the installation and

to review the project with exhibit designers Tim Ventimiglia

and Jennifer Whitburn of Ralph Appelbaum Associates

(RAA - New York), as well as ASC staff and Anchorage

Museum exhibition curator Dave Nicholls. “Lessons

learned” from the project have been invaluable to both

Smithsonian museums and to RAA as design of the full scale

project moves forward.

Daniel Rogers, Chair of the Department of

Anthropology at NMNH and Elizabeth Gordon, Special

Projects Manager for NMAI, traveled to Alaska in August to

represent the Smithsonian at the official groundbreaking for

the new museum wing. Senator Ted Stevens, Governor

Frank Murkowski, and Mayor Mark Begich keynoted the

event, which represents a $116 million investment of private

and public funding. While in Anchorage, Rogers and

Gordon met with Anchorage Museum director Patricia Wolf

to finalize loan agreements that will bring a total of 450

objects from NMNH and 200 from NMAI to Anchorage for

the 2010 ASC exhibition. The objects will be on five, ten,

and fifteen year loans, with new pieces sent north from the

Smithsonian to replace those that are returned. The Alaska

trip was a first for both Dan Rogers and Betsy Gordon, who

enjoyed a back roads tour with Aron Crowell of the rainswollen Little Susitna River and the spectacular beauty of

Eklutna Lake beneath a

wind-torn fragment of

Alaska sunshine.

In September, the

Arctic Studies Center’s

exhibition advisory panel

met for two days in

Anchorage to pore over

preliminary designs and

object selections for the

17 large cases that will

represent all of Alaska’s

diverse cultures. The

project is moving

forward with the panel’s

recommendations for

both exhibition design

and the public

programming that will

place in the new

exhibition space. The

panel includes LaRue

Barnes (Ilanka Cultural

Center), Scott Carrlee

(Alaska State Museum),

Angela Demma (Alaska

Native Heritage Center), Barbara Donatelli (Cook Inlet

Regional Inc.), Ann Fienup-Riordan (Calista Elders Council),

Sven Haakanson, Jr. (Alutiiq Museum), Joan Hamilton

(Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center and Museum), Beverly

Hugo (Iñupiat Heritage, Language, and Culture Commission),

Eliza Jones (Alaska Native Language Center), Suzi Jones

(Anchorage Museum), Merlin Koonooka (Kawerak, Inc.),

Sasha Lindgren (Kenaitze Indian Tribe), Paul Ongtooguk

(University of Alaska Anchorage), Patricia Petrivelli

(Bureau of Indian Affairs), Gordon Pullar (University of

Alaska, Fairbanks), Jon Ross (Alaska Native Heritage

Center), Clare Swan (Kenaitze Indian Tribe), and Rosita

Worl (Sealaska Heritage Institute).

At year’s end back in Washington, collections staff at

NMNH and NMAI plunged into the huge project of

assessing and preparing 650 objects for the Anchorage loan.

The Anchorage Museum Foundation (AMF), through the

authorization of the Anchorage Museum Building Committee

under Chair Brian Davies, is providing $1.2 M over the next

ASC advisor Eliza Jones (Koyukon Athabascan, left front) and Dawn

Biddison (right front) during installation of the Sharing Knowledge preview exhibit at the Anchorage Museum, April 2006. They are examining a

pair of Alutiiq caribou skin boots and a Gwich'in Athabascan dog blanket.

ASC Newsletter
4 ASC Newsletter

THE FIRST ANNUAL ALASKA NATIVE ARTISTS

SUMMIT

By Dawn Biddison

On October 25, 2006, the first annual Alaska Native Artists

Summit was held in Anchorage, Alaska, to address key

issues affecting the Alaska Native arts community. The

event was hosted in conjunction with the Alaska Federation

of Natives (AFN) Convention by the Alaska Native Heritage

Center (ANHC) and the Alaska State Council on the Arts

(AKSCA) and organized by a committee of Native artists and

representatives of Native arts and culture services

organizations, including Dawn Biddison from the ASC

Anchorage office. Eighteen Native villages, Native

corporations, museums, cultural centers, government

agencies, foundations, and corporations acted as cosponsors. Over 300 people attended the Summit—Alaska

Native Elders, artists and writers, and resource providers

from Alaskan and national agencies and organizations.

Dawn provided information to attendees about programs at

the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural

History and National Museum of the American Indian.

The Summit began with welcomes by Dena’ina Elder

Alberta Stephan, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, and

Tlingit artist Teri Rofkar. Inupiaq artist Ron Senungetuk

gave a presentation on the history of Native arts in Alaska.

A summary of the ANHC 2005 Ford Foundation survey of

Alaska Native artists was presented by survey coordinator

Carmen Bydalek. During lunch, there was a presentation of

work by Alaska Native artists and a dance performance by

Chuna McIntyre and Tatiana Andrew. A second dance

performance was held in

honor of Unangan artist

John Hoover by the Kicaput

Dancers of Anchorage.

Morning and afternoon

roundtable discussion were

held on six issues identified

by the Alaska Native artists

who responded to the Ford

Foundation survey:

collections sharing and

repatriation, counterfeit

Native art, intellectual and

cultural property rights,

marketing Native art,

perpetuating Native art, and

trade of restricted materials.

For each issue, participants

requested workshops for

additional information and

for developing ways to

address them. Regarding

collections access,

participants asked for workshops on collections

development and management and on repatriation of sacred

objects. They called for programs to increase education and

cultural sensitivity about Native objects and art in museums.

They also pointed out a need to build trusting relationships

with museums not governed by repatriation laws to ensure

community and artist access to collections.

A report on the Summit, including recommendations for

actions, will be posted on the ASCA website and has been

sent by letter to Alaska Native artists and arts agencies

inviting them to become involved in creating solutions.

Plans for the next Alaska Native Artists Summit are under

way and will be held in Fairbanks in 2007, also in

conjunction with the AFN Convention.

NEW RESULTS OF THE KENAI COAST

ARCHAEOLOGY PROJECT

By Aron L. Crowell

The interdisciplinary Kenai Fjords Oral History and

Archaeology Project moved through an analytical phase in

2006, as work with artifact and faunal collections from

fieldwork in 2002-04 was completed. Several sites in Aialik

Bay, Kenai Fjords National Park, document Alutiiq coastal

life and cultural change over nearly a millennium (C.E. 1000-

1920).

One focus of the project is on interpreting economic and

social impacts of the Russian fur trade, which started in the

1740s when Russian companies and a workforce of

conscripted Alaska Native hunters began pursuing sea

otters first in the Aleutian Islands and then on Kodiak Island

and the southern Alaskan coast. The Kenai Fjords area was

pulled into this expansion during the 1780s-90s, when one of

the Aialik Bay sites – known now as the Early Contact

Village – was briefly occupied. Early Russian trade beads, a

hand-forged iron knife, and a 1748 Russian 1⁄2 kopeck (1/200

of a ruble) are among the artifacts found at the site, along

Opening reception for Sharing Knowledge preview exhibit

3 1⁄2 years to bring new

Smithsonian project staff

on board, including

managers, conservators,

and registration

technicians. Jake Homiak,

Director of Anthropology

Collections, is presently

leading the loan project for

NMNH and Elizabeth

Gordon will be the full-term

project manager for NMAI.

The AMF also generously

approved four years of

funding to support Dawn

Biddison in her role as

museum specialist and ASC

exhibition co-curator in

Anchorage. Sarah Barton,

principal of the

management firm RISE

Alaska, is mentioned here

last but far from least in

recognition of her multifaceted talents and crucial role in

coordinating the diverse cast of players – museum leaders,

designers, architects, consultants, contractors, and many

more – who are working together to make the new

Anchorage facility and exhibitions a reality.
 ASC Newsletter 5

Student Derek Shaw (U.C. Berkeley) and archaeozoologist David

Yesner (University of Alaska, Anchorage) at the Early Contact

Village site, Aialik Bay, Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.

Midden excavations at the Early Contact Village, 2003. Aron

Crowell (lower right) with (left to right) Forest Kvasnikoff,

Katrina Hedrick, Rita Eagle, Derek Shaw, Connie Hedrick,

Mark Luttrell, and Binh Tam Ha.

upwelling and higher oceanic productivity than in modern times.

With funding awarded to Aron Crowell from the Wenner-Gren

Foundation for Anthropological Research, John Valley of the

University of Wisconsin stable isotope laboratory is analyzing

O18/16 and C14/13 ratios from the otoliths (ear bones) of Pacific

cod from the Early Contact Village. The otoliths samples were

prepared by fisheries expert Kristen Munk at the Juneau

laboratory of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It is

expected that the isotopic signatures from the “P cod” samples

will confirm both colder waters during the late LIA and also

higher primary productivity. Comparative work on Aialik

shellfish isotopes is included in a December proposal to the

North Pacific Research Board, in collaboration with Anne

Solomon (University of California, Santa Barbara). Crowell is

also working with GIS analyst Mark Matson and statistician Joe

Liddle (University of Alaska Southeast) to document

ecologically driven shifts in Little Ice Age settlement patterns

across the Gulf of Alaska.

The residents, tribal councils, and youth of three

contemporary Alutiiq villages – Nanwalek, Port Graham, and

Seldovia – have been strongly involved in project design and

implementation. In December, Aron Crowell and David Yesner

traveled to the villages to give the latest in an annual series of

community workshops and school presentations. Part of this

year’s effort was to gather community commentary on the

results of the faunal analysis, based on oral tradition and the

contemporary knowledge of subsistence hunters. Discussions

at the workshops turned toward harbor seal hunting on ice

floes, porpoise behavior (i.e. how was it possible to hunt them

from kayaks?), nutrient enrichment by tidewater glaciers, and

other topics of importance for interpreting the archaeological

findings.

The Kenai Fjords project has been supported by a three

year grant from the Oceans Alaska Science and Learning Center

(OASLC), a partnership of the National Park Service and the

Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. The Arctic Studies Center is

applying for new OASLC funding to support fieldwork during

2007-08 that will provide data from the Nuka Bay area in the

western part of Kenai Fjords National Park. Final reports and

journal publications on the Aialik Bay project are currently in

preparation.

with slate-tipped lances, bone fish hooks, and other

indigenous hunting and fishing equipment. The site

offers evidence of a relatively independent way of life on

this remote coast where Russian control of the Native

population was always tenuous. Abundant and wellpreserved faunal remains show that Aialik Bay hunters

were harvesting large numbers of harbor seals, sea lions,

porpoises, alcids (murres and puffins), fish, and

invertebrates (cockles, mussels, clams). This is a far

richer diet than was possible on Kodiak Island, where

Russian overseers forced Native hunters to focus almost

exclusively on sea otters, leaving little time for other

subsistence pursuits and leading to general hunger in

the villages.

An adjacent Aialik Bay settlement, called the Denton

Site, represents the post-1867 American era, when the

Alaska Commercial Company and other U.S. firms

introduced a cash-based economy, paid high prices for

sea otters and other pelts, and sold a broad range of new

material goods to Native customers. The Denton Site

reflects a period of relative Alutiiq affluence during the

late 19th century, when residents hunted with muskets

and carbines, wore store-bought shoes and cotton

clothing, and outfitted their log cabins with ceramic tea

sets, iron stoves, and kerosene lanterns. Residents of

the site included grandparents of some Alutiiq elders

who are alive today in Nanwalek and Port Graham, and

their way of life is being reconstructed through a

combination of oral history and archaeology.

Archaeozoologists David Yesner and Diane Hanson,

both on the anthropology faculty at the University of

Alaska, Anchorage (UAA), provided identifications and

analysis of more than 10,000 mammal, seabird, and fish

bones from both sites. Graduate students Rita Eagle

(UAA) and Nicole Tozzi (University of Alaska Fairbanks)

are preparing masters theses based on analysis of trade

beads and other artifacts from the two locations.

Work with faunal remains is also directed toward

interpreting climatic and ecological conditions during the

late Little Ice Age (~C.E. 1400-1900). Tree ring data and

glacial advances indicate much colder conditions,

especially around C.E. 1800. Fish (Pacific cod, rockfish),

sea mammals, and shellfish from the sites are large

compared to modern animals and may indicate more
6 ASC Newsletter

OBJECTS AND STORIES: THE ST. LAWRENCE

ISLAND DISASTER, 1878-80

By Aron L. Crowell

Consultations with Alaska Native elders for the Alaska

Collections Project have revealed extraordinary connections

between Smithsonian objects and indigenous history. In

2001, a Yupik ceremonial seal intestine parka from the

collections of the National Museum of the American Indian

inspired Estelle

Oozevaseuk to narrate her

clan’s story of the

devastating food shortage

and epidemic that killed

over 1500 people on St.

Lawrence Island in 1878-

80. In the traditional tale,

published this year in the

journal Arctic

Anthropology1

, men and

women from the village of

Kukulek dress in beautiful

white intestine parkas as

they prepare for death,

which comes as they lie

sleeping inside their

houses.

Part of the significance

of this story lies in the

explanation it gives for

why the disaster

happened. By all

accounts, the direct

causes were complex, a kind of perfect storm. Contemporary

reports by Yankee whaling captains and others in the area,

including Smithsonian collector Edward W. Nelson and

naturalist John Muir, recorded bad winds, sea ice

conditions that prevented walrus hunting, and an

unidentified epidemic illness that swept the island. Yupik

memories of the disaster, recorded in later years by Henry

Collins, Otto Geist, Dorothy Leighton, and other

researchers, corroborate most aspects of these reports.

However, Nelson and others, including Captain Calvin

Hooper of the U. S. Revenue Service, also blamed the failure

of the walrus hunt on consumption of alcohol sold by

unscrupulous traders. This assertion is undermined by the

widespread geographic region that was simultaneously

affected by famine, including villages on the Siberian shore

and King Island. Historian John Bockstoce has suggested

that Hooper exaggerated the alcohol problem in order to

push for more Revenue Service funding from the U. S.

Congress.

Estelle Oozevaseuk’s story, inherited from her

grandfather Uetelen, looks to more spiritual causes. People

of Kukulek, it was said, cut skin from living walruses,

disregarding the respect toward animals that imbues the

spiritual values of all arctic hunting peoples. Directed by a

shaman, who foresaw that all must die for this

transgression, the people of Kukulek dressed in the snowwhite parkas, acknowledged their error, and received

forgiveness from their spiritual leader before passing on to a

Estelle Oozevaseuk at her home in Gambell, St. Lawrence Island,

July 2006

different world. As Mrs. Oozevaseuk recognizes, this story

reflects a synthesis of Christianity and traditional Yupik

belief. A pre-missionary version, recorded on St. Lawrence

Island by Waldemar Bogoras in 1901, lacks any evident

Christian influence; in it, the peoples’ fate is sealed without

recourse by the curse of a angry walrus spirit.

Memories of the famine – and of the stinging accusation

that it was caused by intemperance – still resonate today. In

2005, Gambell resident Douglas Henry found an old

underground meat cache

buried eight feet down in

the frozen soil of the

Siqlugaghyaget

archaeological site.

Blubber from the cache was

eventually radiocarbon

dated to about 1100 years

before present, but before

this result was known some

residents of Gambell

suggested that the meat

remained from 1878, proof

that people had not failed

to provide themselves with

meat.

Aron L. Crowell and

Estelle Oozevaseuk, 2006,

“The St. Lawrence Island

Famine and Epidemic, 1878-

80: A Yupik Narrative in

Cultural and Historical

Perspective,” Arctic

Anthopology 43(1):1-19.

ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE

MARKET: CONFERENCE PANEL IN JUNEAU

By Aron L. Crowell

Complex cultural and economic issues have arisen from the

pressure of a world-wide private and museum market that

deals in artistic ivory treasures from Old Bering Sea and

Okvik period archaeological sites on St. Lawrence Island.

Widespread digging and sales of artifacts by Yupik residents

are completely legal and provide a rare source of critically

needed cash income. Yet the devastation of 2000 year old

sites is troubling for all concerned. A serious and wellattended discussion of the situation took place in Juneau on

Oct. 6 at the annual conference of Museums Alaska, the

statewide association whose members represent over 50

large, small, and tribal museums from around the state. The

session, entitled Cultural Heritage, Archaeology, and the

Market: Looking for Solutions on St. Lawrence Island,

included presentations by Julie Hollowell (Department of

Anthropology and Sociology, University of British

Columbia), Jonella Larson (Museum Studies, Harvard

Extension School), Kaci Fullwood (Kawerak Inc.), and

organizer Aron Crowell (Arctic Studies Center). The

panelists approached the issue from different backgrounds –

Hollowell from her research on the ivory market and
 ASC Newsletter 7

SHARING KNOWLEDGE WEB LAUNCH

By Aron L. Crowell

The Arctic Studies Center announces the official launch of

its new web site, Sharing Knowledge: The Smithsonian

Alaska Collections at http://alaska.si.edu. The site is the

result of five years of collaborative research and

consultation with Alaska Native elders, with a focus on the

history, meaning, and design of Alaskan objects in the

collections of the National Museum of Natural History and

National Museum of the American Indian. A small but

growing number of items from the peoples of northeastern

Siberia is also included. The site offers a window into the

amazing breadth and beauty of these multicultural northern

collections, most acquired by the Smithsonian during the

late 19th and early 20th centuries. A protean variety of

clothing, masks, carvings, tools, and traditional equipment

for hunting, fishing, and domestic life is represented. Each

object features elders’ commentaries (translated and

transcribed from seven indigenous languages), summaries

and citations to historical and anthropological sources, and

supporting images. There are 3-D rotating views of some

items, and “zoomify” high resolution photographs that allow

the user to study fine details of carving, stitching, and

design. The site currently presents about 300 objects but

will expand as more of the 800+ pieces discussed so far with

elders are added. Visitors to the site can also read

introductory essays about the cultural regions of Alaska and

northeastern Siberia, written by Native authors and advisors

to the project. A growing portion of the site is now available

in Russian translation.

Sharing Knowledge web design is by the multi-award

winning Second Story Interactive Studio in Portland,

Oregon, under producer Julie Beeler. Funding for the effort

was provided by the Rasmuson Foundation, National Park

Service (through its Shared Beringian Heritage program), the

Smithsonian Institution, ConocoPhillips Alaska, the

Anchorage Museum Foundation, Museum Loan Network,

and Alaska Humanities Forum. Research and content

production represent the work of project curator Aron

Crowell, co-curator Dawn Biddison, and scores of

collaborators in northern communities. Biographies of more

The home page of the Sharing Knowledge website:

http://alaska.si.edu

curatorship of the Princeton University Art Museum

exhibition Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories from the

Bering Strait; Larson from her Yupik cultural ties to the

island and commitment to cultural heritage issues; Fullwood

as program manager for developing a Beringia Museum in

Nome to represent the cultures of the Bering Strait; and

Crowell from his archaeological research on St. Lawrence

Island and long involvement with Alaska Native museums

and exhibitions. One consensus reached by both panel and

audience was that Native-run museums – in Nome and

possibly on St. Lawrence Island itself – could be part of the

answer to keeping the region’s archaeological heritage from

disappearing entirely, but that destructive digging of sites is

almost certain to continue as long as strong international

demand for ivory artifacts continues.

ALASKA COLLECTION PROJECT WELCOMES

NEW STAFF

Janet Kamien, a museum consultant with long experience in

creating exhibitions at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, the

Boston Children’s Museum, and the Field Museum in

Chicago, has joined the Anchorage Museum as its exhibition

project manager for the new Arctic Studies Center gallery of

Alaska Native culture, opening in 2010. Over the next three

years, Janet will direct traffic at the busy intersection of

design, fabrication, loan preparation, and installation.

The ASC also welcomes new contract staff who are

preparing the Smithsonian objects for their journey north.

Conservators Landis Smith and Michelle Austin-Dennehy

are assessing and treating 450 requested pieces of arctic

clothing, tools, and regalia from NMNH’s Alaska collections.

Conservator Kelly McHugh is undertaking the same work at

NMAI, which will lend 200 of its pieces. All three have long

experience in the art and science of protecting ethnographic

objects – in this case made of skin, ivory, wood, and bone –

from the impacts of travel, handling, and display. Along with

senior conservators Greta Hansen (NMNH) and Marian

Kaminitz (NMAI), the three are working with Anchorage

staff, exhibition designers, and fabricators to achieve an

optimum situation for the objects in Anchorage, where the

pieces will be displayed for up to 15 years before returning

to Washington. Project registrar Randal Scott (NMNH) is

helping to manage the flow of objects and information as the

project develops.

than 40 contributing elders, translators, and scholars are

included on the site.
8 ASC Newsletter

EXHIBITS

ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE EXHIBIT DISPLAYED AT

THE SMITHSONIAN

By Igor Krupnik

For more than seven months,

from April to November 2006,

intriguing blue banners invited

NMNH visitors to explore the

world of the rapidly changing

Arctic presented in a special

new exhibit “Arctic: A Friend

Acting Strangely.” Under

development since 2003 (see

ASC Newsletter 12 and 13,

2004; 2005), the exhibit opened

to the public in April 2006. It

was produced jointly by the

ASC and the NMNH Office of

Exhibits as a part of the

museum’s Forces of Change

series on global change (see

http://forces.si.edu). The

exhibit occupied almost half of

Hall 30 on the 4000 square foot

second floor temporary gallery

adjacent to the new Mammals

Hall, with the second half of

the gallery taken by a ‘sister’

exhibit featuring the story of

atmospheric gases,

Atmosphere: Change Is in the

Air.” The twin exhibits were put together by separate

production teams, but they actually made a perfect match.

The Arctic exhibit’s 1800-square feet of rich content

included ethnographic artifacts from NMNH collections,

over 50 graphic panels, a stunning documentary-style film,

two animations, a modeled igloo, a mounted caribou

(Rangifer tarandus)

specimen, two

mannequins, and two

computer interactive

stations.

Arctic: A Friend

Acting Strangely

was developed as a

joint NMNH project

with NOAA, NSF,

and NASA, as the

principal

Smithsonian

contribution to the

Study of

Environmental

Arctic Change

(SEARCH)

interagency program

conducted since

2000 by eight federal

agencies, under the

general leadership of

Opening display with mannequins of Arctic indigenous hunter and polar scientist

shown against a stunning arctic backdrop. Photo by Jim DiLoreto.

NSF. The exhibit was produced by a joint ASC-NMNH Office

of Exhibits team that included Igor Krupnik (lead science

curator), Bill Fitzhugh (science

curator), Lou Codispoti (science

curator), Barbara Stauffer

(exhibit developer), Siobhan

Starrs (exhibit developer), Judy

Mannes (script writer), Richard

Efthim (education specialist),

Katherine Lenard (production

designer), Christine Leonard

(architect), and Katherine Rusk

(researcher), under the general

leadership of Barbara and Igor.

Stephen Loring, Noel Broadbent,

and Dennis Stanford from the

NMNH Department of

Anthropology took part in the

preparation of various exhibit

sections and displays. Many

leading scientists at NOAA and

NASA, researchers at other

agencies and universities

contributed data, images, maps,

graphics, and hours of free

consultations to the exhibit

production.

The title of the exhibit was a

paraphrase of the Inuit (Inuktitut)

word uggianaqtuq first

documented in interviews with

the Inuit people on Baffin Island,

Arctic Canada by Shari Fox Gearheard in the early 2000s.

The Inuit explained that they normally use that word to

describe someone who is a close friend or a relative and who

starts to behave in a strange, unpredictable manner. They

sometimes use this word also to refer to the increasingly

unstable and

unpredictable

weather conditions

they are observing

these days. By

selecting an Inuit

concept as a catchy

exhibit title to be

featured in

Washington, D.C.,

we wanted to share

the local people’s

vision of what is

happening to their

environment. It was

also aimed to send a

message that Native

observations

strongly confirm the

signal of rapid

climate warming in

the Arctic that is

also being

Exhibit development team (left to right): Barbara Stauffer,

Bill Fitzhugh, Siobhan Starrs, and Igor Krupnik. Photo by

Ken Rahaim.
 ASC Newsletter 9

Exhibit featuring decorated caribou-skin parka and traditional dolls of

the Innu people of Quebec and Labrador, Canada, from the NMNH ethnology collections.

supported by numerous recent scholarly studies of Arctic

climate, sea ice, atmospheric circulation, and general

ecosystem change. In fact, our exhibit was mainly an attempt

to show the ‘human face’ of Arctic climate change by

revealing (or, rather, illustrating) perspectives, observational

methods, and interpretations of change used by indigenous

people and polar scientists. While scientists may debate the

causes of the current climate change in the Arctic– many

linking it to polar amplification of the global warming trend—

we wanted to create an exhibit that would tell how the

changes are perceived by and directly affect Arctic residents

today.

This ‘dual’ perspective on Arctic climate change, as seen

by indigenous residents and polar scientists, was visually

articulated by two mannequins placed at the very entrance

to the exhibit. One

featured a polar

researcher dressed in

an orange field suite, a

donation by NOAA

scientist, Dr. Kathy

Crane. The other

mannequin was a figure

of an indigenous hunter

dressed in a genuine

whale hunting suite

donated by the family

of the late Melvin

Seppilu from the village

of Savoonga on St.

Lawrence Island,

Alaska. A reserved and

quiet man, an

experienced whaling

captain, and a

renowned ivory carver,

Melvin visited NMNH

as a part of St.

Lawrence Island

heritage team in 2001 and became a great fan of the

Smithsonian. To memorialize this connection, his brother’s

family let Melvin’s hunting clothing to be used in the exhibit

(and later to become a part of the Smithsonian ethnological

collection). Numerous other objects and Native photographs

and statements were also used in the exhibit to illustrate

Arctic people’s attachment to and their reliance upon their

familiar environment – a friend that increasingly behaves

‘strangely’ over the past decade. That message was

evocatively delivered in the exhibit’s 4-minute video,

Eyewitness to Change, which told the story of Arctic

environmental change as seen through the eyes of residents

of a small Inuit (Inuvialuit) community of Sachs Harbour in

the Canadian Arctic. The exhibit video was produced using

footage from a video project, Sila Alongotok. Inuit

Observations on Climate Change, produced jointly by the

International Institute of Sustainable Development in

Winnipeg, Manitoba and the Community of Sachs Harbour.

The exhibit’s main narrative, the story of the Changing

Arctic, was told in several focused stories illustrated by

ethnographic objects from the Smithsonian collections,

photographs, satellite animations, graphic illustrations, and

computer interactive stations. The Eyewitness to Change

section explored how Arctic indigenous residents interpret

the shifts in their environment. The Arctic Meltdown section

presented the story of the changes in polar sea ice and how

it affects local people’s economies and wildlife that depend

on sea ice as its prime habitat. Another section, Slip Sliding

Away, illustrated how changes in sea ice are triggering

catastrophic storms and rapid coastal erosion alleviated by

the thawing of permafrost. An Arctic Way of Life, the section

that featured changes in land ecosystems through the story

of caribou and reindeer, and of indigenous cultures, such as

those of the Innu and Sámi people that live by caribou

hunting and reindeer herding. The concluding section,

Climate Roller Coaster, explored how Arctic climate had

fluctuated over the past 20,000 years and how human

cultures have adapted with various degrees of success to

the changing environment and subsistence resources.

Of course, no exhibit

can tell the whole story

and none can project the

complexity of curators’

original plans and

designers’ visions in full.

Thousands of

Smithsonian visitors

enjoyed the exhibit over

its seven-month lifetime;

but time and again we

have been asked why we

did not focus it on ‘global

warming,’ or ‘why our

exhibit does not feature

the increase in carbon

dioxide or greenhouse

gases,’ the main perceived

factor of the climate

warming trend. To that we

had to answer that people

who live in the North

normally do not view

changes to their land and

sea as the ‘CO2 story’ and that we see our task of arctic

anthropologists to present that vision, rather than that of

polar physical scientists or environmental activists. Dozens

of our colleagues from every science field supported that

approach. Almost 50 groups from every major polar science

event that took place in Washington, DC over seven-month

time and from many polar nations visited our exhibit and

were welcomed with our guided tours.

We were particularly proud that our Arctic exhibit was

quickly regarded as the prime Smithsonian contribution to

the forthcoming International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008. In

fact, we became the first and the only staging ground in

town (if not across the nation) that helped scientists, agency

people, and numerous visitors visualize future public

programs to be developed during the IPY years. Exhibit

tours, planning sessions, and presentation of exhibit

materials at various IPY-related meetings in 2006 became

additional tangible contributions of our project to public

education and to the worldwide preparation to IPY 2007–

2008.

Unfortunately, due to the tight NMNH exhibition

schedule, the show closed several months prior to the actual

start of IPY in March 2007. Nevertheless, starting in January

2007 it will be accessible online through a special website
10 ASC Newsletter

developed by the NMNH exhibit team in collaboration with

the Night Kitchen Interactive, an award-winning website

design firm from Philadelphia (see http://

www.whatscookin.com/).This website development project

was funded by a grant from NSF and became available online in early January 2007 at http://forces.si.edu/arctic.html.

In addition, all exhibit panels have been carefully preserved,

both physically and virtually, in a temporary storage space

for use in a prospective traveling version of the exhibit when

the necessary funds are secured. Another option is a smaller

‘print-on-demand’ version of 25 original exhibit panels that

can be delivered to prospective users as a licensed package

of PDF files. Such a ‘print-on-demand’ package has been

developed by the NMNH Office of the Exhibits and it may be

soon staged at some northern museums and public centers

in conjunction to the IPY 2007–2008 opening events. Those

interested in either the exhibit or the PDF version should

contact Siobhan Starrs in the NMNH Special Exhibits Office

(starrss@si.edu). After three years of preparation and seven

months of the Smithsonian display, we would love to see

Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely featured in cyberspace

and additional venues.

Our warmest thanks to Waleed Abdalati, Richard Alley,

Fred Bruemmer, John Calder, Elisabeth Cassano, Kathy

Crane, Joan Eamer, Shari Fox Gearheard, Brad Griffith,

Brendan Kelly, John Kermond, David Klein, Gary Kofinas,

Chris Linder, James Overland, Mark Serreze, Neil

Swanberg, as well as to our indigenous contributors, George

Noongwook, Christina Alowa, Cecil Seppilu, Chester

Noongwook, Vadim Yenan (all from Savoonga, Alaska),

Conrad Oozeva (from Gambell, Alaska), Zacharias Aqqiaruq

(from Igloolik, Canada), N. Attungala (from Baker Lake,

Canada), Rosemarie Kuptana (originally from Sachs

Harbour, Canada), and many others. A special ‘thank-you’

for all the hard work put by Deborah Hull-Walski, Susan

Crawford, Natalie Firnhaber, Greta Hansen, and Landis

Smith from the NMNH Anthropology Collections and

Archives Program, and by Paul Rhymer, Rena Selim,

Carolyn Margolis, Kim Moeller, David Hsu, Lola Lancaster,

and Charles Noble from the NMNH Office of Exhibits.

ONLINE EXHIBIT AT HTTP://FORCES.SI.EDU/

ARCTIC/

By Siobhan Starrs

The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely exhibition web

site launched to the public on January 8, 2007. The web

site puts a human face on warming in the Arctic by

exploring changes in the Arctic that have been observed

and documented by scientists and polar residents alike.

 The Arctic site is a portal for Arctic research and includes

compelling photography, scientific research, polar resident

and community stories, two interactive activities and an

Eyewitness documentary video. The site also includes a

section for Educators that includes a set of science

standards-based activities developed by the National

Museum of Natural History for teachers, informal

educators and families. The Eyewitness to Change section

contains a changing gallery that features stories of Arctic

researchers, residents and communities. The stories featured

will change through the upcoming International Polar Year

(IPY) 2007-2008. Igor Krupnik is leading the ASC efforts on

IPY4 and participating on many IPY4 committees and teams.

The new Arctic web site will become a portal and public face

for IPY4 events and activities for Natural History Museum

visitors. The exhibit web site will grow in February 2007 to

include commenting and feedback section that allow site

visitors to share their own stories with each other. The

Arctic site will provide a public forum, actual and virtual, for

communication among people, agencies, and groups

interested in issues of environmental change as well as for

those who are concerned about the future of the Arctic and

of the entire planet affected by climate change.

The web site incorporates rich content from the Arctic: A

Friend Acting Strangely exhibition that was developed

jointly by the ASC and Office of Exhibits at Smithsonian’s

National Museum of Natural History and was on display

through November 2006. The curators for the exhibition and

web site content are Igor Krupnik and William Fitzhugh,

at the ASC. Additional exhibit content and photographs

were provided by Stephen Loring from the ASC and from

Noel Broadbent and Dennis Stanford, at the Museum’s

Department of Anthropology. The exhibition was made

possible by a generous grant from the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Arctic Research

Office. Additional support and funding for the exhibit were

provided by the Department of Energy, the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the

National Science Foundation (NSF). The web site was

generously funded by the National Science Foundation’s

Office of Polar Programs.

In even more exciting news, some of the Arctic: A Friend

Acting Strangely exhibition’s graphic and multimedia

components, including customized packages for smaller

venues, are now available for prospective display at other

venues during IPY 2007-2008 and beyond. Interested venues

are encouraged to contact the National Museum of Natural

History’s Office of Exhibits for more information.

For more information about the web site and the

prospective local exhibit options please contact:

Siobhan Starrs, National Museum of Natural History

Phone: 202-633-1143, E-mail: starrss@si.edu

Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely, http://forces.si.edu.arctic.
 ASC Newsletter 11

RESEARCH

IPY 2007–08: IT’S RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!

By Igor Krupnik

By the time this issue of the ASC Newsletter arrives to its

readers, it will be hardly a few week left before the official

opening of International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008, due

March 1st, 2007. In fact, some of the opening events for the

IPY are to start in February 2007. The several-year-long

preparatory period is now all but over, and the new venture

that happens once in FIFTY years is literally around the

corner.

Over those years, we kept our readers informed on the

planning and preparation for IPY (ASC Newsletter 2003,

2004, 2005). The most recent update on IPY activities in

social and human sciences has been published recently in

the journal ARCTIC (Hovelsrud and Krupnik 2006).

As is now broadly known, the social and human

sciences will have a very prominent place in this IPY, unlike

its three predecessors of 1882–1883, 1932–1933, and 1957–

1958. According to the soon-to-be-released Science Plan

for IPY 2007–2008, a total of 229 projects submitted by

scholars, educators, data managers, polar residents, media

and outreach specialists from over 60 countries, have been

endorsed for implementation during the official IPY period

from March 2007 to March 2009. These projects have a

strong interdisciplinary emphasis and address the six major

themes of IPY 2007–2008: current status of the polar regions;

the unprecedented level of change around the poles, both

environmental and social; global linkages that connect

polar regions with the rest of the globe; new research

frontiers in polar sciences; the unique role of the polar

regions as vantage points for observations; and human

dimensions of polar science that include cultural, historical,

social, and environmental processes that affect circumpolar

human societies. Additionally, several IPY projects explore

data management, new observational systems, education,

and public outreach efforts related to IPY science.

Social and Human Studies in IPY 2007–2008

Of those 229 initiatives in research, education, and public

outreach endorsed by the Joint Committee for

implementation during the IPY years, over 60 projects (or

more than 25%) are focused on social and human issues.

They advance collaborative efforts by scientists and

agencies from 25 countries, including several non-polar

nations such as Australia, Indonesia, Italy, and South Africa,

in addition to the Arctic countries and nations with

traditionally strong polar programs. Scholars from 14 nations

are listed as project leaders, which makes the social/human

field as diverse as the IPY itself.

The ‘human component’ is also being featured

prominently in many large interdisciplinary IPY programs

beyond the social or human health fields. Social scientists

and northern residents are currently serving on national IPY

committees in more than a dozen countries: Bulgaria,

Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, the

Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom

and the United States.

As much as the new IPY is going to be special because

of the broad participation of social and human scientists, it

is supposed to be a true milestone in the level of

engagement of polar residents, particularly of northern

indigenous people. We hardly have any record of polar

residents’ involvement in the previous IPY ventures, other

than serving as guides, dog drivers, manual laborers, food

providers, and low-level assistants. IPY 2007–2008 is going

to take place in a totally different era. Many Arctic regions

now feature modern schools, computer and Internet

communication, and highly literate youth interested in

science, technology, and higher education.

Polar science has also changed dramatically over the

past fifty years, since the previous IGY of 1957–1958. Two

most recent interdisciplinary studies, The Northern

Contaminants Programme and the Arctic Climate Impact

Assessment (ACIA), and other projects of the 1990s and

early 2000s were instrumental in opening polar scientists to

the value of indigenous knowledge and local observation of

polar processes. For decades, the ‘brand’ image of polar

science was that of tough bearded white men standing on

polar ice sheet or on the deck of an icebreaker. The new

vision for IPY 2007–2008 now includes a smiling face of an

Inuit kid in its logo.

It is not surprising that the response to the new IPY call

from groups representing Arctic residents and indigenous

people was very enthusiastic. All major organizations

representing Arctic indigenous people, such as the Inuit

Circumpolar Conference, the Aleut International

Association, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, the Gwich’in

Council International, the Russian Association of

Indigenous Peoples of the North, the Sámi Council, are

involved in IPY activities as supporters or initiators of

various projects. When people ask why IPY 2007–2008 is

important to polar residents the answer is simple. It is going

to be the first major interdisciplinary venture in the history

of polar science in which polar residents’ knowledge of their

environment is actively sought and is treated as a valuable

component of shared understanding of global links and

processes.

Over 30 listed IPY projects in social and human studies

that feature very strong participation of polar indigenous

researchers or groups representing polar residents mostly

involve studies of indigenous knowledge, environmental

observations, community sustainability, health and nutrition,

language, literacy, and education. Scores of projects have

indigenous scholars as their principal investigators or have
12 ASC Newsletter

local groups and agencies as their driving force. Of course,

participation in IPY will become relevant to polar residents

only if it brings certain tangible results, such as the increase

in community-shared knowledge, new status for indigenous

science, or improvement in people’s well-being. We hope

that this unprecedented level of engagement will benefit the

participating communities in many ways, including new

critical skills, training of young students, knowledge

documentation, and the development of local infrastructure.

Smithsonian IPY Program

Of all of the present-day government agencies, Smithsonian

has, perhaps, the longest record of

engagement in IPY efforts, starting

from the first US IPY missions of 1881–

1884 to Point Barrow, Ellesmere Island,

and Ungava Bay. Smithsonian

contribution was considered critical

from the very beginning of the US

planning efforts for this IPY. The ASC,

in particular, was instrumental in

drafting the list of public and outreach

events, and in gearing up arctic social

scientists for more active participation

in IPY. Our recent exhibit, Arctic: A

Friend Acting Strangely, is widely

regarded as the launch effort to

advance public understanding of, and

its support for, the US IPY program.

The next major Smithsonian

contribution to IPY 2007–2008 is a

two-day science symposium named

Smithsonian at the Poles:

Contributions to International Polar

Year Science scheduled for May 3-4,

2007. The symposium convened by

the Under Secretary for Science Dr.

David Evans will present research

findings by Smithsonian scholars and their collaborators

from both the Arctic and Antarctica, with particular attention

to changes in the polar systems and their impacts on the

globe as a whole. The two-day event will feature an

introductory plenary session followed by six sessions of

invited papers and panel discussions, keynote lectures,

evening public talks, and other events.

Symposium papers are to cover a wide range of topics,

such as polar astronomy, systematics and biology of polar

organisms, environmental change and polar marine

ecosystems, methods and techniques of under-ice research,

IPY histories and legacies, and cultural studies. Speakers

include leaders in their respective fields from many

Smithsonian research units (Smithsonian Astrophysical

Observatory, National Museum of Natural History,

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, National

Zoological Park, National Air and Space Museum),

Smithsonian Archives, the Office of the Under Secretary for

Science, and their National Science Foundation-supported

polar research partners. A special aim of the symposium is

to network Smithsonian studies with other federal agencies

during the International Polar Year.

The ASC staff and research associates will take very

active role in the IPY symposium. Bill Fitzhugh will deliver

one of the plenary opening talks and will chair the session

on the polar cultural research, with the all-ASC slate of

speakers, including Stephen Loring, Aron Crowell, Igor

Krupnik, Ernest S. Burch, Jr., and Ann Fienup-Riordan. Igor

acts as one of three co-chairs of the symposium, together

with Michael Lang and Scott Miller from the Office of the

Under Secretary for Science. In addition, he is to chair a

session named IPY Histories and Legacies that will feature

five speakers from the field of science history: Marc

Rothenberg, James Fleming, Fae Korsmo, David DeVorkin,

and Noel Broadbent. One more ASC Research Associate,

Douglas Siegal-Causey, from the University of Alaska

Anchorage, will be a speaker at the session on polar

ecosystem change. The symposium

website at www.si.edu/ipy will be active

in February 2007; symposium

proceedings are to be published by

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

by mid-2008.

In October 2007, Smithsonian is to

host the second IPY-focused symposium

titled “Making Science Global:

Reconsidering the Social and Intellectual

Implications of the International Polar

Years.” The two-day conference

sponsored by NSF will examine the

history and impact upon science and

society of the International Polar Years

from 1882, 1932, and 1957, with a subtext

“Lessons for IPY-4.” Over 20 invited

speakers, primarily science historians,

will explore the role of the IPY ventures

in the growth of global science,

professionalism and of institutions in the

associated disciplines. The organizing

team chaired by David DeVorkin from

the National Air and Space Museum,

includes several Smithsonian scholars

and their partners from other US

institutions and across the world. Thanks to these two major

symposia, the Smithsonian will be firmly on the map as one of

the key centers of IPY activities in 2007–2008.

The IPY Opening Events

Officially, the IPY 2007–2008 starts on March 1, 2007 and will

continue until March 1, 2009, to give both the Arctic and

Antarctic scientists two full years of fieldwork. Several

nations are currently gearing for their IPY ‘launch events.’

The main official opening ceremony for IPY will take place

March 1, 2007 in Paris, at the famous science museum Palais

de la Découverte. The event co-hosted by two official

sponsors of IPY, the International Council for Science (ICSU)

and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), will

include several press conferences, public statements, and life

communication via satellite connections to scientists and

journalists from the North and South Poles.

Many national and regional events will also take place on

March 1st, or a few days prior to the official launch in Paris. In

the U.S. the official opening ceremony for IPY will take place

February 26th, at the old National Academies’ building in

Washington, D.C. That building has a revered history of

being the official headquarters for the IGY of 1957–1958, fifty

years ago. A smaller opening ceremony will take place in midMarch at the ‘Arctic Science Summit Week’ (ASSW) at

Saami couple in Kautokeimo,

Norway. 1883. Photo: Sophus

Tromholt, the IPY observer. Original

at Tromsø Museum, Norway.
 ASC Newsletter 13

‘JESUP-2’ UPDATE : FACES, LANDSCAPES, AND

OTHER VENTURES

By Igor Krupnik

The last issue of the ASC Newsletter (2005, no.13) featured a

short article telling the story of a new historical photo

collection project that was started jointly by the ASC,

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York,

and a local research center, Chukotka, in Anadyr, Russia. The

study is focused on a collection of 1000-some historical

photographs from Northeast Siberia taken during the Jesup

North Pacific Expedition (JNPE) of 1897–1902 currently

housed at the AMNH. The pictures are attributed to

Waldemar Bogoras (1865–1936), one of the most prolific

JNPE participants. The main goal of our joint project, called

‘Faces of Chukotka,’ was to re-connect today’s residents of

the areas visited by Bogoras in 1900–1901 to his photographs

and to collect local people’s comments and memories related

to faces, landscapes, and ethnographic sceneries featured in

his pictures. The project explores new collection and heritage

dimensions of the Jesup-2 initiative, as the program moves

on into its second successful decade.

In 2006, the project team made substantial progress in

both scholarly studies and public use

of Bogoras’ Chukotkan photography.

Thanks to the dedicated assistance of

Barbara Mathé at the AMNH Library

Special Collections, I have completed

surveying and cataloging Bogoras’

photography at AMNH. This work was

helped tremendously by the recent

recovery of yet another invaluable

JNPE resource that was considered

‘lost’ for several decades. It is a bulky

scrapbook, a large-size bound volume

with pasted prints of vintage

photographs (from glass negatives)

taken by the JNPE participants. There

are several such ‘scrapbooks’ featuring

JNPE photographs at the AMNH—both as bound volumes

and separated paper sheets stored in boxes—but the one

listed as No.1 has been considered ‘missing’ since the early

1970s. In winter 2006, the missing scrapbook was

miraculously recovered and put back into the AMNH Special

collections. It features almost 700 images from the JNPE

fieldwork, including about 130 photographs taken by Norman

Buxton from May 1900 to summer 1901, and over 550 images

from Markovo, Anadyr (Mariinski Post), and Indian Point

(Ungaziq, or Chaplino on Cape Chaplin) that were registered

in the AMNH photo collection records as taken by Bogoras

in 1900–1901. All images in the scrapbook have hand-written

labels (captions), often with exact dates when pictures were

taken, usually missing in the collection records.

Bogoras’ images begin with the first photo no. 5570/1392

(“View of Markova”) dated December 15, 1900. Almost 240

pictures are pasted on the following pages, all taken between

December 15, 1900 and March 23, 1901 in the town of

Markovo (‘Markowa’) on the Anadyr River and in the nearby

nomadic camps and local trade fairs. However, according to

Bogoras’ field itinerary, at that very time he was working with

Jochelson among the Koryak of north Kamchatka, several

hundred miles south from Markovo. Evidently, those

View of Markovo (Markowa), on the middle

Anadyr River. December 1900. AMNH photo

Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, at the joint annual

meeting of several polar research organizations.

The main European launch of IPY 2007–2008 is also

scheduled for February 26th, at a joint opening ceremony

sponsored by the European Parliament, the European

Science Foundation, and European Polar Board. National

launch events for IPY will also take place in Germany (in

Berlin, on March 1, 2007), Finland (at the Arctic Centre in

Rovaniemi, on March 1st), Japan (in Roppongi, on March 1,

2007), the Netherlands (in Groningen, on March 8-9, 2007),

New Zealand (at Scott Base in Antarctica, on January 20th),

Sweden (in the famous Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, on March

1st); UK (at the Royal Society in London, on February 26th).

Canada is going to have its national IPY launch associated

with the start of the Canada Winter Games in Whitehorse,

Yukon Territory on February 24th, and continuing for a week.

As of this writing, a smaller version of our exhibit Arctic: A

Friend Acting Strangely, will be put on display at the

opening event in Whitehorse. Denmark, the Faroe Islands,

Greenland and Iceland will join forces in celebrating IPY at

the Danish Polar Centre and the North Atlantic House in

Copenhagen on March 1st. National IPY opening events

have been already announced in Russia, Norway, Australia,

Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium,

and other countries.

Last but not least, a special

‘indigenous’ opening of IPY 2007–

2008 will be on February 14-16, in

the town of Kautokeino/

Guovdageaidnu in northern

Norway, in the heart of the Sámi

land. It is being organized jointly

by the Sámi University College/

Nordic Sámi Institute, the

Kautokeino Municipality,

International Centre for Reindeer

Husbandry, Kautokeino Museum,

and other local groups. The threeday opening will feature a full

program of Sámi cultural events in this largest reindeer

herding region of Scandinavia, a small science symposium

with several local and invited speakers, and public

activities, including an exhibit of historical photographs

from the first IPY years. The event holds a special

significance as Kautokeino was host to an aurora borealis

observational station during the first IPY in 1882-1883.

More information can be found on the main IPY website

www.ipy.org.

Of course, many issues critical to the eventual success

of IPY will not be resolved by the official opening date. It is

now the task of the hundreds of IPY ‘foot soldiers’—

scientists, educators, agency staffers, local residents, media

and support workers—to implement this monumental

program across the polar regions and then to move it to the

processing labs, data centers, classrooms, museums,

journals and publishing houses. We have two full years to

make it happen. The ASC Newsletter will keep its readers

posted on the progress in IPY activities in its next issues.

Grete K. Hovelsrud and Igor Krupnik. 2006. IPY 2007-

08 and Social/Human Sciences: An Update. ARCTIC 59(3):

341-348.
14 ASC Newsletter

“Deermen tent.” Alexander Axelrod (?) in a Chukchi camp.

 July 1901. AMNH photo

The cover of the new CD of Siberian historical

photography released by MAE (2006) featuring a Yupik student from Naukan. 1929.

Markovo photos, the first in Bogoras’ photo collection at

AMNH, were taken by somebody else.

I believe that the ‘unknown’ JNPE photographer who

took those pictures was Alexander Axelrod (1879–1945), a

junior field assistant of Waldemar Jochelson and, later, of

Bogoras, of whom we know surprisingly little. A Russian

émigré medical student from Switzerland, he was invited by

Jochelson to join the Jesup Expedition as his field assistant.

Axelrod traveled together with the Jochelsons to the Sea of

Okhotsk and later on their survey of the Kamchatka Koryak.

When Bogoras joined the Jochelsons’ team in November

1900, Jochelson sent Axelrod to Markovo and tasked him

with making physical measurements, photographing local

people, and collecting ethnographic and zoological

specimens for the AMNH. Thus, all of the JNPE physical

measurements of the Yukagir, Chuvan (Chuvantsy), Even

(Lamoot), Chukchi, and local Russian people taken in and

around Markovo between December 1900 and March 1901

(total of 124) were actually made by Axelrod. He also took at

least 250 photographs that ended up in Bogoras’ collection.

Unfortunately, Axelrod’s contribution to the JNPE was hardly

ever acknowledged; Bogoras himself never listed him in any

of his voluminous publications. I believe Axelrod is featured

on a photograph (AMNH #1389/6140) “Deermen tent” taken

in a Chukchi camp near the mouth of the Anadyr River in

July 1901, dressed in a worn Chukchi reindeer coat and a fur

hat. If so, this is the only image of Alexander Axelrod, one of

the least known figures of the JNPE venture.

A sample of Axelrod photographs from Markovo has

been recently passed to our partners at the Anadyr Regional

Museum in Anadyr. Our Russian colleagues are to connect

us to local museum and cultural workers in the town of

Markovo so that we may start a joint study of the

photographs and ‘knowledge repatriation’ effort. During

2006, a team of local elders and cultural experts from several

Chukotkan communities worked with a small set of Bogoras

JNPE photos (about 40), primarily of Chukchi herders and

maritime hunters, taken on a trip to Cape Chaplin in AprilJuly 1901. People reconstructed captions to the pictures,

wrote their comments about landscapes, traditional clothing,

village and camp life. The results of this study have been

presented by Nadezhda Vukvukai from Anadyr in her joint

paper with Igor Krupnik delivered at the annual National Park

Service’s Shared Beringia Heritage conference in

Anchorage in September 2006. An earlier joint presentation

on Bogoras JNPE photography from Chukotka given at the

previous Beringia conference in Anadyr in 2005 has been

published in a bilingual volume of conference proceedings

in 2006, with several photographs attached as illustrations.

Yet, many more of Bogoras’ JNPE pictures from

Chukotka will be soon available to local audiences and

Russian readers, thanks to the recently prepared volume,

Tropoyu Bogoraza (‘In the Footsteps of Bogoras’, 2006),

which is currently in press in Russia. This is a collection of

papers on Bogoras, his legacy, his students, and the

students of his students as well as on various issues related

to the Native people of Chukotka. Assembled and edited by

Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya and Igor Krupnik, under the joint

sponsorship of the Moscow-based Institute of Russian

Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Chukotka regional

administration, the book will feature almost 200 historical

photographs from Chukotka, including some 40 of the best

images from the Bogoras AMNH photo collection. Again,

we are grateful to our colleagues at AMNH and, particularly

to Barbara Mathé, for generously sharing the JNPE images

from their collections for numerous Jesup-2 ventures over

the last two decades.

Another photo collection project completed last year as

an offshoot of the Jesup-2 efforts explored a set of historical

photographs taken by one Bogoras’ students, Aleksandr

Forshtein (1904–1968) in Chukotka in 1927–1929. This was a

joint initiative of the ASC and the Museum of Anthropology

and Ethnography (MAE, Kunstkammer) in St. Petersburg, an

old partner from the Crossroads era. Igor Krupnik and Elena

A. Mikhailova, MAE ethnology curator, researched the

collection of some 140 photographs taken by Forshtein in

Siberian Yupik communities of Chaplino (Ungaziq), Imtuk,

Sireniki, and Naukan. Comments from Yupik elders and

cultural experts from both Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island

have been collected in course of the study; the images were

shared with small local museums and village high-schools

for local heritage programs. A joint paper by Krupnik and

Mikhailova titled Landscapes, Faces, and Memories:

Eskimo Photography of Aleksandr Forshtein was

published in the MAE-based journal Antropologicheskii

Forum (Anthropological Forum 2006, no.4); an English

version of that same paper is due shortly. Inspired by that

work, MAE has recently started a production of collectionbased CDs

called Siberia

as Seen by the

Ethnographers

of the Early 20th

Century, which

is aimed at

making its best

Siberian

historical photo

collections open

to researchers

and the public.

The first CD in

that new series

produced in

2006 features

140 images

taken by

Forshtein in

Chukotka and
 ASC Newsletter 15

Map of the smithy at Hornslandsudde

over 90 photographs taken by Waldemar Jochelson during

his North Pacific studies, including several dozen from his

JNPE and the Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition (1908–1911)

years.

The Jochelson’s legacy is becoming increasingly popular

in Russia these days, after many decades of neglect, even

disregard, because of Jochelson’s emigration to the U.S. in

the 1920s. In 2005, Zinaida Ivanova-Unarova, another Jesup-2

participant from Yakutsk in Sakha-Yakutia Republic,

published the full Russian translation of Jochelson’s The

Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus translated together

with her late husband Vladimir Ivanov-Unarov (see ASC

Newsletter 13). This past year, Zinaida has been pushing

hard for a production of a new Russian catalog of

Jochelson’s collection of Siberian ethnological objects and

historical photographs from his JNPE fieldwork in Yakutia in

1901–1902, now housed at AMNH.

Sergei Slobodin, another Russian Jesup-2 collaborator

from Magadan, has recently compiled the first complete list

of Jochelson’s publications that was published in the

Moscow-based journal, Etnograficheskoe obozrenie

(Ethnographic Review, 2005, no.5). It covers almost 100

books, articles, and reviews, produced by Jochelson from

1892 and up to the latest posthumous edition of 2001. In St.

Petersburg, at the Russian Ethnographic Museum (REM),

preparations are under way for a new exhibit featuring

Jochelson’s Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition of 1908–1911. The

two-year field study by Jochelson and his wife, Dina

Jochelson-Brodsky was a direct continuation of the

couple’s earlier two-year Siberian fieldwork under the JNPE

(1900–1902). The Jochelsons’ Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition

was financed by the Russian banker, Theodor Riabushinski

(Ryabushinskiy). The collections were brought to St.

Petersburg and are currently housed at REM and, partly, at

MAE. The year 2009 will mark a centennial of the

Jochelsons’ arrival to the Aleutians (January 3rd, 1909) and

the beginning of their Alaskan fieldwork on Riabushinski

Expedition. Our Russian colleagues have a solid ground to

build a unique ethnographic exhibit, which may also find a

grateful audience in Alaska if the exhibit is put on travel after

its display in St. Petersburg.

In Sakhalin, our Russian colleagues at the Sakhalin

Regional Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk continued their

advance in exploring connections between Leo Shternberg,

yet another participant of the JNPE project, and his comrade

in political exile and Sakhalin Native ethnology, Polish selftaught anthropologist Bronislaw Pilsudski (1866–1918).

The latest issue of the Izvestiia Instituta naslediia

Bronislava Pilsudskogo (Proceedings of the Institute of

Bronislaw Pilsudki’s Heritage, 2005, no.9) published two

unknown letters from Pilsudski to Shternberg and recently

recovered Shternberg’s review of Pilsudski’s book on Ainu

folklore and language. However, the main breakthrough in

the studies of Shternberg legacy is to come shortly from this

country. Sergei Kan, another Jesup-2 veteran from

Dartmouth College, has completed his 800-page professional

biography of Leo Shternberg that has been accepted for

publication by the University of Nebraska Press. Kan’s work

on Shternberg’s biography has been started in the 1990s as

a part of the Jesup-2 effort and may well become one of its

most seminal products.

As of 2006, the Jesup-2 effort, now in its fourteenth year,

continues to generate enthusiasm, public programs, and

THE SEARCH FOR A PAST

By Noel Broadbent

The Search for a Past Project is into its third year of funding.

Major activities in 2006 included: 1) library, collections, map,

place-name and archival research; 2) materials analysis

(carbon, bone, iron slag); 3) text production. The ongoing

educational focus of the project has been the support of a

Ph.D. student, Britta Wennstedt Edvinger. Several articles

have been co-authored and two papers presented at

conferences, most recently an article on circular sacrificial

sites published in Acta Borealia (2006).

The project goal of identifying and defining coastal

Saami settlement in northern Sweden is continuously

gaining in substance and quality. The analysis of over 50

radiocarbon dates confirms that this coastal settlement

started in the early metal age, and was especially active

during the Viking age. The pattern ended by AD 1300. New

mercantile and state-level economic controls prevailed by

this time and the hunter-gatherers were increasingly

marginalized and forced inland. This also marked the

expansion of Swedish agrarian settlement along the coast

and the establishment of parishes. The Little Ice Age and

the Black Death also had a part to play in northern change.

Metallurgical analyses were performed by Dr. Hjarthner

Holdar in Uppsala, and show that these hunter-gatherer

solid science. And, finally, a reminder to all of us,

northerners, Siberian and (North) American anthropologists:

the year 2008 will mark the 150th anniversary of Franz Boas’

birthday (July 9, 1858). We are certain to expect more

scholarly and public celebrations as well as international

symposia, exhibits, and publications dedicated to Boas’ life

and academic career. One way or another, many of these will

dwell on the JNPE venture and on Boas’ role in the studies

of North Pacific people. It seems like our Jesup-2 program

may get a new shot of energy and some fresh blood. Jesup-2

veterans. Please keep tuned!
16 ASC Newsletter

MY SUMMER AT THE SMITHSONIAN

By Jacquelyn Graham

In the summer of 2005, I participated in an Arctic Studies field

school at Hornslandsudde near the city of Härnosand in

northern Sweden. This dig was a collaborative effort

between the NSF-funded “Search for a Past” project led by

Dr. Noel D. Broadbent, and the Scandinavian Archaeology

Center run by Kjell Edvinger and Britta Wennstedt Edvinger

of Sweden. The excavations were mostly of hut floors dating

to the Viking Period (AD 700 – 1100). My internship in the

summer of 2006 at the Smithsonian was a follow-up to the

field school. I had a list of tasks for the summer, one being

the finishing of the excavation report. I also wanted to work

on Saami bear graves, one of which had been excavated

within the project in 2004. This is the subject of my senior

thesis as the University of Minnesota.

The purpose of the internship was to give me training in

archaeological documentation, report writing, scientific

illustration and data management. Since I was interested in

illustration, I learned to use Microsoft Photoshop, Illustrator

and Powerpoint. I also learned how to use the Oxcal

Calibration Program and SYSTAT, a statistical program. I had

never used Photoshop before in my life, but luckily there is

an amazing illustrator at the Anthropology Department,

Marcia Bakry, who found the time in her busy schedule to

help me understand the program. Photoshop quickly became

my friend. On the other hand, I really enjoy drawing by hand.

I ended up doing two reconstruction drawings of huts and

features at two of the sites. I have seen so many

reconstructions or artist’s renderings before, and now I was

going to be that artist! I drew our site RAA132 which had a

hut, lean-to, hearth and a storage cairn (below). I also drew a

reconstruction of two huts and a ritual feature from the

Grundskatan site father north (and the site of the bear

grave).Using Photoshop techniques, I rendered numerous

field drawings of excavation units as well as stone

alignments and stone storage caches.

While working on these tasks, I got to know many

people in the department. Every day Noel and I would eat

luch with Avital Cohen, an intern native to the D.C. area,

George Michael Leader, an intern from Pennsylvania who

left half way into my internship for South Africa, and ClaireEstel Deitch, an intern from Canada.

Another of our “daily colleagues” was Dennis Stanford,

who is Curator of PaleoIndian collections and an expert on

Clovis points. I also got to know Igor Krupnik, who was

Avital’s supervisor and Bill Fitzhugh, George Michael’s

supervisor as well as the department Chair, Dan Rogers and

co-chair Laurie Burgess. The department is large, and has

more than 100 people working all over the world.

I also worked with an archaeologist from Anchorage, the

ASC’s Aron Crowell, who came to measure and document

items that were going on loan for an exhibit in Alaska. Aron

was in need of assistance to measure artifacts and I was

volunteered to help. His visit gave me an opportunity to see

the MSC collections building for Anthropology in Suitland,

Maryland. I never knew that such a tedious job could be so

exciting. I had to go through the huge shelves to find the

exact items on his list, measure them, and write down the

catalogue information. That experience more than any other

confirmed for me that I have chosen the right field for my

career.

After finishing the Hornslandsudde site report, Noel and

I started working on Saami bear graves. This topic is a great

interest of mine and I was excited that Noel wanted to

compile data about it. Noel translated the Scandinavian

texts and I compiled data from the English texts that I had

found. From these efforts we put together a complete chart

of 45 Swedish and Norwegian bear graves and did statistical

breakdowns of

skeletal parts,

grave locations and

grave treatment etc.

We took a break

in our arctic

research when

Noel’s colleague,

Lana Troy, flew in

from Uppsala

University in

Sweden. She came

to give a talk at the

Smithsonian about

Egyptology and to

visit the new

Hatshepsut exhibit

at the Metropolitan

Museum in New

York. Noel, Lana,

and I took the train

up to New York

Site RAA132 with hut, lean-to,

hearth and a storage cairn, as

illustrated by Jacquelyn Graham

groups were capable of manufacturing their own iron tools.

A complete iron smithy was investigated at the

Hornslandsudde site. It was part of a double hut with a

livestock enclosure and dates to as early at 1820 BP.

Archaeozoological studies by Jan Storå, archaeozoologist

at Stockholm University, show that these people also kept

sheep/goats/reindeer and both corrals and small livestock

huts have been documented at several sites. It is not

unlikely that many Saami chose to become settled farmers

and integrated into majority society. The farmsteads along

these coasts differ from those in southern middle Sweden

and show a greater connection to hunting and fishing.

Intern, Jacquelyn Graham (University of Minnesota)

worked with for eight weeks at the NMNH last summer. The

Hornslandsudde excavation report was completed, and also

presented as a poster at the NMNH and at the Department of

Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. In addition,

an overview of 45 bear graves in Scandinavia was prepared.

This is an important aspect of the project, and one of the

best arguments that these sites were Saami in origin.

Jan Storå has completed his analysis on the seal bones

from all the investigated sites and put them into the context

of other sites in the region from the Stone Age to Medieval

times. He has been able to distinguish sites with subsistence

butchering from sites where only parts of the seal skeletons

were intact, suggesting a focus on skins or blubber. In a

comparative analysis of seal species exploitation, there are

clear indications that harp seals appeared in the north during

warm periods, and these were replaced by gray seals in

historic times. These patterns reflect changes in climate and

hunting patterns over time.
 ASC Newsletter 17

FULBRIGHT COMPARATIVE NATIVE EDUCATION

PROJECT

By Patrick Lantto

I joined Noel Broadbent at the Arctic Studies Center in

November with support from the Fulbright Commission. My

project extends until May, 2007. I work as a postdoctoral

fellow in the Department of Historical Studies, Umeå

University, Sweden, where I was appointed associate

professor, 2004. My professional interests include

contemporary history, international indigenous studies,

Saami history, and educational history, and I have studied

the history and development of the Saami movement in

Sweden.

My Fulbright project focuses on indigenous education

and has the title: “How to Educate Savages”: A

Comparative Perspective on the Native Educational

Policies of USA, Canada, Australia, and Sweden. The aim

of this project is to integrate a study of the American Indian

educational policy into an ongoing work so as to

comparatively analyze the native education policies of

Sweden, Canada and Australia, and the effects these policies

had on indigenous peoples from1850 – 2000. The USA,

Canada and Australia have taken similar strategies, and

share the ultimate goal of assimilating their indigenous

populations,

while Sweden’s

policies were

designed to

segregate and

preserve the

Saami.

However, all

four

approaches

possess

interesting

differences.

The project

is based on two

premises.

Firstly, the way

indigenous

groups are viewed is considered to determine the

boundaries and the content of native policies. These views

limit the political scope of possible measures and actions;

they define the boundaries of the policy area, and decide

what the policy can contain and what it cannot. In a sense,

these views also define the group, by stipulating who

belongs to the group and who doesn’t. The group is faced

with an image of themselves, as individuals and as a group,

which for a long period was defined in derogatory terms,

such as primitive Lapps or savage Indians. This image limits

their political potential since only some forms of actions,

some opinions, are considered compatible with this image.

The fundamental influence of this predominant image on

state policy and on the relationship between the state and

indigenous groups makes this a natural starting point for the

analysis of this study.

Secondly, the unequal distribution of power between the

state and the indigenous population points to a colonial

relationship. One must apply this perspective in order to

understand the situation and analyze it correctly.

Colonialism is a process in which the states establish a

dominant position in relation to the indigenous peoples,

who in their turn adjust to their subordinated position,

seeking ways to change and counteract this relationship.

The opinions of indigenous groups were largely ignored,

unless they unless they confirmed and supported the

policies. One must acknowledge the unequal distribution of

power in this relationship in order to properly analyze the

political actions of indigenous peoples. Therefore, it is

necessary to apply an ethnohistorical approach, letting the

colonized party’s own statements form the basis for the

analysis. Government sources on these issues are generally

misleading, due to the prejudices and condescending

attitudes that for a long time colored them.

Much focus has been placed on the residential schools

in both countries, even though only a minority of

indigenous children attended them, while day schools,

which were run parallel but with fewer resources, have been

largely overlooked. That motivated me to look more closely

on the system of day schools in my archival studies in

Canada, and depend more on existing research concerning

the residential schools, in order to create a comprehensive

picture. It is my intention to work similarly with the American

material. One other interesting issue to investigate is

City for a day trip to the Metropolitan, one of the great

Egyptian collections of the world. Few people ever get a

personal tour of a museum exhibit of this quality with one of

the leading researchers in the field, but I did! Lana talked

about the individual pieces in the exhibit and I listened, all

too eager to learn more about a topic I knew almost nothing

about. We had lunch with the Museum Egyptologists while

Dr. Troy talked shop. Her work on Egyptian queenship had

been used in this beautiful exhibit. This was also my first

trip to New York, and we had coffee and ice cream in Central

Park before taking the train home from Pennsylvania Station.

Back in DC the following day, Dr. Troy lectured about the

development of cities and towns in ancient Egypt. Hers was

one of the many weekly talks that I had the privilege of

attending while interning at the museum. I also attended a

talk by Doug Owsley on Kennewick man, some of the oldest

human remains found in the Americas. His team was able to

determine his original position in the ground by measuring

calcium carbonate build-up on his remains. They also had

created a three-dimensional model and made a cast of the

skull and the projectile that had been found in his body.

The last project that I worked on was making a poster

designed for conference use. My poster consists of

information about our results from the Hornslandsudde

excavation. One copy is still on display at the Smithsonian,

and one is proudly hanging in the undergraduate

anthropology office at the University of Minnesota.

The internship experience at the Smithsonian was

beyond words. I made new friends and was exposed to

research and ideas that I could never have imagined. I am

eternally thankful to Noel Broadbent, who helped guide me

on my path of study, and has facilitated two of the most

stimulating summers of my life.

Patrick Lantto
18 ASC Newsletter

RECOGNIZING THE REALITY OF A PEOPLE

By Avital Friedman

Avital Friedman scanning Goro slides.

NATIONAL NARRATIVES: A NEW SAAMI

RESEARCH PROJECT

By Noel Broadbent

Noel Broadbent and Patrik Lantto are co-PIs on a new

project proposal entitled: “National Narratives, Prehistory

and the Law. Challenges to the Paradigm of Saami Rights in

Sweden.”

This project is an examination of the consequences of

archaeology and competing historical narratives for the

Saami in Sweden. A primary contextual focus of the study

will be on Saami indigenous identity as it has been

manifested in the Swedish welfare state since the 1930s,

including issues of research, education, government

policies and the law. Current conflicts involving land-use,

hunting and fishing rights are analyzed.

The study encompasses two interconnected themes: 1)

national identity, prehistory and history, and 2)

indigenous/minority policies. The Swedish nation-building

process incorporated myths about prehistory and the

nature of Swedish and Saami identities. These myths still

play a role in Saami rights issues and cultural politics. New

archaeological evidence is now challenging both Saami

and Nordic narratives. It is hypothesized that many of the

most fundamental values that led to social policies in

Sweden have at the same time rendered minority rights

problematic. This is, in concert with immigrant conflicts,

whether developments in Canada had any effect on the

American Indian education policy, and vice versa.

American indigenous policy also affected Australian

Aboriginal policy, especially after WWII. In the debates

concerning Aborigines, reference was often made to the

Indian policies of the United States and Canada. I have yet

to establish how deeply this affected educational

approaches, but it did play a role in the general

discussions concerning the Aborigines. It will also be

interesting to compare the ways in which American Indian

policies were presented in Australia with how North

American actors themselves viewed this development.

The American Indian policy did not have the same effect

on Swedish Saami policy, especially not as long as it

remained focussed on segregation. However, after WWII

the content of the policy began to change, and

developments and solutions in other countries with

indigenous population became more relevant for the

formulation of the Swedish policy.

This project is based on a qualitative method of

analysis of archival sources and other references. During

my stay I will focus on studying the archival material, and

gathering relevant excerpts.

The interconnectedness between the indigenous

policies in different countries has become increasingly

clear during my work. This makes the comparative aspects

of the project all the more important. By taking a

comparative approach to this project, I will illuminate both

specific developments within each country, as well as more

general trends in the treatment of indigenous populations

globally. This differentiation between the specific and the

general will be important for future research.

When I

decided that I

would strive for a

major, in

anthropology as I

signed for the

Intro to Cultural

Anthropology

class at

Washington

University at St.

Louis, MO, it was

merely due to my

fascination with

other cultures and

with all the

information I

could discover

about other peoples. So when Igor Krupnik offered the

cataloging and study of a collection of historical slides of the

Ahiramiut, a group of the Caribou Inuit people of northern

Canada, as my summer 2006 internship project with the ASC, I

jumped at the amazing opportunity to work on a story like

this as well as to be at the Smithsonian Institution itself.

Through much dedication and persistence, Igor was able

to persuade Thomas Goreau, the grandson of the famed

science photographer, Fritz Goro (1901–1986), to lend the

Arctic Studies Center a collection of 326 slides taken by Goro

during his 1955 trip to Ennadai Lake, sponsored by LIFE

magazine. LIFE at that time was publishing a series of

articles called “The Epic of Man,” aimed at educating the

public on the origins of early man and ancient civilizations.

They wanted to do a story on today’s equivalents of ‘early

Stone Age people,’ and they sent Goro on a two-month

mission to the Ahiarmiut people of northern Canada to

document their life for the special article. The article came out

in the February 1956 edition, portraying the Ahiarmiut as

today’s “Mesolithic Man,” using Goro’s pictures to help

characterize these people as entirely primitive.

My summer project involved many practical steps, such

as the scanning of old slides, the creation of a database, and

the printing of copies to send to experts for commentary.

These were the steps which helped me reach the more

intellectual and analytical aspects of the work

anthropologists do with historical photographs. All steps

were critical. From the creation of the image database, I

learned what was important to look for in a historical

photographic collection. From my examination of the

collection, I was able to pick out categories, themes, and

basic images, as one might do in processing photographs for

a catalog. As my knowledge of the slides grew with

background research, I was finally able to identify

individuals, their actions, and which of the photographs were

one of the major political dilemmas of Sweden today and many

Western European and northern countries facing cultural

diversification. The project is a collaborative endeavor by a

Swedish historian and a Nordic archaeologist.
 ASC Newsletter 19

Members of the Ahiarmiut camp headed by Aulajjut.

Ennadai Lake, Canada. 1955. Photo by Fritz Goro

(slide no. 174).

staged or were taken in a natural context. Comments by

Yvon Csonka from the University of Greenland in Nuuk, who

used to work with the Ahiarmiut in the 1980s, were of

incomparable help, as were the advice of Stephen Loring

and Igor Krupnik.

All steps involved in this

project, from the minute details to

the writing of a narrative, were

firsts for me, for all cultures are

mysteries to those who seek to

understand them, and although

others had gotten there before me,

this project was my “mystery” to

uncover. It was my personal

chance to discover the culture and

people of the Ahiarmiut by making

conclusions from Goro’s

collection, as well as my first

experience as a “budding

anthropologist” in putting

together the pieces involved in

understanding a people and

creating a project, and for this

chance I am, and always will be,

grateful.

One of the ‘mysteries’ I had to

work with was how ‘Stone Age-like’ were the Ahiarmiut

really in 1955, when Goro pictured them in his LIFE story.

Interestingly, the characterization of the Ahiarmiut as ‘Stone

Age-like’ was contradicted by the findings of Geert van den

Steenhoven, a Dutch anthropologist who was living with the

Ahiarmiut at the very time that the LIFE group came to visit

them. Steenhoven found the Ahiarmiut to have had

substantial contact with white

people, and to have

incorporated aspects of

modern culture, such as

clothing, rifles and the use of

metal for many cooking and

hunting appliances, into their

lives. Steenhoven’s

information suggested that

several photographs used by

LIFE magazine had been

indeed staged to support the

article. The chance to examine

the full collection of Fritz

Goro’s original slides from that

trip was a unique opportunity

to understand the real culture

of the Ahiarmiut, and to what

extent their life was correctly

depicted in the photographs

taken for the journal story.

A constant question in anthropology is what is one to

do with the information collected in the field? Does one

simply publish a paper or a book or deliver lectures in an

effort to educate other people? Does one attempt to get the

information into a college classroom and inspire a new

generation of anthropologists? By answering this question,

the Arctic Studies Center has taught me a lesson that is hard

to entirely understand within the confines of the college

Ajaaq, the daughter Aulajjut, and her baby son.

Ennadai Lake, Canada. Photo by Fritz Goro (slide

no.169).

classroom. Anthropological research does not have to serve

the anthropologist alone, but can and should also benefit the

people studied. The anthropologist can give back

something to the people by giving communities easy access

to the finished products of the

research, as well as inviting

them to actively participate in

the research process. In

doing this, the anthropologist

encourages the communities

to connect to their history and

heritage, to ensure the

continuity of their respective

cultures. I have seen during

my summer internship how

the active participation of

elders from various northern

communities have a great

influence on the research

done here, especially among

many of Igor’s projects. I

understand that the next step

in our work on Fritz Goro’s

collection will be to send the

images to the Ahiarmiut

people who currently reside in

Arviat in Canada. Some day, I hope to get a chance to see

their comments and their impact on our research process.

Giving back to the community has become extremely

important in my new vision of anthropological research, and

I hope to give back as much as possible in any future

anthropological work I may do.

INTERDISCIPLINARY

TEAM DEVELOPS

MODELS OF COMPLEX

SOCIETIES IN INNER

ASIA

 By J. Daniel Rogers

In January of 2006 a three year

grant was awarded to George

Mason University and the

Smithsonian Institution by the

National Science Foundation,

under the title “Agent-Based

Dynamics of Social Complexity:

Modeling Adaptive Behavior and

Long-Term Change in Inner

Asia.” The project is working in consultation with the Mongolian Institute of Archaeology and other institutions. Designed as

an innovative collaboration between archaeologists, geologists,

geographers, political scientists, and computational scientists

the project is in the midst of developing a comprehensive

theory and model of changes taking place in Inner Asian social

systems as they developed early states and empires, including

that of the Mongols.

At the Smithsonian, the research is based in the Depart-
20 ASC Newsletter

KURILE ISLAND BIOCOMPLEXITY PROJECT 2006

By Ben Fitzhugh

University of Washington

Supported by a grant from NSF, a team of American,

Japanese, and Russian scholars and students are examining

5000 years of history of human-environmental interactions

along the Kuril Island chain in the northwest Pacific.

Evidence of human colonization, persistence and

abandonment at various times in the past five millennia and

under different social, economic, and technological regimes,

is being used to study human vulnerability and resilience to

both catastrophic and gradual environmental changes,

including human-induced changes. Our objectives include:

understanding the feedbacks among climate, sea ice, marine

and terrestrial ecology, and humans; estimating the degree

of human vulnerability to catastrophic events and their

ecological consequences at different spatial and temporal

scales; and assessing the role of cultural variables both in Ethnographic map of the Kurile Islands

ment of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural

History. The primary objectives of the Smithsonian team are to

supply archaeological expertise and information. The purpose

of archaeological data collection is to establish the chronology

and main attribute characteristics of Inner Asia societies and

respective environments during the last 4,500 years—a region

of cross-cultural space-time corresponding to the so-called

“Eastern Central Asian Neolithic and Bronze Age.” Smithsonian

Institution researchers conducted fieldwork and analysis at

three archaeological survey projects in different parts of

Mongolia and a separate project to assemble a macro-regional

database of archaeological sites and information to provide the

primary social data for the research project.

During the months of June, July, and August, 2006, three

archaeological teams led respectively by William Fitzhugh,

Bruno Frohlich, and William Honeychurch, conducted

excavations and site surveys in Mongolia. The field projects

focused on three scales of analysis, each requiring a different set

of variables: (1) Subcontinent—the interactions of states and

empires; (2) Regional—“tribes”, confederations, ethnic groups,

subsegments of states and empires; (3) Local—the interactions

of individuals in households, camps, and settlements (villages

and cities).

During 2007 the three field teams will again return to

Mongolia to continue their excavations and systematic surveys.

As the data sets are built, special emphasis will be placed on

collection of materials for radiocarbon dating and the development of comparable datasets between regions. The macroregional database, currently being developed at the Mongolian

Institute of Archaeology, will be expanded to become a

comprehensive listing of Bronze Age and later sites in

Mongolia.

The project Principal Investigator is Claudio CioffiRevilla, Director, Center for Social Complexity, George Mason

University. Other members of the team from George Mason

University include Sean Luke, Dawn C. Parker, and several

other researchers. The Smithsonian team includes J. Daniel

Rogers, William Fitzhugh, Bruno Frohlich, and William

Honeychurch.

influencing community survival and affecting environmental

changes. These objectives are being tackled through an

ecologically integrated study of: archaeological and historic

records of human settlement and abandonment; geological

evidence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis;

paleoecoogical and oceanographic evidence of past

vegetation and marine conditions; and climatological

evidence of past temperature, sea ice, and storminess.

Evidence collected in the field over three summers will be

used to test and calibrate computer agent-based models and

simulations. Numerical models will be run to detect the most

critical social, ecological and physical variables affecting

human resilience and vulnerability. The project includes

education and outreach partnerships with indigenous Ainu

communities in Hokkaido, Japan; the development of

secondary school education kits and interactive computer

simulations through the Burke Museum of Natural History

and Culture; and the participation of undergraduate and

graduate students throughout the project.

This study will make significant contributions to

understanding the complexity of coupled human and natural

systems. The research will advance the theory of human

ecological dynamics and of the ways social and

technological variables buffering or aggravate human

vulnerability to unpredictable ecological changes and

catastrophic events. Methodologically, this research will

develop new modeling tools to facilitate interdisciplinary

integration and understanding. In application, this research

will provide models that can be adapted to other contexts

and modern conditions where coastal communities appear

particularly vulnerable to environmental and social factors

beyond their control. More generally, this research will

provide tools in the form of model prototypes that can be

adapted to many different regions where humanenvironmental dynamics are complex. Subarctic coastal

communities today face natural and human induced changes
 ASC Newsletter 21

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF ARCTIC FOOD VESSEL

RESIDUES

Caroline Solazzo, Pre-doctoral student

Museum Conservation Institute, Washington DC

Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Laboratory, Lille (France)

During my research fellowship, directed by Dr. David

Erhardt in 2005-2006 at the Smithsonian’s Museum

Conservation Institute (formerly the Smithsonian Center for

Materials Research and Education), the chemical content of

food residues from Arctic archaeological artifacts was for the

first time thoroughly investigated. Residues were found in

cooking vessels, either absorbed in the clay matrix of

ceramics or trapped as a charred layer of residues adhering

on the surface of pots. By analyzing cooking residues in the

arctic archaeological context, we can characterize, identify

and understand the degradation of organic compounds

resulting from the processing of foodstuffs and correlate

this information with the anthropological context.

Surface residues were analyzed by gas chromatography,

a method that separates the different constituents of a

mixture such as fatty acids, sterols or terpenoides. The lipid

composition of the residues was characterized (Solazzo and

Erhardt, 2007) and compared with whale and seal tissues.

Products of degradation of fatty acids were determined by

studying the decomposition of marine fat and meat after

simulation of cooking processes and reproduction of

blubber-burning lamps. The burning of marine oil (well

known for its insaturated fatty acids or Omega-3) produces a

characteristic fingerprint of products of oxidation. Such a

profile can be used to study residues from marine products

on any kind of artifacts. This study has for example shown a

varying degree of conservation of lipids between clay,

stone, wooden or bone artifacts, and has highlighted the

effect of burning temperature.

Although lipid data was consistent with both whale and

seal fat, species distinction could not be done on the solely

basis of lipid characterization. A new analytical method for

protein analysis (Solazzo et al., 2007) was tested on

absorbed residues in an Inupiat potsherd from Point Barrow

(1700-1850 A. D.) (Solazzo, 2007). Preliminary results have

Lipid analysis of a prehistoric clay lamp fragment from

Seward Peninsula, Kowieruk (3 miles east Imaruk

Basin).

Ben Fitzhugh in the Kuril

Islands. Photo by Mike Etnier.

in the environment and

in access to critical

food resources. How

well these communities

can adapt is both

constrained and

facilitated by

engagement in local

and global social,

political, and economic

networks.

Understanding the

complexity of these

interactions is critical

to the effective

management of human

response to change in

the subarctic and

elsewhere. Unfortunately, modern communities are often

embedded in such complex social-political-economic webs

that quantifiably reliable and realistic models are difficult to

develop and evaluate. The Kuril Islands are a region where

coupled human-environmental models can be more easily

bounded and evaluated. This project is supported by an

award resulting from the FY 2004 special competition in

Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics

of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.

Summer 2006 was spent in the first of three project field

expeditions to the Kuril Islands. In addition to the ship crew

on the Russian ship “Gipanis”, this expedition included 21

scientists, 8 graduate students, 4 undergraduate students, a

middle school teacher and a photographer – 35 project

participants in all (see Table 1). This group spent 43 days

(July 18 to August 30) visiting the Kuril Islands and

conducting archaeological, geological, and paleoecological

field investigations on a number of islands from the

southernmost end of Kunashir to the northernmost island

of Shumshu (a linear distance of 1140 km). In an effort to

maximize the amount of research performed in a limited time

frame, teams of archaeologists, geologists, and

paleoecologists were deployed in remote field camps for

periods of up to two weeks in promising locations while the

ship took the remaining participants to other sectors of the

archipelago for more rapid scientific surveys. Teams went to

shore at approximately 35 locations throughout the

archipelago. See the project web site for more details:

https://depts.washington.edu/ikip/index.shtml.

References:

2004 “New Evidence for Expansion of the Jomon Culture and

the Ainu into the Kuril Islands: from IKIP 2000 Anthropological

Research in the Kuril Islands.” Kaoru Tezuka and Ben Fitzhugh. 

In, Special Issue of the Hokkaido University Bulletin.

2004 “Archaeological Paleobiogeography in the Russian Far

East: The Kuril Islands and Sakhalin in Comparative Perspective.” 

Ben Fitzhugh, Scotty Moore, Chris Lockwood, and Cristie Boone.

Asian Perspective. 43(1):92-122.

2002 “Archaeology in the Kuril Islands: Advances in the

study of Human Paleobiogeography and Northwest Pacific

Prehistory.” Ben Fitzhugh, Valery O. Shubin, Kaoru Tezuka,

Yoshihiro Ishizuka, and Carole A. S. Mandryk. Arctic

Anthropology 39(1-2):69-94.
22 ASC Newsletter

THE MYSTERIOUS PERIWINKLE (LITTORINA

LITTOREA): NORSE OR LATER INTRODUCTION

FROM EUROPE?

By John Chapman

The marine periwinkle snail, Littorina littorea was almost

certainly introduced to America from Europe by human

activities (Chapman et al., in press) but, due to the lack of

fossils, their history after first establishment is all but

unknown. Help in discovering locations of fossil periwinkle

shells from middens or natural marine deposits in the

Canadian Maritimes for an analysis of its American

geography over time would be greatly appreciated.

Major hypotheses proposed to explain the periwinkle’s

occurrence in North America are: (1) it is naturally amphiAtlantic (and thus native to North America); (2) it was

introduced to Pictou, or Halifax, Nova Scotia after 1840 with

solid ballast from sailing ships or as food, and/or: (3) that it

was introduced to Maritime Canada by the Norse. The first

hypothesis is largely discounted; however, there are fossils

and the ages of these fossil shells could test all three

hypotheses. If North American shells older than 1,000 years

can be documented, L. littorea was present before

Europeans and then went extinct before introduction by

Norse, or later. Shell ages ranging only between 1,000 years

and 1450 indicate they arrived with the Norse and then went

extinct. Shell ages only younger than 500 years, or a hiatus

in ages between 1,000 and 500 years, indicate they arrived

only after Columbus or became extinct before a modern

introduction.

Only 19 records of North American L. littorea fossils

have been reported (New Brunswick (Clarke 1971), Nova

Scotia (Clarke 1963, Wagner 1977) and Newfoundland (Clarke

1963, Bird 1968). The radiocarbon isotope dates of 15 of

these shells place them between 1,000 and 1,500 AD and

thus, after first Norse contact and before later European

contact. Older uncontrolled stratigraphic dates associated

with the remaining fossils are less reliable. The odds of

discovering 15 of 19 shells deposited only in the last 1000

years in the approximately 11,000 years since the last glacial

period are about zero (÷2 = 112.2, df = 1, p < 3.2E-26) but a

larger sample of fossils should be examined.

Fossil L. littorina from campsites or natural marine

deposits in the L’Anse aux Meadows area, anywhere in

Newfoundland, or anywhere in Greenland and Iceland, that

can be used to date by carbon 14 analyses or other methods

would be extremely valuable.

Bird’s (1968) record of two L. littorea from L’Anse aux

Meadows Norse site were not stratigraphically controlled or

carbon-dated, and have been lost. Two additional shells not

clearly identified as L. littorea were also found at the site

(Birgitta Wallace, pers. comm..); however, Wallace notes that

no L’Anse aux Meadows shells are associated with Norse

artifacts. The latter specimens, if verified to be L. littorea,

and 1,000 years or more old, nevertheless might indicate

whether periwinkles were available to the Newfoundland

Norse as food. Littorina littorea fossils from anywhere in

Maritime Canada are needed to unravel this mystery. Are

there any more?

revealed for the first time the unambiguous identification of

seal myoglobin in an archaeological ceramic by protein

sequencing. Found in the muscle tissues of mammals,

myoglobin is indicative of the cooking of meat, probably by

hot-stone boiling. The extreme cold of Alaska and northern

Canada also evidently provides an ideal environment for the

biochemical study of the former contents of vessels and

artifacts from the Arctic.

References:

Solazzo, C. & D. Erhardt. 2007. Analysis of Lipid Residues in

Archaeological Artifacts: Marine Mammal Oil and Cooking

Practices in the Arctic. British Archaeological Reports in

press.

Solazzo, C., C. Tokarski & C. Rolando. 2007. Protéomique

dans l’art et l’archéologie, in preparation.

Solazzo, C. 2007. Investigating archaeological food residues

by protein sequencing: Detection of myoglobin in an Arctic

potsherd from Point Barrow, Alaska (1700-1850 A. D.), in

preparation.

Periwinkle snail Littorina littorea, about 17

mm in height.

John Chapman

Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State

University, Hatfield Marine Science Center, 2030 SE Marine

Science Dr., Newport, Oregon 97365-5296;

Tel. 541 867-0235

Email: John.Chapman@OregonState.EDU

References:

J. B. Bird. 1968 Littorina littorea: occurrence in a northern

Newfoundland beach terrace, predating Norse settlements.

Science 159: 114.

J. W. Chapman, J. T. Carlton, M. R. Bellinger and A. M. H.

Blakeslee. In press. Premature refutation of a humanmediated marine species introduction: the case history of the

marine snail Littorina littorea in the northwestern Atlantic.

Biological Invasions.

A. H. Clarke. 1963 Supplementary notes on pre-Columbian

Littorina littorea in Nova Scotia. Nautilus 77: 8-11.

A. H. Clarke. 1971 Littorina littorea, native or introduced?

The Biologist 53:160-162.

F. J. E Wagner. 1977 Palaeoecology of marine Pleistocene

Mollusca, Nova Scotia. Canadian Journal of Earth Science

14:1305-1323.
 ASC Newsletter 23

OUTREACH

THINKING ABOUT THE CARIBOU HOUSE: AN

INNU HERITAGE INITIATIVE

By Stephen Loring

Stephen Loring of the Arctic Studies Center conducted an

archaeological training program and cultural heritage

awareness module for Innu youth from the community of

Natuashish in northern Labrador from October 3-17. The

training program is designed to expose Innu youth to the

archaeological legacy of their ancestors and the cultural

landscape surrounding Kamestastin, a large meteor impact

crater lake in the barren lands near the George River. The

program was scheduled to coincide with the autumnal

movement of the George River caribou herd, providing a

dramatic mix of caribou hunting, archaeological site survey,

ethno-archaeology and oral history.

Adopting an Innu approach to education (“don’t be

bossy, don’t be greedy”)

recognizes the significance and

relevance of the knowledge of

experienced Innu hunters and their

wives, the importance of thinking

and speaking in Innu-Aimen, and

the supportive, cooperative society

of the hunting camps. The project

was developed in conjunction with

Innu Nation’s Guardian Program

(Richard Nuna), the Tshikapisk

Foundation (Anthony Jenkinson),

and St. Mary’s University (Trudy

Sable), where Loring is a visiting

adjunct professor in the

Anthropology Department. Roderick Tshakapesh holds the large unifacial

Ramah chert scraper found by Snowden Piwas.

Photo by Trudy Sable, St. Mary’s University. CONSERVATION WORKSHOP

IN MONGOLIA

Nora Lockshin

Based on the recommendation of Natalie Firnhaber (2005

Deerstone Project)1

 to project director Bill Fitzhugh, I was

offered the fortunate opportunity to travel with the 2006

team. With the kind permission of the Smithsonian

Institution Archives (SIA), where I serve as SIA’s paper

conservator and extend services throughout the Institution,

I prepared to teach a paper conservation workshop and

consult with Mongolian professionals in archives and library

conservation. The workshop was held on June 3, at the

National Museum of Mongolian History, in front of an

audience that ranged between 20-30 people, 6 of whom

replied that they had a direct managerial or treatment

responsibility to archival and library materials.

Beginning with a short lecture (ably translated by

Aryunaa, visiting from San Francisco), holistic preservation

concepts were discussed using the translated outline and

graphic from the Research, Libraries and Collections Task

Force (ReLACT) “7 preservation solutions”2

. The concepts

were illustrated using a display of a variety of records

materials including letters, photographs and books that I had

brought from our study collection which I thought would

match their Soviet-era Western style documents. Condition

and vulnerabilities were explained, as well as types of

enclosures and supports which prevent damage. I

introduced preservation management concepts such as

collection level surveying to determine individual

preservation needs and prioritization using examples. I

further handed around copies of survey documents,

conservation documentation on the scales of grand

collection-level and item-level treatment, and discussed how

results of such surveys can allow batching treatments by

type.

Knowing that high quality materials are difficult to

obtain in Mongolia, I demonstrated how to test the quality

of available materials with chemical indicating markers, and

noted that some copy/office papers are alkaline due to

presence of calcium carbonate as a filler material and that if

tested and found suitable, could suffice for wrapping

material if supplies are short. This

led to discussion of typical threats

to paper objects, including

emergency scenarios, disaster

preparedness as part of a

preservation program. Use of The

National Trust for Historic

Preservation’s “Disaster Response

Wheel” was demonstrated for all

types of cultural objects, and

noting its availability on the

Internet, I suggested that it would

be an excellent project for someone

to translate.3

Next, I displayed mounting

techniques for flat paper objects,

and photographs, and books,

showing mounting variants such as

paper and safe plastic corners,

mounting channel strips and

mounting sleeves, the photocopying of backs of

photographs to reduce handling. For books, I showed the

typical construction of Western-style bound books using a

cutaway-view binding sample and unsupported pamphlets,

why supports are needed during use, showing a simple book

cradle and its construction.

I then moved onto the treatment demonstration,

beginning with testing for acidity and solubility, setup of a

simple humidification and flattening for crumpled or rolled

materials; surface cleaning and why – especially as

Mongolia is still dependent on coal energy and has high

airborne pollutant load. Next, I showed repair materials,

traditional and new synthetic adhesives, and ways of using

and extending precious supply through the making of

solvent-reactive adhesive-coated repair tissues. The

participants were then invited to pose questions and come

up and try some of the techniques for themselves, which

made for very lively exchange, and resulted in several

appointments for consultation visits and further workshop

ideas.

On June 5, I met with Enkhbat (Galgadrakh), director of

the Cultural Heritage Center (CHC) and Ganaa (Ganbat

Gantuya). The CHC is a regional center for Mongolia’s many

aimag (state) museums to send materials for registration and
24 ASC Newsletter

treatment; many of the conservators were away working on a

temple, but Ganaa had remained in town and wished me to

consult on an archeological leather burial garment from a

burial site near ÈXX3T (the overcoat to the silk garment

Firnhaber had advised on). At first I thought that this might

be a bit outside my expertise, but it turned out that many of

the techniques I had learned for repairing ancient book

leathers workshop given by the U.K.’s Leather Conservation

Centre would be applicable and Ganaa was excellent at

quickly learning and appropriately incorporating them.

Coincidentally while I was there, the curators of the

Danzanravjaa Museum had brought ten manuscript books of

poetry for documentation and registration at the CHC. (After

additional stateside research, I believe the books are the

original manuscripts for the operetta Saran Khukhuu, and

are pictured on their website.4

) I was invited to examine

them, and this turned into discussing their potential

treatment and rehousing. I made another appointment with

Ganaa for later in the week, to work together on a treatment

plan for minor paper mends and custom portfolios.

On June 6, I made a visit to the National Library of

Mongolia and the sutra collection in the Antique Treasure

Room or Mongolian Exhibit of Valuable and Unique Books,

which I believe had been examined by Natalie on her prior

visit. Unfortunately the library’s director had changed, but I

was graciously allowed to inspect the two damaged moldy

books by Altanzaya, the room supervisor and Bayarlax, the

Fonds supervisor. There was a long discussion as to

whether or not the books could be treated during my visit. I

had to decline for time-based and conservation ethics

reasons, but suggested that I could write a treatment &

grant proposal for a return visit, hoping to train CHC

conservators on this treatment, which is intense and would

benefit from multiple hands in a joint treatment. I noted that

throughout the library, plastic buckets of water were placed

throughout rooms and stack areas as evaporative

humidifiers. The stacks had non-recording hydrographs on

the shelf ends, and fire extinguishers were marked and

available.

On June 7, I visited the National Archives of Mongolia,

where I was greeted by Purevsuren Sosor, and the whole

preservation department, and was given a tour of their

treatment lab, stacks and reading room. Purevsuren and

several of the staff had had the opportunity to work with

Walter Newman of the Northeast Document Conservation

Center in 2000, and had built a high workflow lab. A great

deal of their current treatment is on archival records that had

been transferred in open trucks during the 1920’s to the

National Archives in a great centralizing operation, and had

been water-damaged in transit. Washing, mending and

rebinding of pamphlets is a large part of the operation. Their

techniques are good, but the materials for covers are not the

best, and I took samples for further testing. In response to

request to teach another hands-on workshop in the little

time that remained, I suggested a collaboration that would

satisfy the promise to teach Ganaa some techniques for the

poetry books, and so a group workshop was organized in

their space for the following afternoon.

I was invited to speak with the new Director of the

Archives, Erdenetsetseg Dorj. She was excited to learn and

cooperate further, her main concerns being the need for more

training, techniques for audiovisual materials and their longterm preservation, and cold storage options for these

sensitive materials in Mongolia. Certainly language and

funding for international training is their primary barrier.

They have received grants of large modern microfilming

equipment, but are unable to have an ongoing program due

to a lack of developing facilities & chemicals. I suggested

that since telecommunications cost and skills seemed to be

advanced and supported within their government

institution, they might apply for additional computer

technology grants to adapt their equipment to digital

capture, and investing in storage drives. In this way they

might bypass the supply problem. Additionally, I proposed

thinking on a regional scale, and working with the EuroAsian library and archives community to propose taking

advantage of Mongolia’s naturally cool climate to build a

cooperative or for-profit long-term remote cold storage and/

or digital-delivery-on-demand facilities.

I returned to the Archives the following day with Ganaa

and conducted a hands-on workshop in techniques of “dry”

paste mending and the preparation and use of remoistenable

repair tissues having noted previously that all their mending

was using wet-on-wet techniques, and that not all materials

could be washed. This worked extremely well for

architectural drawings on thin paper which they were

previously afraid to treat due to fragility and solubility

issues.

On our last working day, June 12, I went along with Paul

Rhymer of NMNH to visit N. Oyuntegsh, director of the

Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum. The museum is a fairly

modern installation in an historic building, with a designated

conservation lab space, although no staff conservator. They

National archives of Mongolia conservators and

Nora Lockshin

Ganaa using new techniques on the garment
 ASC Newsletter 25

have a beautiful collection of ancient and modern art, and

were very interested in following up on my materials and

supply lists, in order to better prepare for an upcoming

UNESCO workshop in October 2006. I was also able to point

them to preservation manuals freely available in English and

Russian on-line that could be used as reference starting

points for writing their own basic preservation guidelines,

implementing surveys and preservation actions.

Overall, it was a very exciting journey. I was impressed to

see the energy, skills and adaptive creativity of the

colleagues with whom I worked. I hope that more resources

can be identified to extend their skills and training to reach

more staff, users and improve collections conditions on both

collections-based and regional local outreach levels.

1 ASC Newsletter (Dec. 2005, vol. 13:28-30)

2 http://www.si.edu/mci/downloads/RELACT/RELACTMongolian.pdf

3 https://www.heritagepreservation.org/catalog/Wheel1.htm

4 http://danzanravjaa.org/index.php

A BOREAL FOREST EXHIBIT INITIATIVE

By Stephen Loring

Last year Bill Fitzhugh was approached by a group of artists,

environmentalists and museum designers about the

possibility of doing an exhibition on the art and ecology of

the Canadian Boreal Forest. The group, including the wildlife

artist Robert Bateman, widely considered the preeminent

wildlife artist in the world, and Carl Brenders (Belgium) is

interested in an exhibition that featured art work derived

from canoe expeditions on remote wilderness rivers in the

Canadian north. They want to develop an exhibit that would

explore the relationship between human beings and their

environment through a variety of lenses including the eyes

of artists, northern natives and boreal forest ecologists/

anthropologists. The project is the brain-child of wildlife

artist Robert Mullen and Dr. David Wagner.

In September an extraordinary group of artists,

scientists, writers and conservationists convened on the

shores of Indian House Lake in northern Quebec prior to

setting off on a canoe trip down the George River to

experience the beauty and majesty of the northern boreal

forest wilderness. The 12-member international crew

included artist Robert Bateman; Smithsonian Institution

anthropologist Stephen Loring, expedition paddlers,

conservationists, and photojournalists Gary and Joanie

McGuffin; and internationally respected wildlife painters

from Canada (Jean-Louis Courteau), the U.S. (Lee

Kromschroeder, John Pitcher) and the U.K. (Lindsey

Foggett), including artist and project leader Rob Mullen.

The canoe journey is a critical component for a new

exhibition, Visions of the Boreal Forest, which has

Smithsonian scientists and researchers collaborating with

the Wilderness River Expedition Art Foundation (WREAF)

to develop an exhibition on the art and ecology of the North

American northern boreal forest.

Robert Mullen writes: “The purpose of the expedition

and the subsequent exhibition will be to interpret the boreal

forest/arctic wilderness of Nunavik (Arctic Quebec) through

field notes, sketches, pleine-aire and studio paintings,

photography and video. These material will be shared with

the public in a first-hand, experiential exhibition portraying

the vast grandeur, and beauty of this vital and

underappreciated ecosystem.”

Combining art and science with adventure, the

Wilderness River Expedition Art Foundation (WREAF)

provides artists with intimate, intense and “real” experience

of wilderness to inspire their work. It mobilizes artists in a

unique way to contribute to the public discussion of

conservation. WREAF’s focus is the boreal forest

ecosystem, the largest intact forest on Earth. Critical for

climate, water, habitat, native culture, timber, minerals and

energy, it is nearby, unappreciated, and threatened by

unsustainable development making it one of the greatest

and most pressing conservation opportunities in the world.

With world-class artists and paddlers, the world’s largest

museum, expert researchers, and the romantically wild rivers

of the north, WREAF has an opportunity to significantly

add to the public awareness and discussion of conservation

issues affecting the boreal forest.

The George River arises from Cabot Lake in northeastern

Quebec near the Labrador border. It flows 350 miles

northward paralleling the Labrador border and the Torngat

Mountains (highest North American range east of the

Rockies) before emptying into the eastern side of Ungava

Bay along the far northern edge of Quebec in the region now

called Nunavik. It is home to the largest caribou herd in the

world, bears, wolves, wolverines, golden eagles, and an

awesome fishery of salmon, trout and arctic char.

The George River is ideal for the centerpiece expedition

of “Visions of the Boreal Forest”. The river provides shelter

for the extension of the boreal forest into the tundra. Not

only is it an ecological interface between forest and tundra,

but a cultural one as well, between the Innu and Inuit.

See: http://www.wreaf-borealrivers.org/georgeriver/

“Top of the Tundra,” a painting by Rob Mullen,

inspired by his travels to the George River.

Wildlife artists Robert Bateman and Rob Mullen, Indian

House Lake on the George River.
26 ASC Newsletter

COLLECTIONS

STUDYING THE MACFARLANE INUVIALUIT

COLLECTION

By Clare-Estelle Daitch

I arrived at the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Centre from the

University of Toronto in July 2006 with an ambitious plan to

document the entire MacFarlane ethnological collection on

the Inuvialuit people of the Western Canadian Arctic. My

goal was then to create a visually rich computer database

with photographs, artifact descriptions, and measurements

that I would take back to the Northwest Territories to share

with Inuvialuit elders, and to learn more about the historical

and cultural significance of the collection. However, after

two weeks of studying dozens of Inuvialuit pipes carefully

preserved at the MSC, I realized my plans had to be scaled

back. So, I ended up photographing and describing a sample

of a hundred selected artifacts, a cross-section of all areas of

the MacFarlane collection. This included objects from men

and women’s toolkits, toys, clothing, transportation devices,

and many carefully decorated items of personal adornment.

Over and over, I was awed by the careful workmanship and

elaborate design of objects made by the unnamed Inuvialuit

contributors to the Smithsonian.

The collection was amassed in the Canadian Arctic and

shipped to the Smithsonian between 1860 and 1870 by

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) clerk Roderick R.

MacFarlane. In 1862, when visiting Fort Good Hope,

MacFarlane met Robert Kennicott, a young American

naturalist sent by the Smithsonian Institution to collect

natural history specimens from what is now Arctic and

Subarctic Canada.

Encouraged by Kennicott,

MacFarlane and other

Hudson Bay Company

employees became major

contributors of early natural

history and ethnographic

collections to the Smithsonian

Institution. MacFarlane, the

most prolific amongst those

early local amateur collectors,

sent approximately 5,715

items, or almost half of the

Institution’s extensive early

Canadian collections. The

vast majority were natural

history specimens,

representing the wildlife, flora,

and fauna of the MacKenzie

River basin, but approximately

550 items were ethnographic artifacts. MacFarlane recruited

countless unnamed Inuvialuit and Dene to assist with

collecting and preparing zoological specimens for shipment

to the Smithsonian.

As was customary for the time, a significant portion of

the MacFarlane Inuvialuit collection was traded to other

institutions, including the Danish National Museum in

Copenhagen, the National Museum of Scotland, and various

American institutions. Today, numbering close to 300

artifacts, the Smithsonian MacFarlane Collection remains the

most

significant

historic

Inuvialuit

collection in

the world.

Parts of the

collection

have been

published,

but until

now, it is

has never

been fully

photographed

or

described,

so that

modern-day Inuvialuit and interested northerners have very

limited knowledge about that unique historical resource.

Inuvialuit ancestors, in trading their cultural materials for

trade goods, left invaluable clues and glimpses into

traditional resources, ways of life, and aesthetic values of

the mid-nineteenth century, a period of profound cultural

disruption and transition.

While the Inuvialuit had limited direct trade with

Europeans until the establishment of the Fort Anderson Post

in 1861, they had long obtained European trade goods, both

through Dene intermediaries to the south and Alaskan

Iñupiat groups to the west. The artifacts in the MacFarlane

collection are replete with metal,

glass beads and trade cloth,

often depicting Inuvialuit

innovations using European

trade materials. Blue glass

beads, in particular, held special

value and significance for the

Inuvialuit, and many artifacts in

the collection, from pipes to

clothing to labrets, are

decorated with opaque

turquoise beads, which came

either from trade with the HBC or

from the west through Russia.

I started my work at the MSC

by researching and

photographing several Inuvialuit

pipes in the collection. Tobacco,

a highly prized trade good, was

probably first obtained from

Siberia, through other Eskimo groups to the west in Alaska

rather than from Hudson’s Bay Company sources. Indeed

the pipes in the MacFarlane collection, with their long

curved split wooden stems, and T-based cylindrical bowls

indicate Asian rather than European influence. The pipe

stems are often decorated with large turquoise beads, likely

Russian in origin. Many have small metal pipe cleaners

attached to them, often with a distinct curlicue design on the

handle, also suggestive of cross-cultural contact and

outside influences.

Pipe from the MacFarlane Collection, accessioned 1866

Note the inscription on the underside of the copper pipe bowl.

Clare-Estelle Daitch
 ASC Newsletter 27

One pipe I examined suggests that the Inuvialuit were

extremely creative when seeking sources of metal for their

valued pipes. Upon turning over what looked to be a typical

example of an Inuvialuit pipe, I discovered that the

underside of a copper pipe bowl had been adapted from a

metal tag with the following inscription:

CONE N. E. OF POINT BARROW INVESTIGATOR AUG

1850 ENTERPRISE AUG 1851 PLOVER AT PORT CLARENCE

SQUADRON (cut off by pipe hole) ARHINGN & W OF PAR

(cut off by pipe hole) S 1852 DEPOTS OF PROVISIONS

REFUGE INLET OF PORT LEOPOLD & ADMIRALITY

INLET IN BARROW STRAIGHTS

This indicates that the copper bowl of the pipe was made

from a metal tag distributed to Inuit, probably by members of

the British Navy’s Franklin Search Expedition sent to

northern Alaska aboard the H.M.S. Plover. The Plover overwintered at Point Barrow in 1852-1853 maintaining close

contact with Inupiat families, traders and travelers from

whom they eagerly sought any information pertaining to the

lost Franklin expedition. In the hope that Franklin survivors

might have been rescued by small Inuit bands, tin tags and

messages were printed up and distributed to the Inuit telling

any potential survivors where supply depots had been

established in the central Arctic and Alaska and that ships

were looking for them.

One of the many unique objects in the MacFarlane

collection is a fabulous Aleut-Aluttiq gut skin parka and cap

in extraordinary condition. The parka is decorated with

colorful strips of dyed skin-red, black, white and green-that

create an intricate geometrical design around the neckline,

arms, and waistline. Additionally, there are small pieces of

red and black trade cloth stitched between the seams. The

amount of painstakingly detailed and time-consuming

decorative work on a raincoat astounded me.

Of special interest is the cap that accompanies the parka.

Made from the same waterproof intestine as the shirt, the

The companion piece to the parka is this sea-lion gut

cap decorated with colored threads and yarns.

cap is shaped like a sailor’s cap, revealing the influence of

European-Russian clothing styles popular in the Eastern

Aleutians and on Kodiak Island in the middle of the 19th

century. The gut skin garments in the MacFarlane collection

were probably acquired directly from Yankee whalers who

regularly stopped in the Aleutians for clothes and supplies

on their voyage to the Bering Sea whaling grounds.

I also studied a set of 8 sides of wooden boxes, painted

on both sides, that give an Inuvialuit perspective on their

life and times in the 1860s. The full story of those painted

wooden plaques was recently published by David Morrison

in the journal Arctic, (2006, vol.59, no.4).

The next phase of this ongoing project will be to compile

all the photographs and descriptions into a visual database,

and to share this collection with colleagues in the Northwest

Territories and elders and communities in Inuvialuit territory.

Through this I hope to begin a process of “visual

repatriation” and work towards increasing awareness of and

access to this important historical resource. In addition, I

hope to work with elders who can contribute Inuvialuit

language terms and stories related to artifacts in the

MacFarlane Collection. I plan to return at a later date to the

Smithsonian to finish the process I began this past summer,

for I only looked at a third of this extensive collection.

Last but not least, I would like to extend my warmest

appreciation to the Arctic Studies Center for hosting me, and

to Arctic Studies Center staff Igor Krupnik, Stephen Loring

and William Fitzhugh for providing supervision and

guidance with my research. Further, I thank Deb HullWalski and the Anthropology collections staff at the

Museum Support Center for graciously accommodating my

research and assisting me with locating and photographing

artifacts. Finally, I am indebted to Emiliana DonadiSanchez, an Arctic Studies Center volunteer, who tirelessly

devoted her summer to photographing the MacFarlane

collection. I could not have completed this work without her.

Waterproof gut skin parka acquired by Roderick

MacFarlane from “the Arctic Coast” in 1866. The elaborate

trim is characteristic of gut skin parkas made in the eastern

Aleutian Islands.
28 ASC Newsletter

RAMAH REDUX

By Stephen Loring

[revised and expanded version of an article by Deborah

Inkpen in the Memorial University Gazette (v.39 #4) for

October 12, 2006]

The decision by the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s

popular science television series The Nature of Things to

produce a five part series on the geology of Canada

provided an opportunity for Stephen Loring to join his

colleague, Professor Derek Wilton, (Department of Earth

Sciences at Memorial University) on a research trip to the

Torngat Mountains in northern Labrador. Wilton’s interest

in metallogenic studies has brought him back time and

again to northern Labrador, especially to the Mugford and

Ramah series in the Torngat Mountains, as well as to the

rich mineral deposits of central and interior Labrador. Loring

and Wilton have crossed paths many times, including a

chance meeting in the basement bar of the Adlavik Inn in

Makkovik, in which Ramah chert figured significantly. That

meeting sparked a collaborative research program to

identify and “finger-print” the sources of different lithic raw

materials used by ancestral Innu and paleoeskimo peoples

in Labrador.

The Nature of Things programmers were especially

interested in presenting a perspective on field-work that

showed how scientific expeditions worked in remote

wilderness settings, and were eager to document the

ambiance of camp-life, travel and research. Accompanying

the scientists, were independent film-makers Yanick Rose

and Michele Valiquette fom Montreal. The expedition

headed north in a palatial fishing trawler, the What’s

Happening, under the dirction of it’s skipper, Joe Angnatok

of Nain. The boat trip alone allowed both the scientists and

the film-makers exceptional opportunities to examine the

geology of the exposed coast-line. Wilton was very excited

about the potential of the film program to reach a public

audience. “It is great,” he said, “that now people will see

what we do. We tell people we collect rocks but that really

tells them very little. In the film, we talked about the science

behind our work. I hope it will make people interested in

geology. It will also show people what a great place

Labrador is.”

The premise of the segment on Wilton’s team is that the

exposed rocks in northern Labrador are a fantastic place to

visualize the science behind the dynamics of mountain

building. “The Torngats are mountains right now, but as

geologists we can see that they were mountains probably

three or four times before that,” Wilton explains. “The idea

is that mountains rise, then erode and rock gets transported

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

OCEAN HALL UPDATE

By Stephen Loring

As part of the major alterations to the Smithsonian’s

National Museum of Natural History all of the North and

South American archaeology and ethnology halls have

been permanently closed, the displays completely

dissembled. In there place plans are now well underway to

install a new Ocean Hall (due to open in September 2008)

that will be the largest renovation to the museum in its 95+

years. The new hall explores the Ocean ecosystem: the

origin and evolution of life in the seas and the complex web

of creatures, nutrients, and geophysical processes that

make life on earth possible.

After some serious negotiations the Dept. of

Anthropology, led by a strong ASC contingent, has been

successful in its petition to have a presence in the new hall.

Recognizing that boats have long been an important aspect

of the human experience of the ocean planet we have now

arranged to include a newly commissioned Northwest Coast

ocean-going canoe as a permanent feature of the hall. The

plan is to suspend the canoe across the north end of the

hall making it an especially prominent and conspicuous

feature. It will be sharing the lofty reaches of the hall with a

life-sized model of a Right Whale. Beneath the canoe will

be two pairs of large display cases. The ASC is working

with Jill Johnson and her exhibit development staff to

develop a story-line for these exhibition venues that

recognizes the relationship between indigenous

communities of the North Pacific and salmon. The canoe

project is proceeding in close collaboration with Rosita

Worl and Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau which has

graciously made a log available for the project and arranged

for Kevin Chilton to oversee the canoe building. The

NMNH is honored to be able to include a magnificent NWC

log canoe in the new Ocean Hall which will serve as a very

visible testament to the enduring legacy of the intimacy of

the relationships between the people of the NWC, salmon,

and the sea.

“We have to show respect to the water, to the salmon and

everything that the Creator sent us. We would respect the

cedar that gave its life for our canoe, the salmon that gave its

life so we could eat. We show our respect through prayer,

fasting and prayer songs; this is our tradition.” – Mary

McQuillen, Port Townsend

In the ‘old days’ (1970s) Chief Shakes’ and other canoes

used to be stored au natural where the Atrium Cafe is now.
 ASC Newsletter 29

The Moravian Mission at

Ramah ca.1876. The

highest quality chert lies

beyond the summit peaks.

somewhere else and is

incorporated into new rocks

and new rocks turn into new

mountains. So it’s about the

cyclicity of mountain building

and the movement of the

Earth’s crust or surface, socalled plate tectonics...The

Torngat Mountains are one of

the best places on the planet

to see this because the rocks

are so well exposed with the

mountains rising directly out

of the sea.” Fond of quoting

the American geologist Oscar

Lieber (who visited Labrador

in 1860 as part of the U.S.

Eclipse Expedition) Wilton

quipped “here ‘the rocks revel

in their freedom.’ I think that’s

perfect,” he added.

For his part, Loring was

thrilled to be able to visit a number of different exposures of

Ramah chert between Saglek and Nachvak Fiords, granting

him a better understanding of the variation within the chert

beds, as well as an idea of different places that the chert

might have been accessed by Maritime Archaic,

Paleoeskimo and ancestral Innu groups. It is apparent, from

the fact that Ramah chert was traded so extensively to

distant Indian groups in the Maritimes and New England

(where it was always consumed in ceremonial

circumstances) that the stone had significant spiritual and

symbolic properties in addition to its more prosaic qualities.

The Nature of Things program on Labrador’s Canadian

Shield geology (and archaeology) will air sometime in early

2007 on CBC in Canada as well as on the Discovery Channel

in the US and NHK in Japan.

CANADIAN INUIT CULTURE UNVEILED IN

MONGOLIA

By Ian Burchett, Counselor, Public Affairs, The Canadian Embassy

in Beijing

[excerpted from a Canadian Foreign Service report – ed.]

Responding to the recommendations of the Canada

Mongolia Roundtable held in Ulaanbaatar last May, the

Canadian Embassy in Beijing and Canada’s Honorary

Consulate in Ulaanbaatar undertook an unprecedented series

of cultural activities in the Mongolian capital from October 7

to 13, 2005. With the strong support of several Canadian

companies, including Air Canada, Ivanhoe Mines Mongolia,

Boroo Gold, Major Drilling Mongolia, and Red Path

Mongolia, the local public was invited to view Culture on

Cloth, a unique collection of Nunavut wall hangings from

Baker Lake at the Mongolian Modern Art Gallery.

Culture on Cloth serves as an accessible way to

understand the culture of the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic.

Everyone has used needles and cloth. “This unique

exhibition opens the door of communication between

Young visitors to the Culture on Cloth exhibit in Ulaanbaatar

show off their own Mongolian designs.

different cultures,” Judith Varney Burch told her local

audience. “As the world becomes smaller, sharing similitude

and differences between our societies is stimulating and

significant. What a pleasure it was to compare igloos and

yurts, the open spaces of the Gobi and vastness of Canada’s

Arctic”, said Ms. Varney-Burch.

[We asked Judith to write about her Mongolia trip and

exhibit. Following is her report.]

CULTURE ON CLOTH : REACHING AROUND THE

WORLD

By Judith Varney Burch

Mongolia – a mysterious place. Bill Fitzhugh is the only

person I know who has been there. Sitting in his kitchen in

Washington, I asked, “So where should I do the Culture on

Cloth exhibition next? I have had the good fortune to lecture

and curate exhibits in Mexico, Japan, and many places in

China – so where?” Bill suggested Mongolia. Canada was

also interested in making a stronger connection in Mongolia.

That’s how I found myself on my way to Ulaanbaatar,

Mongolia, in October 2005. I had no preconceived picture –

“Maybe it’s a bit like Tibet,” I thought. But no, Lhasa has

mountains and is a very different feeling older culture.

When I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, I was shocked. A highly

polluted city full of Russian cement-built, square-like

buildings and no trees. My first impression was, “Why am I

here?” But after spending a few days in UB, I became more

comfortable. To step out into the street is suicidal – cars pay

no attention to lights. I soon learned to look for a pack of

Mongolians, blend in, and cross the street together.

After the first few days of museums and wandering, I left

for Dalanzagad, the airport in the Gobi. The area is quite

desolate and the housing minimal, windswept with sand and

gravel. This is the Gobi. My sister Kathy and I got into a

land rover-ish kind of Russian vehicle. With an interpreter

and a driver we headed out over this pinkish/

yellowish gravelly desert called the Gobi. Five hours later we

saw our first car. Traffic is not a problem here. No sense of

the population explosion either. We did see gers (I had

known them as yurts) and herders. Camels, ponies and

sheep were in evidence sometimes. There was a look of

water, which turned out to be ripples of cloud shadows on

the Gobi. How frustrating for thirsty travelers!
30 ASC Newsletter

We stopped at a few gers, were invited in, and spent

some time with the people who lived there. Beautiful redcheeked, shapely women and handsome strong men. A sense

of peace and comfort surrounded them. Animals milling

about; it was hard to see what they were eating – just sprigs

of green. We saw women milking the camels. A different

world not many people have seen.

It was the end of the tourist season and we were heading

for a ger camp. We were the only

ones there at “Three Camel Lodge”

and at “Tashjian Two”. At the first

camp, a Mongolian couple

entertained us after dinner. An

instrument similar to a long zither was

used, but the most amazing thing was

the throat-singing. I am accustomed

to the way women create strange

harmonics by singing into each

other’s mouth in the Canadian Arctic.

I was thrilled and ultimately was able

to get a CD to take to the Canadian

Arctic. This was only one

connection. Of course, there was also

the tundra and the steppes, then the

igloo and the ger. When children are

born in the Canadian Arctic, they have a “Mongolian blue

spot” at the base of their spines.

Walking off with our guide, I was taken to an area where

prehistoric animals appeared on the stones. Real or not, who

am I to say? But I took many photos and was thrilled. I felt as

if I were walking on the moon. No one around and a vastness

that was unequalled. It seemed to go on forever. At one

gorge we wandered in and saw a beautiful family wearing

“dels” and carrying food for a day’s picnic. Dels are coats

made of patterned silk with sheepskin lining. They are slit up

the sides to be able to mount a horse or camel. Very warm and

handsome coats. The men wore a wide scarf around their

waist, supposedly to hold their organs in place as they are

riding on camels and horses. The women’s waist scarf was

much thinner. I yearn for a del in chilly Nova Scotia. We did

the prescribed “ride on the camel” up on the dunes. This

camel is much more comfortable than the ones in Egypt; it

has two humps, more like a recliner!

After four nights on the Gobi, in gers, it was time to

return to UB. Now I am a different person, I am far more

acclimated to Mongolia. As soon as I arrived in UB, things

looked different. My sister left shortly thereafter, and my

work began. The person I worked with at the Canadian

consulate, Saruul, is effective, warm and wonderful. Oddly

enough, she went to school at Virginia Tech! What a

coincidence! I worked with other women at the Arts Council

of Mongolia – all strong and competent women. My

exhibition of nineteen wall-hangings from Baker Lake in

Nunavut, Arctic Canada, Culture on Cloth, was hung at the

Mongolian Modern Art Museum. One woman did all of the

hanging, whereas in Beijing about twenty-five people hung

the show and in Kunming about fifteen. What a difference!

The woman in UB was like a wound-up clock, never stopped,

just jumped up and down on ladders and hung it perfectly.

After the exhibit was up and before the actual opening, I

had time to wander around in UB. I fell in love with the place

and the people. Of course, being by myself, it was easy to

link with others. Brigitte, a German woman, asked me to join

her for dinner. The British Embassy has a “steppe inn” on

Friday nights and the ex-pat community is all there. By this

time the Canadian Embassy guys from Beijing were on the

spot. I adore them and we all went out to dinner many times.

Restaurants abound in UB: Afghani, Thai, Greek, French,

and on and on. An Australian guy who is the English

language editor of the Mongol Messenger newspaper also

became a friend. A Hawaiian woman who studied at

Georgetown Law School (as

did her husband) also

became a friend. She is a

retired judge and was

brought into Mongolia to

help straighten out some

judicial problems. All of

these people I regularly

connect with now on email!

While wandering around

in UB, the smiles and nods

particularly from the older

women were heartwarming.

As I write this, I can see their

wonderful faces and feel very

proud and honored to have

connected with them, just

through a smile. I adored UB, even after my first bad reaction –

the people, the place, the shops, the museum folks – all are

wonderful. I want to go back!

The exhibition is visually accessible to all people, so it

was a terrific success according to the Canadian Embassy

folks from Beijing. This was their first cultural exchange in

Mongolia. The support received by the private sector – Air

Canada, Canadian mining companies, and the Mongolian

government – was overwhelming.

I lectured to university students, master’s students and

professors and also worked with eight-year-olds. Working

with young people began in Beijing and was met with such

success we did it again in UB. Next to my exhibition was a

bronze sculpture of a drum-dancing shaman! I pointed this

sculpture out first, and then with the children I was able to

explain a bit about the Canadian Arctic of the recent past

using the wall-hangings. Then the children made small wallhangings of their own culture. These have now been sent to

Baker Lake in Canada. At the end of March, I will be in

Baker Lake to spend time with the elder wall-hanging artists,

the heritage society, and the children of the elementary

school. I want the artists to be recognized as significant, for

their work became a stepping stone of cultural awareness

about the Arctic to people in Asia. I have asked that these

artists help the students create wall-hangings of Baker Lake

today which will then be sent back to Beijing, Kunming,

Ulaanbaatar, and Nanjing. All of the works of the children in

these other areas, except for Nanjing, have now been

received as gifts to the school. When I am in Nanjing,

working with children in early March, these creations will

also be sent to Baker Lake.

The women in Baker Lake, who have written their story

on cloth, have made the world a smaller place, as their work

is seen in Asia. The Canadian Embassy has done a superb

job celebrating their art by sharing it with others around the

world. I am a small link and have adored seeing this happen

– reaching around the world and acknowledging we are all

the same blood, flesh, heart, and soul.

Judith Varney Burch discusses a Nunavut Inuit design

with Mongolian school children.
 ASC Newsletter 31

MCI staff Leslie Weber and Vicky Karas explain the deer

stone scanning project to visitors.Photo by Don Hurlbert.

Our young teachers take a break to play knucklebones.

Photo by Don Hurlbert.

A MONGOLIAN ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL AT NMNH

By Christie Leece

Mongolia has been abuzz this year in celebration of

Chinggis Khaan’s unification of the country 800 years ago.

Throughout 2006 many celebrations were held in Mongolia

with a special focus on the country’s history. The American

face of these festivities took place in October at the

National Museum of Natural History. For three days the

museum played host to a

festival of Mongolian arts

and culture. The event was

initiated by Ambassador

Bold of Mongolia,

sheparded by B. Odonjil of

the Mongolian Embassy,

and organized by William

Fitzhugh and Christie

Leece, the Smithsonian

Associates, the Office of

Education, the Office of

Exhibits, the National

Geographic Society, The

Great Story of Mongols

troupe headed by

Gankhuyag Natsag and

Sansar, and many

Mongolian community

members and organizations.

The idea was to hold an event highlighting Mongolian

arts, traditions and history. Months later, this came to

fruition in an exhibit hall teeming with photographic

displays and a furnished ger (yurt), the Museum’s replica

deer stone, as well as booths for artists, Mongolian

community groups and children’s activities. To everyone’s

enjoyment, Smithsonian researchers, musicians, artists,

dancers and a filmmaker met

unexpectedly large

audiences in the hall.

The Smithsonian

Associates opened the

festivities with a music and

fashion show on Friday

night. The Mongolian

Embassy brought three

highly-acclaimed musicians

from Mongolia for the

performance, whose

traditional long songs, horse

head-fiddle, throat singing,

and dulcimer wowed the

audience. They were

followed by the premiere of

“The Great Story of

Mongols,” a theatrical

performance featuring

traditional and modern costumes, dance, and a modern

musical score. This opening event ushered in a great

weekend of activities.

A second Smithsonian Associates program brought

William Fitzhugh and Hans Sues from the Smithsonian,

Munkh-Ochir D. Khirghis from Mongolia, and Gordon

Wiltsie from the National Geographic Society together to

discuss aspects of history as different as dinosaur bones,

photographic exploration and deer stones.

The public side of the program was extremely successful

throughout the weekend. Thousands of people made their

way through the halls looking at special photo exhibits

including a National Geographic collection, “A Century of

Photographs.” Many a visitor struck a pose with Gordon

Wiltsie’s larger than life wrestler photo, a part of his

Mongolia series. Elaine

Ling’s portfolio of black and

white images and a collection

of photos from the

Mongolian Embassy also

filled the space.

The artwork set a great

backdrop for the many

performances that took to

the stage in the hall.

Buddhist Tsam masked

dancers, shaman dances and

two young local dancers

thrilled audiences as well as

musicians playing traditional

instruments and songs.

MCI staff, Vicky Karas,

Rae Beaubien, and Leslie

Weber could be found

scanning the model deer stone and explaining their work to

fascinated visitors. Felt demonstrations by Rachel Suntop

added another Smithsonian connection to the festival.

During her internship in the spring, Rachel looked at

techniques and designs from the SI collections to inspire

three unique hats she designed. Two of these were

Mongolia themed, using handmade felt.

A day-long Mongolian film and documentary series was

held in the Baird

Auditorium, thanks to the

efforts of Debbie Rothberg,

while in the exhibit hall

people visited with Chris

McKee about his

documentary, Mujaan. The

film chronicles the process

of making a ger by hand. An

evening lecture by

Myagmar Saruul Erdene

brought a focus to

Hollywood portrayals of

Chinggis Khaan by John

Wayne and Omar Shariff

and Western visions of

Mongolia in film.

One of the most special

and rewarding aspects of

hosting the festival in

Washington is the region’s large Mongolian population. The

great spirit and talent in the local community allowed us to

produce a significant program without the burden of airfare.

Extra hands and know-how cannot be underestimatedparticularly when trying to assemble a ger. MongolianAmerican school children were able to come and teach
32 ASC Newsletter

[We asked Alicia to prpare this short history of Mongolia

for our October festival and reprint it here-ed.]

MONGOLIA AT 800: A BRIEF HISTORY

By Dr. Alicia Campi

In 2006 Mongolia was home to 2.5 million people on a 1.5-

million-square-kilometer (972,445-square-mile) landlocked

high plateau, averaging 1,580 meters (almost 1 mile) above

sea level. It has only two giant neighbors—Russia on the

north and China on the south. The country has a harsh dry

climate and thick forests, high mountains, and lakes in the

north, but 90 percent of the land is arid grass steppes and

desert (called Gobi), unsuitable for farming. For 3000 years it

has been occupied by nomads mounted on horseback and

living in mobile round yurt-like tents known as gers. Today,

nearly half of the population still lives in the countryside

and herds 33 million head of sheep, goats, cows, horses, and

camels. The country’s population is quite homogeneous.

Nearly 90 percent are Khalkha Mongol, with the largest

minority (around 7 percent) being Kazakh Turks mainly

living in the western provinces. Outside the territory of the

modern independent nation are Mongols in China (Inner

Mongolia) and Russia (Buryatia and Kalmykia), who number

another 6 million.

Mongolia traces its origins to the election of a young

warrior named Temujin, who 800 years ago in 1206 was

elected in a kuriltai (council) as Khan. Temujin chose the

mystic name of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, which perhaps

means “universal or great khan.” This great military leader

established the Mongolian Empire of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, the largest empire in world history. It

stretched from Siberia, Korea, and China to Afghanistan and

North India through Tibet, Central Asia including the Silk

Road cities, Russia, Turkey, and Iraq to the borders of Egypt

and Germany. The Mongols promoted trade, art, and

cultural exchange throughout the empire, which is why

historians call this period of history Pax Mongolica.

Chinggis Khan

reorganized his

nomadic warriors to

establish a politicalmilitary system totally

loyal to him. He first

led his less than a half

million Mongol

warriors into North

China, where his army

developed siege

techniques to attack

fortified cities.

Chinggis devastated

the northern capital

(modern Beijing), but

the subjugation of all

of China was

completed only by his

grandson, Kubilai,

who in 1279 became

the emperor of a new

Mongol dynasty

Alicia Campi of the Chinggis Khan

Foundation, discussant at the

Woodrow Wilson Center seminar.

WOODROW WILSON CENTER HOSTS MONGOLIA

SEMINAR

By Bill Fitzhugh

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and

the Smithsonian Institution co-hosted a special seminar,

Mongolia Matters: the Legacy of Chingghis Khan and

Mongolia’s Great Empire on October 4. Organized by Alicia

Campi and assisted by Mark Mohr of WWICS, the

conference added a stimulating scholarly component to the

SI’s Mongolian Festival. Dr. Munkh-Ochir D. Khirghis of

the Mongolian Institute for Strategic Studies spoke about

Mongolia’s historic legacy from Chinggis Khaan and the

Empire Period; Dr. Alicia Campi of the Chinggis Khan

Foundation presented Mongolia’s more recent history and

issues of the modern day; and Dr. Vesna A. Wallace of the

University of California in Santa Barbara discussed Buddhist

history and its interplay with shamanism and traditional

culture. Odonjil Banzragch, deputy chief of mission at the

Mongolian Embassy in Washington, served as discussant

and commentator. The session was an exciting kick-off for

the festival events to follow, was well-attended, and

produced a lively discussion. Thanks to Mark and Alicia and

the speakers, to the WWICS for hosting and assisting with

travel support, and to the Mongolian Embassy for bringing

Munkh-Ochir from Monoglia.

games, calligraphy and stories, offering a rare opportunity

for the Museum’s guests and the young teachers. Despite

it’s brevity the festival was a great success for the museum

and participants.

Special thanks to our planning committee, Carolyn

Margolis, Jackie Weisz, David Hsu, Kim Moeller, Debbie

Rothberg, Harold Banks, Gloria Chernay, Ruth Robbins,

Brigitte Blachere, Mary Helen Young, Randall Kremer,

Michelle Urie, Kelly Carnes, Odonjil Banzragch, Alicia

Campi, Ed Nef, Aya Choi, Ganna Natsag, Alimaa

Jamiyansuren, Tsog Iveelt, Natanya Zagorski. It is no small

feat to get a program off the ground; we greatly appreciate

all of your help.

Rachel Suntop demonstrates felting techniques to Natural

History visitors.The headdresses she designed during her

internship can be found at: http://www.rsuntop.com/
 ASC Newsletter 33

Bogdo Gegen (Living Buddha). However, Republican China

continued to dominate its foreign policy.

In 1921 Mongolia underwent a communist revolution

with the aid of Bolshevik forces in Siberia, and became a

loyal Soviet satellite from 1924 to 1990. The communists

destroyed the Buddhist monasteries and purged the country

of intellectuals and lamas, in their drive to establish a secular

state. Chinggis Khan was banished from the history books.

Although there were diplomatic and commercial contacts in

the early part of the 20th century between the United States

and Mongolia, full diplomatic recognition did not occur until

1987. During these socialist years, Mongolians and

Americans knew little about each other. However, Mongolia

did experience a few notable cultural contacts with

Americans: The Roy Chapman Andrews dinosaur

expeditions in the 1920s, the travels in the 1930s of the

eminent Mongolist and writer Owen Lattimore, and the 1945

trip of Vice-President Henry Wallace. In 1990 the country

experienced a peaceful democratic revolution, and soon

thereafter adopted a new Constitution. Mongols

consciously sought to revive native traditions, such as great

respect for their founding father Chinggis Khan and

Tibetan-style Buddhism. Today Mongolia has re-emerged

internationally because of its successful adoption of both

democratic and free market institutions, and because of its

large untapped mineral deposits (copper, molybdenum, gold,

uranium, oil, coal.).

In the post-socialist era Mongolia has developed a

strong relationship with the United States. Mongolian

Presidents have come several times to the U.S., and

President George W. Bush made the first official visit to

Mongolia in November 2005. The United States is

Mongolia’s third largest investor, third largest foreign aid

donor, and third most important trade partner. American

business interests include sizable private investment in the

mining, oil, cashmere goat hair, camel wool, motor vehicle,

educational and tourism sectors. Mongolia was one of the

first countries to offer support to the United States after the

September 11th terrorist attacks and has contributed troops

to coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our two nations,

despite very diverse cultures, believe they are united by

important shared interests, which is why many policymakers

consider the United States as Mongolia’s “Third Neighbor.”

called Yuan. Chinggis Khan himself began campaigns

against the Muslim Central Asian states and made a

political-religious alliance with Tibetan Buddhists, which

initiated more than 700 years of cultural and religious

connections between the two peoples. Chinggis Khan died

in 1227, dividing up his empire geographically among his

four sons.

These sons expanded the empire further into Russia,

Korea, China, Iran, and Syria, and built the empire its first

sedentary capital called Karakorum in the heart of the

Mongolian homeland steppe. This capital was visited by

Western writers such as John of Plano Carpini, William of

Rubruk, and the famous Marco Polo. During the imperial

period the Mongol rulers in the four major parts of the

empire usually promoted the religion and arts of the peoples

they ruled. This was particularly true in Islamic and

Buddhist countries. In West Asia the Mongol Ilkhans

remained in power only until 1335. However, Mongol rule—

“the Golden Horde”—persisted in Russia until 1502, when it

was destroyed by the Muscovite state. The Mongols’

administrative practices greatly influenced Russia, and often

this heritage, also known as Tatar, is credited with explaining

why Russia’s culture is distinctive from other European

nations.

When the Mongols were deposed in China in 1368 by

the native Chinese Ming dynasty, they returned in disunity

to the Mongol steppe. Mongol generals in the western

regions became involved in Tibetan political and religious

matters, and it was the Mongols who established the

political authority of the Dalai Lama over Tibet. At this time

the Mongol people were converted to Tibetan Buddhism.

Eventually, over 700 monasteries and temples were

established throughout the country. In the early

seventeenth century the Manchu people made an alliance

with the Eastern Mongol nobles to conquer China and

establish the last Chinese dynasty called Qing. Over the

next three centuries this alliance disintegrated into full

Manchu Chinese political and economic domination over the

Mongols. With the fall of Manchu rule in China in 1911,

Mongolia was able to establish a weak Autonomous

Government under a Buddhist religious leader called the

Mongolian children racing bareback. Photo by Gordon

Wiltsie.

Models at Mongolia’s 800th Anniversary celebration

wearing historic costumes.
34 ASC Newsletter

flooring were found around the fringes of the pavement and

on what seemed to be sill footings of a roughly square

structure, whose north side abuts the steep slope at the cliff

base. What was missing was evidence of a large furnace,

which may yet be found in several peat-covered rock piles

lying outside this year’s excavation area. The burned

flooring and sills suggest this structure may have burned at

the close of the occupation

period. The paucity of roof tiles

suggests this structure may not

have had a tile roof.

An interesting aspect of this

excavation was the relative

absence of ceramics, tiles, clay

pipes, beads, nails, and other

materials. The situation was

quite the contrary in the nearby

cook-house and its external work

area to the north. One would not

expect domestic materials in a

black-smith operation. More

unusual was the presence of

several Dorset artifacts found in

direct association with the

Basque materials: a large flake of Ramah chert and a

miniature (3 cm dia.) Dorset soapstone lamp fragment with

charred encrustations. Stylistically, this lamp dates to

Middle or Late Dorset, ca. 300-1200 AD. Currently it is the

westernmost Dorset find in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. How it

got into a Basque context is even more mysterious than the

presence of Inuit soapstone vessels we found in other areas

of the site, which we attribute to Inuit service at the site.

Most of our effort, however, was devoted to the adjacent

underwater site, located only a few meters off-shore from the

land site and positioned as the anchorage location of the

Basque vessels. Being new to this game, I quickly learned

how much time and energy it

takes to support four divers

underwater for two hours a day.

Perry Colbourne spent a couple

hours every day filling tanks

with the air compressor we

rented from a dive shop in

Gander, Nfld., as well as tending

the divers and the dredge pump

from our dive skiff. In fact,

swimming was really the easy

part! It was getting dressed and

undressed that drove us over

the edge. Just getting in and out

of your gear took almost an

hour: layers of insulation,

drysuit, buoyancy compensator

vests, weight belts, tanks, and the pièces de résistances –

scull-cap hoods and mitts so tight you can hardly get them

on or off. And good luck trying to try knots underwater! By

the time you flop into the drink you are so over-heated you

feel like a boiled lobster.

Getting sunk reversed the temperature scale dramatically.

But to get there you have to sink first, and I never seemed to

WET AND COLD: DIGGING AND DIVING AT THE

MÉCATINA BASQUE SITE

By Bill Fitzhugh

In August 2006, the Gateways Project conducted another

season at the Hare Harbor Basque site at the southern end

of Mécatina Peninsula, and

initiated excavations at the

underwater site discovered there

in 2003. Due to a shorter season,

we restricted our work to

Mécatina and did not survey

other regions between

Harrington Harbor and Blanc

Sablon. Our crew included Perry

Colbourne (Pitsiulak skipper),

William Fitzhugh, Christie

Leece, Esther Perman (a junior

at Dartmouth College),

photographer Will Richard, and

diver-archaeologists Erik

Phaneuf and Fréderic Savard.

Phaneuf and Savard, re-joining

the project from last year, represented the University of

Montreal, which has become an institutional partner for our

underwater work. Yves Chrétien was unable to join us this

year due to his new responsibilities at the Cartier-Roberval

settlement he discovered last year on the out-skirts of

Quebec City.

The principal goals of the 2006 season were to begin

excavating a possible ‘blacksmith’ structure located in 2005

and to map and test the underwater site in preparation for a

more intensive three-year marine project in 2007-9. Partial

support for this season’s project came from the NMNH

Bateman Fund. The project could never have been

accomplished without the

support we received from the

town of Harrington Harbor,

particularly from the Rowsell and

Evans families; and from the

Colbourne clan of Lushes Bight,

Nfld.

Last year we had opened up

an 8x8 meter peat bog area in

which we found well-preserved

barrel staves, quantities of

chopped wood and charcoal, iron

bar stock, and a large iron

hammer head. Test pits east of

the bog indicated paving slabs

and thick layers of charcoal,

suggesting the bog had been

used as a dump and fuel-preparation area associated with a

black-smith operation which we presumed was nearby.

This summer’s work confirmed this interpretation,

revealing a 6x6 meter paved area in which we found a broken

and re-worked iron anchor prong, heavy round-headed bolts

or pins, and dumps of encrusted iron and charcoal. A small

hearth area at the northwest edge of the pavement contained

calcined bone fragments, and traces of charred wood

Bill and Christie suited up with cut whale bone

Unexpected Dorset finds in the middle of the

Basque site.

FIELDWORK
 ASC Newsletter 35

Erik Phaneuf investigates a ballast pile at the Petit

Mécatina site.

have enough dive weights to do this easily; so I had to strap

hammers and old iron shackles on to get down. Once down,

it is still and dark and COLD. Our hoods don’t zip into the

dry suits, and every time you bend your head forward to

look down a stab of 40-degree F. water slices into the back of

your neck. And then there is THE SQUEEZE as you

descend. You compensate a bit by adding air to your

drysuit, and boy, does that make you feel nice and warm!

Basking in sudden warmth all is fine until you ascend a few

feet and realize your positive buoyancy is taking charge and

you have to try to get that nice air out of your suit again,

quickly, or else you’ll cork to the surface and boil your

blood.

Despite all the complications of technology, diving on

the site was an exhilarating adventure. Arrayed across the

bottom, angling down from the shore between 10-45 feet

deep, were huge humped-up linear piles of ballast stone that

looked like giant sea cucumbers heading for the beach. The

bottom was strewn with roof tiles, modern grapnels lost by

lobster fishermen over the years, a fair number of huge

whale bones, and a few 19 and 20th C. bottles and jugs.

When the wind was off-shore, our tiny harbor was clear as a

bell and you could see 40-50 feet; but when it rained or blew

on-shore the visibility fell to about 5-10 meters. My dive

partner Christie and I quickly learned to try and keep our fins

well off the bottom to avoid kicking up a storm and losing

ourselves in a cloud of mud. Maintaining proper buoyancy

was the most difficult part of dry-suit diving at this site

because our mapping duties required us to move up and

down the steeply-inclined slope continuously, taking and

recording measurements.

Yet in the midst of all the physical trials, we got some

really good results! We mapped the entire site area and set

up a grid that will allow us to map features, conduct

excavations, and estimate the amount of rock in the ballast

piles (helping to determine the tonnage of ships employed).

Erik and Fréderik excavated seven 1-m square test pits on a

north-south transect at depths between 55 to 10 feet,

revealing a consistent stratigraphic pattern from depth to

surface of the sediments: (1) tiles; (2) wood debitage; (3)

tiles; (4) fish bones; and (5) tiles. The deposits were thickest

at 30-45 foot depths and the wood and bone levels were as

thick as 10-12 cm. Wooden barrel wedges and hoop

fragments were the most common artifacts found in the

wood level, but we also recovered domestic ceramics, part of

a leather shoe, and a wooden bowl. The wood level was

composed of masses of conifer axe cuttings, suggesting a

major timber squaring operation, probably related to building

docks and shore facilities. Once the site had been prepared,

the bone level gives the appearance of a major fishery

operation. While most were cod bone, other species,

including several birds and sea mammals, were represented.

Sophia Perdikaris will investigate these remains to see

whether they indicate processing for local consumption or

an export fishery.

During the past year Brenda MacLeod and her

colleagues have continued their DNA work on our whale

remains, identifying humbpack and bowhead. She also

confirms that our bones are not all from a single whale, but

from at least several individuals. Thus we can be assured of

at least a minor whaling operation and not just a single

chance catch or salvage of a drift whale.

In addition to the above findings we confirmed that the

underwater and shore sites are both Basque and date to the

same period, ca. late 17th to early 18th C.; that several vessels

must have been moored here at one time to account for the

multiple ballast piles, some of which occur in less desirable

anchorage locations than others; and that the Basque

enterprise was a small ‘full-service’ operation that appears to

have continued sporadically for several decades.

Next year we plan to expand work on the black-smith

and underwater operations in collaboration with Brad

Loewen and marine archaeology students from the

University of Montreal. We hope to survey Hare Harbor with

remote sensing gear to check for wrecks or other remains,

and to excavate a larger excavation block in the anchorage

area. Christie and I will be back underwater again, chattering

teeth and all!

Stratigraphy of the underwater deposit showing layers of

chopped wood and fish bones. Illustration by Erik Phaneuf.

1-roof tiles

2-fish bones

3-roof tiles

4-chopped wood

5-peat

6-sand
36 ASC Newsletter

FIELDWORK IN MONGOLIA

MONGOLIA DEER STONE PROJECT : FIELD

REPORT 2006

By William W. Fitzhugh

The joint American-Mongolian Deer Stone Project

completed its fifth field season this summer, returning to

Hovsgol Aimag to conduct a broader series of

investigations than it has mounted in previous years. The

roster of projects this year included an expanded deer

stone survey, with test excavations at several new sites in

the northern Darkhad Valley; botanical surveys and

Tsaatan studies north of the Shishged River; and

ethnographic studies of Tsaatan and Mongolian

shamanism. Bruno Frohlich’s mound surveys took on a

new dimension with the excavation of three Bronze Age

burial mounds, and the Museum Conservation Institute

fielded a second year of its deer stone laser scanning and

conservation program. In addition, we were fortunate to

collaborate with Francis Allard of Indiana University of

Pennsylvania who introduced us to Bronze Age sites in the

Khanuy Valley and expanded his ethnographic study of

modern horse husbandry and ritual practices into the

Darkhad Valley. Individually and collectively the results of

the 2006 field season far surpassed the results of previous

years and resulted in a number of important breakthroughs.

This year the core programs were supported financially

by the Trust for Mutual Understanding and, for the first

time, by the National Geographic Society, which will include

a small story on our work in the February 2007 issue. (Look

for a great Ushkiin Uver sunset deer stone shot by Gordon

Wiltsie, who photographed the NGS story on the Darkhad

fall migration story in the 2003 issue.) Other components of

our field work were supported by the Smithsonian

Institution, NMNH, and MCI.

I am especially grateful for our outstanding field crews:

Christie Leece, Marilyn Walker, Ayush, Amara, J.

Bayarsaikhan, Sanjmyatav, Khadbaatar, Mendbayar,

Tsolmon, Onolbaatar, and Songuulkhuu, Paula DePriest,

Oyumaa, and Oyumbileg; the MCI scanning team of Rae

Beaubien, Basiliki Vicky Karas, and Leslie Weber; Bruno

Frohlich and his group of ‘mounders’ from the Institute of

Archaeology; drivers Tsog, Khatbaatar, Narangel,

Batbaatar, and Tserenam; our cook Amra; and our project

coordinator and translator, Adiya Namkhai. Francis Allard

and his team from Indiana University, Pennsylvania, Laura

Short and Erika Maggiore, Marion Sikora from the

University of Pittsburgh, and Alyssa Caralla and Nasaa of

Ulaanbaatar.

Conference and Workshop

As in previous years we held a symposium co-sponsored

with the National Museum of Mongolian History at the

National University lecture hall on 2 June, mounted with the

assistance of the American Center for Mongolian Studies,

Peter Marsh and Enkbaatar. Papers were presented by Cliff

Montaigne, Rae Beaubien and Vicky Karas, Leslie Weber,

William Fitzhugh, Paula DePriest, Bayarsaikhan, Ayush,

Erdenebaatar, Sukhbaatar, DePriest and Oyuma, Francis

Allard, Alyssa Caralla, and Erika Maggiore to an audience

that at times reached nearly 100 scholars and students. On

June 3nd, at the conclusion of the conference, Director A.

Ochir of the NMMH hosted an evening reception at which

Bill Fitzhugh gave a popular presentation on the Deer Stone

Project and Director D. Tseveendorj of the Institute of

Archaeology spoke about recent developments in Mongolian

archaeological research, which is truly a ‘booming’ field now,

with scores of projects including 7-8 large international

efforts. The consensus at the close of the meeting was that

the growing success of the conference called for broadened

participation by the University and Institute in future years.

During the conference and during the following week

Smithsonian exhibit specialist Paul Rhymer held workshop

sessions on exhibit techniques and specimen preparation and

mounting. The National Museum of Mongolian Natural

History was especially hospitable in providing space,

materials, and support for Paul’s presentations. Last year

Natalie Firnhaber had discovered the urgent need for paper

conservation at several museums, libraries, and archives in

UB, and this year we were delighted that Nora Lockshin,

paper conservator at the SI Archives, was able to join the

team for a week of presentations and consultations. As has

occurred in past years, there was a phenomenal response to

these museum training workshops, and the contacts that the

team has made have been followed up with the country,

SI Archives conservator, Nora Lockshin, demonstrates techniques at UB workshop.

Our team of intrepid drivers-Batbaatar, Tsog,

Tserenam, Khatbaatar, and Narangel
 ASC Newsletter 37

making a short visit to the Khanuy Valley region to view the

sites that Francis Allard and Erdenebaatar of the Institute

of History have been working at for the past several years.

Our drivers from Muron had come down to meet us in UB,

avoiding the logistical trauma we have had in getting to the

Hovsgol region in early years. We spent a few hours at the

Gol Mod I Xiongnu site being excavated by a French team

directed by Jean-Paul DesRoches and spent a day at the

huge Urt Bulagyn kherigsuur site with its ca. 1700 horse

mounds and inspected and photographed the large deer

stone site KYR-119. Our team member Sanjmiatav had

excavated several square burials here with Russian

archaeologist Volkov in 1968 and 1988-89. More than any

other deer stone site we’ve seen, this one cries out loudly

for conservation attention

and possible reconstruction.

We arrived a few days

later in the Darkhad and set

up a base camp on the south

side of the Shishged River

just outside the gorge that

takes the river on its course

into Russia, becoming the

Little Yenesei. The

spectacular scenery here was

enhanced by some equally

spectacular weather which

brought sheets of rain by the

river, but dumped thick snow

on the mountains all around,

nearly down to our elevation.

While Francis’ team

interviewed herders about

horse-rearing, maintenance, and death ritual – which has

some strong parallels with ritual treatment of horse remains

in Bronze Age sites – we launched surveys into the

surrounding terrain, making some wonderful discoveries.

The biggest surprise was finding that the rock art we had

discovered last year on the north bank of the Shishged was

just the tip of the iceberg. This year we found some

wonderful rock art locations, and most surprising, two that

had carvings of the same deer motif found on the deer

stones. Only one or two other rock art examples of this motif

have been found in Mongolia. Given the considerable rock

art surveys that have been done elsewhere, these finds

suggest that the deer stone icon may be more common here

than anywhere else.

We also found several important new deer stone sites:

Zeerdegchingiin Khoshuu, Avt, and Hort Azuur. Zeerdeg.

Khoshuu had several kherigsuurs that had been ‘excavated’

long ago, probably by Buddhist monks in the 20th century.

We excavated a horse mound and a stone ring here,

obtaining several dating samples. Avt was an exciting find

because it contained several of the smallest deer stones we

had ever seen, some only 60cm total length. Unfortunately,

like other sites in this area, they were not in primary position.

Hort Azur, located in the northeast corner of the Darkhad,

was exciting when we discovered its single standing stone

was accompanied by several other fallen stones, one of

which had a tiger image on its face. Even better, we found

associated charcoal. These Darkhad deer stones are very

different from the ‘classic’ stones of the Erkhel-Muron

region in having fewer deer images, minimal carving, smaller

size, and other features that suggest they date either earlier

or later than the classic stones, or are a regional, attenuated

style. The results of our dating samples are eagerly awaited.

So far we have one date from a northern Darkhad deer stone,

again minimally carved, and with no deer images, and horse

remains from this stone are the oldest of any we have

received, ca. 3100 cal BP.

While we were working on deer stones, Paula DePriest

had set off on a horse trek with a group of Tsaatan led by

Sanjim, into the mountain country north of the Shishged,

ascending the Tengis and reaching the Russian border. Their

route then turned south, emerging in the East Tsaatan

country, where they found people sewing the canvas we had

helped deliver, into new tent

covers. Paula’s trip brought

her into a portion of the

Tsaatan territory we had not

visited previously.

We had visited with the

Tsaatan for a few days right

after our arrival in the valley.

Working with the US Embassy

and the Red Cross, we had

arranged to present every East

and West Tundra Tsaatan with

enough canvas to make new

covers for their urts (tents),

and as a special contribution

from the Smithsonian, he

provided every family with a

50-pound bag of flour. We saw

a lot of smiles as these

materials disappeared into the mountains on the backs of

horses! We followed behind, and by the time we reached the

spring camp the canvas was on the ground being sewed by

a host of seamstresses under the age of eight!

This summer we were accompanied by Marilyn Walker,

a Canadian scholar who has been studying shamanism,

plant-curing, and other ritual practices in northern North

America and Russia. Marilyn had teamed up with Ayush from

the NMMH and arranged to spend two weeks in the

Darkhad working with Tsaatan shamans. Unfortunately she

was too late to meet Suyan, the legendary Tsaatan shaman

of the West Tundra group whom we had been fortunate

enough to get to know during the past several years. Suyan

died this past March. We were more blessed than we ever

realized. Marilyn and Ayush had a very productive project

and made plans for beginning a full-scale project in the

coming years. En route to and from the Tsaatan they were

able to meet several Darkhad shamans. Her field report is

found elsewhere in this newsletter.

A few weeks later we had returned to Erkhel to continue

our long-term study of the Ulaan Tolgoi deer stone site. This

year’s work involved excavating several horse mounds

associated with Deer Stone 5 and several horse mounds at

the nearby kherigsuur to see if these features and their

associated mounds dated to the same time as the deer

stones, as preliminary results from our 2005 excavations had

suggested. While excavating a stone ring associated with

DS 5, Bayaraa encountered a large deposit of ceramic

fragments, and when the area was opened up we discovered

Spirit deer petroglyph at Shishged River with discoverer, a

happy Ja. Bayarsaikhan.
38 ASC Newsletter

our first evidence of domestic activities associated with the

rings and their burned food bone deposits. Our work around

Erkhel concluded with excavations at Khushugiin Devseg, a

site we had found last year on a plateau in the hills east of

Lake Erkhel. Amidst a swarm of mosquitoes in the gathering

dark, Bayaraa pushed his team to the limit and discovered a

thick domestic deposit containing bone and charcoal that

we’ve dated to ca. 2000 BP, several centuries after the deer

stones. Although complicated by multiple components this

site is probably one of the most important discoveries of the

past several years, as it will probably give us a long

chronology for the Erkhel region, of which the deer stone

occupation appears as only one component.

While we were engaged in the Darkhad, Rae Beaubien,

Vicky Karas, and Leslie Weber had established a salon in

Muron from which they were emerging in early evenings

with their laser scanning gear to begin a night’s work at

Ushkiin Uver. They had found the daytime sun to

problematic for the light-sensitive scanner. Having tried to

work during the daytime by building fabric-covered

scaffolds over the stones, only to have them blown apart by

wind, they found the quiet nights a perfect cover, and

succeeded in scanning all of the site’s 14 stones. One

night’s work was particularly memorable, when a UFO

descended over them, lighting up the sky with an eerie,

swirling glow, before zooming off. This is no joke, I was told.

Their driver confirmed, having witnessed the display

independently. Something else is interested in our deer

stones! Fortunately, our intrepid scanners recovered

sufficiently to spend a few days with us in Erkhel, where

they succeeded in scanning the huge DS2, the most

beautiful of all Mongolian stones, in a last-ditch all-nighter.

Watching the ranks of zebra-pattern light bars flashing

across the stone’s face I could well imagine why we were

being monitored by Extra-Terrestrials.

Once back in ‘Muren Country’ we were able to catch up

with Bruno Frohlich and his mound study group. In

previous years Bruno had spent most of this time on

detailed surveys, stomping up and down the faces of hills

with Tugsu and other students, building a huge database of

mound distributions. This year he turned to excavation, to

determine what and who these mounds were for. This turned

out to be heavy, hot work, but was nevertheless very

rewarding, as he recovered three sets of human remains from

each of the three mounds excavated. These were smaller

mounds located in the hills, where these features are

manageable, whereas the valley-bottom mounds require a

small army to excavate. Bruno found these burials to have

few artifact deposits, like others that have been excavated

elsewhere. We’re eagerly awaiting the results on c14 age,

diet, age-at-death, sex, health and other information.

On our way north we had passed through Galt and

discovered a fine deer stone site at Nukht Am on the Ider

River. We spent two days here excavating a horse mound

associated with one of the large kherigsuurs and a feature

associated with the adjacent deer stone site, in which a pair

of nearly identical deer stones was surrounded by a single

ring of rock features, presumably horse sacrifices. This

turned out to be the case, but the horse remains were found

more than a meter deep, below huge stone slabs – definitely

a different pattern than found at the other sites we have

investigated. The remains of a grinding quern were also

recovered.

The journey back to UB took us through Jargalant,

Bayaraa’s home, where we had an enjoyable visit with his

family and friends. By this time Naadam-fever was raging

among the virile young Mongolians our crew. Khadaa had

already taken first prize in a wrestling bout near Erkhel,

winning a young colt, and he and several others remained

behind in Jargalant to compete in their festival. The nonwrestlers made their way back via Kharakhorum to discover

UB flush with preparations for the great celebrations of the

800 anniversary Naadam, sheep tied to the trees in town

outside apartments where men were honing their butcher

knives and women were stoking the stew pots while roars

were coming from the decorated Sukhbaatar Square. Back in

the museum we packed our gear and sorted samples. It had

been a great season, and the prospects for 2007 were

looking even better.

Radiocarbon dates from the 2006 season:

Urt Bulagyn KYR-1-21 horse satellite mound: cal BC 1030 to 820

Urt Bulagyn KYR-1-22 horse satellite mound: cal BC 1020 to 830

Nukhtiin Am Deer Stone 1, F1 horse tooth: cal BC 1100 to 900

Ulaan Tolgoi, Deer Stone 5, F2 horse tooth: cal BC 1100 to 900

Christie and Bayaraa with “the smallest deer stone in the Khushugiin Devseg Deer Stone 2, F1 horse tooth: cal BC 360 to 40

world”.

Sanjmyatav traces outline of deer and tiger images on Hort

Azuur deer stone in Northern Darkhad Valley.
 ASC Newsletter 39

HORSES AND KHIRIGSUURS PAST AND PRESENT :

INVESTIGATING RITUAL LANDSCAPES

By Francis Allard

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

In June 2006,

five members of

the Khanuy

Valley Project

on Early

Nomadic

Pastoralism in

Mongolia

traveled to

northern

Mongolia to

carry out a smallscale

ethnographic

and surveying

project. Our

group, which

spent a good

portion of the

three week field

season traveling

with the

Smithsonian

team, included

myself (Francis

Allard, the Project Director), Erika Maggiore and Laura

Short (both undergraduate students at Indiana University of

Pennsylvania), as well as Alyssa Caralla and Nasaa, both

from Ulaan Bataar. Our previous four field seasons had

focused on central Mongolia’s Khanuy Valley, where the

project has carried out a large number of excavations,

surveys, and interviews of local herding families. One

significant result of this earlier work was the identification of

a remarkable degree of uniformity in the way the Bronze Age

ritual sites (known as ‘khirigsuurs’) were built. This includes

consistency in the spatial arrangements of different elements

(a central mound, ‘paths’, an area of small ‘satellite’ stone

mounds, and another of surface stone circles), as well as in

the orientation of the sites themselves, whose central axis

almost always falls within the narrow W-E to NW-SE range.

Another finding of the Khanuy Valley project has been

the recovery of horse skulls under the satellite mounds of

khirigsuurs. Typically, the skull points to between 90 (east)

and 130 (southeast) degrees, a range which corresponds to

the location of the sunrise on the horizon during the months

of October to December, and which suggests the possibility

that horses were sacrificed and offered to the sun at that

time of the year. Our interviews of local families in Khanuy

Valley have added support to this interpretation. Although

horses are not sacrificed any more, herders have told us that

they eat horse meat, that they kill one horse per year (in

November), and that the head of the horse is the most

important part of the body, with many placing the head on a

mountain, usually pointing toward the east or sunrise.

Following a short stay in Khanuy Valley, the team

traveled to the Darkhad basin, located some 350 kms

Horse skulls in trees, Darkhad, northern

Mongolia.

(this turned out not to be a horse sacrifice and is probably not

associated with the nearby deer stone)

Hort Azuur Deer Stone 3 charcoal: cal BC 390 to 190

(not a horse sacrifice feature, charcoal was found under a fallen

deer stone and association is not secure)

Key scientific results from 2005 Analysis and the 2006

Field Season:

- Three new deer stone sites found, including more than 20

new deer stones;

- With the spectacular increase in the number of fallen or

partially-buried deer stones discovered, we now estimate the

number of deer stones previous recorded by Volkov and

others, ca. 300 in Mongolia, is more likely to be between

1000-1500;

- 29 new radiocarbon samples recovered from deer stone and

kherigsuur contexts;

- Discovery of a previously unknown rock art locale on the

north bank of the Shishged River, including two rock art

panels depicting the iconic deer stone ‘master spirit’;

- Complete laser scans of the 14 extant deer stones at

Ushkiin Uver, and the 4.3 meter Ulaan Tolgoi deer stone;

- Botanical survey of the Tengis-North Darkhad Mountain

region;

- Preliminary interviews with Tsaatan and Darkhad shamans

by Marilyn Walker and Ayush;

- Frohlich excavations of three small mounds, all of which

contained human remains and revealed mound construction

details;

- Third annual Deer Stone Project conference and workshop

held in Ulaanbaatar;

- Publication and distribution of: The Deer Stone Project:

Anthropological Studies in Mongolia 2002-2004, edited

by William Fitzhugh, J. Bayarsaikhan, and Peter Marsh. 2005.

254 pp. Washington and Ulaanbaatar: Arctic Studies Center

and National Museum of Mongolian History.

- Collaboration with Francis Allard on surveys, preservation,

and dating of the Urt Bulagyn kherigsuur and KYR-119 deer

stone sites in the Khanuy Valley.

It took some time to find this horse burial!

Onolbaatar, Tsolmon, Khadbaatar and Mendbayar.
40 ASC Newsletter

northwest of the valley and whose southern periphery is

defined by a sparsely inhabited and rugged mountainous

area. We spent about one week near the town of Tsaaganuur

at the northern end of the basin, followed by a few days

near Renchinlhumbe, located along its eastern edge. Our

non-systematic surveys in these two areas located a number

of Bronze Age khirigsuurs, although none approached the

size of those in Khanuy Valley. What was clearly apparent,

however, was the structural similarity of these sites to

Khanuy’s khirigsuurs. Our interviews of local families in the

basin also revealed similarities as well as interesting

differences with practices in Khanuy Valley. Parallels include

the importance of the horse head, the killing of one horse in

November, and its association with the east or sunrise.

However, many herders in the Darkhad basin hang the skull

on a tree branch. It’s also worth noting that the horse skull

excavated by the Smithsonian team at a khirigsuur near

Tsaaganuur had an orientation of 110 degrees, in other

words within the range of horse skull orientations in

Khanuy Valley. Following our work in the Darkhad basin, we

traveled to Lake Erkhel where we spent five days mapping

sites and interviewing local families. Once again, we noted

consistency in the khirigsuurs’ structure and orientation,

while the herders presented a picture of their horse-focused

practices that was similar to that in Khanuy Valley.

Interestingly, local customs included both the hanging of

the skull in trees and its placement on the ground,

suggesting an intermediate area of cultural practice between

Khanuy and Darkhad.

Considering that khirigsuurs were built by pre-literate

societies, and that those in Khanuy Valley may range in date

from as early as 1100 to as late as 700 BCE (on the basis of

the few radiocarbon dates presently available), the

consistency in site construction and horse-focused practice

suggests the faithful transmission of ritual practice by

religious ‘specialists’ over hundreds of years. The similarity

of Darkhad’s khirigsuurs to those in Khanuy Valley indicate

a similarly faithful and no less intriguing spread of ideas

over large distances (in this case across a mountain range),

as does the discovery of a southeast pointing horse skull

found in one satellite mound there. As revealed by our

Visit to a Tsaatn campsite in the Darkhad West tundra.

Erika Maggiore, Francis Allard, and Laura Short.

interviews this past summer, consistency in modern day

horse-focused practices across such distances are another

exciting find which helps paint a picture of long-term and

cross-regional continuity in some of Mongolia’s cultural

practices.

BOTANY TEAM TRAVELS NORTH OF THE

SHISHGED GOL IN EAST TAIGA

Paula DePriest, Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian

Institution

In June 2006 the botany team led by Paula T. DePriest, and

including Mongolian botanists J. Oyumaa and Oyunbileg,

and cook Olzii, traveled with Dukha guides Sanjim,

Bayanaa, Batmunkh, Enkhbat, Lhagvasuren, Tataar, and

Tsogt-Ochir, on a 100 km horse-back circuit starting from the

Shishged Gol ferry crossing of north of Tsaagannur

(N51°24.600’ E 099°17.603’), June 15-24. The goals of the trip

were to examine pastures and natural areas of the Dukha’s

traditional reindeer-herding territory north of the Shishged

Gol—called the East Taiga, to compare these areas to

reindeer-herding territories south of the Shishged, and to

estimate the reindeer capacity of the combined areas.

The Shishged is a tributary of the Yenesei River draining

through Tuva and Siberia into the Arctic Ocean and divides

the current East and West Taiga territories, north and south

respectively. From the ferry crossing we traveled west along

the north shore of the Shishged Gol to the mouth of Tengis

Gol (N51°28.926’ E 099°03.007’). Passing through this area we

saw a Bronze Age khirigsuur (N52°26.493’ E 099°12.357’), and

Chinggis Rock and Fence (N51°28.808¢ E 099°03.050¢), a rock

dome and line of rocks with surrounding circular rock

features reported to have been constructed during the

Chinggis Khan period. Chinggis Khan (more likely his son

Joci) is reported to have visited the confluence of the Tengis

and Shishged Rivers to accept the peaceful surrender of the

People of the Forest in 1207/08, leaving footprints and a

fence of stacked stones. The Tengis Gol is a doubly

Urt Bulagyn, one of the largest Bronze Age burial

mounds in Mongolia (map by Francis Allard).
 ASC Newsletter 41

important site for Mongolians as legend dictates that the

Mongol clan originated from a blue-grey wolf and a fallow

doe along a body of water named ‘Tenggis.’

The Tengis valley is broad and glacier-carved. Ice dams

extending from the Tengis glaciers blocked the Shishged d

River during the Last Glacial Maximum, making a proglacial

lake of the Darkhat Valley. Continuing north and up along

this Valley (N51°50.972’ E 099°08.093’), and northeast along

an ice-filled tributary, we reached the Ulaankhad Gol (Red

Rocks River; N51°51.460’ E 099°21.951’), and turned north to

an unused reindeer summer pasture along the Russian

border (N51°55.873’ E 099°23.482’). The nearby summer camp

was adjacent to a 30 m waterfall (N51°54.229’ E 099°21.685’)

with deep river gorges above and below, demonstrating the

glacier formation of these valleys. From the border we turned

south, passing through the East Taiga spring pastures

(N51°46.568’ E 099°25.965’), and visited the 10 ortzes (tents)

of the East Taiga’s early summer camp (N51°39.237’ E

099°22.703’). At this camp, we were the first to use the two

new guest ortzes established to minimize the impact of

increasingly frequent tourist guests on fragile pastures.

After leaving the East Taiga camp, we traveled to south

sacred Tibetan Buddhist sites on Renchinlkhumbe

Mountain. Two ovoos, one the ridgeline (N51°31.571’ E

099°14.111’) and one summit of the south peak (N51°32.575’

E 099°12.270’) were used for worship by ethnic Darkhats

during the two hundred years of the Buddhist ecclesiastical

estate, Darhad Ih Shav’. The ovoo on the lower ridge was

the site of annual readings of sacred texts until its

suppression in the 1930s . Since the 1990s, the site is being

restored with new ovoos and carved plaques with Tibetan

writing. Ten days after our departure we returned to the

Shishged Gol ferry crossing and to Tsaagannur.

Our route along the Tengis and its tributaries was a major

herding area for Dukha until resettlement of the herders

closer to the supply sites at Tsaagannur. Traditionally, the

area was connected to the reindeer herding area of northern

Tuva by a major trail, with the seasonal migrations crossing

today’s border. Lead guide Sanjim’s family escaped from

Tuva in 1946 to settle in this area; we visited the camp of his

relatives at the confluence of the Shishged and Tengis and

in the East Taiga camps. Also, Sanjim located the poles of

the ortz in the last fall camp his family used along a tributary

of the Tengis Gol. Today both Dukha and Darkhat use this

area for hunting and fishing, especially in the winter when

the rivers are frozen making travel by reindeer easy. The only

wild game that we saw was two prong-horn deer along the

Tengis Gol; however, it is reported that the river valley to the

west of Tengis Gol supports a herd of wild reindeer.

In comparison to the reindeer herding territories south of

the Shishged Gol, the East Taiga offers a number of

underutilized pastures that are easy to access. The glacial

history of the area produces broad valleys excellent for

seasonal pastures, low passes easily crossed, and deeply

carved river gorges and waterfalls with abundant water to

support camps and herding. Because of an unseasonably

cool June 2006, the vegetation in this area was delayed in

both germination and flowering by comparison to the more

southern West Taiga. Additional collecting later in the

season would be required to compare two floras, although

some rare plants were documented and collected on

Renchinlkhumbe Mountain and near the Russian border. Use

of the pastures along the Tengis Gol would significantly

increase the carrying capacity of reindeer for the Sayan

Mountains, but this would require protection of the area

with control of hunting to increase the wild game, herdbuilding support such as importing appropriate Sayan

breeding stock from Tuva, and infrastructure development

to support year-round habitation by herding families.

BRONZE AGE MOUNDS AND ANCIENT HOMINIDS

By Bruno Frohlich and Amgalantugs Tsend

The 2006 season in Hovsgol aimag focused on the

excavations of a selected number of burial mounds in the

southern distribution of the field of 1400 mounds surveyed

in 2004 and 2005. We had several objectives, including

verifying the on-going dispute about whether the mounds

were used for burial or other functions, as well as questions

about the meaning of round vs. square khirigsuurs, the

location of burials in the mound, and the age of the

deceased.

Our excavation season was sponsored and funded by a

NSF grant with George Mason University, National

Geographic Society, the Department of Anthropology, and

private donors. The field season was co-organized with the

East Taiga summer camp along the Russian border that has

not been used in more than five years.

Dukha guide Sanjim with his sons, the guides

Bayanaa and Batmunkh, with his relatives in the

East Taiga early summer camp.
42 ASC Newsletter

Institute of Archaeology at the Mongolian Academy of

Sciences, and we enjoyed having many Mongolian

participants from the Institute, the National Museum of

Mongolian History, and the University of Ulaanbaatar.

Our team included Bruno

Frohlich (Smithsonian

Institution), Eliza Wallace

(Boston University), Evan

Garofalo (Johns Hopkins

University), Thomas Frohlich

(Hobart and William Smith

Colleges), William Offenheiser

(Smithsonian Institution),

Laura Short (Indiana

University), Gordon Wiltsie

(National Geographic Society),

Nicholas Wiltsie, Manlaibaatar

Sundev (National Museum of

Mongolian History),

Amgalantugs Tsend

(Mongolian Academy of

Sciences), Batshatar Erdene

(Mongolian Academy of

Sciences), Batsuch Lhagvajav

(University of Ulaanbaatar), Bolormaa Lumben (Muron),

Bat-Erdene Tsetsegee (University of Ulaanbaatar),

Uuriintuya Choisuren (University of Ulaanbaatar), Tomor

Gurdorj (Ulaanbaatar), and Sukhbaatar Ganjuur

(Ulaanbaatar).

We selected seven mounds in the southwestern part of

our survey area located 10-15 km west of the Ushkiin Uver

deer stone complex west of

Muron. Six mounds were

completed and one large mound

was partly completed whose

burial chamber still remains to be

excavated. We obtained excellent

human skeletal remains from all

the central mounds strongly

supporting our hypothesis that

they are indeed human burial

features. The bodies included

children and adults of both sexes,

and apparently the smaller

mounds include sub-adults, with

the size of the mound correlating

with the age of death of the subadult. When larger mounds were

excavated, they yielded adult

human remains with no

correlation with the size and

shape of the mounds. Thus variation in size and shape of

the larger mounds may primarily be a function of some other

factor, for example social status. We did not find any burial

objects. Bone samples have been selected from all six

skeletons for dating at the AMS laboratory at the University

of Arizona. We have not yet received the results.

In 2007 we plan to complete the excavation of the

medium size mound begun in 2006. Also, new remote sensing

data has been received from Google Earth, and some of our

research areas in northern Mongolia can now be displayed

on line with a pixel resolution between 0.5 meter and one

meter. This allows for the display of between 30 and 40

percent of known mounds, thus becoming a fascinating new

tool for exploring and mapping other mound structures in

unknown areas. Using these files we found such two areas

south and west of our present

survey area which we plan to

explore in 2007.

During October month,

Professor Tseevendorj, the

director of the Institute of

Archaeology, Mongolian

Academy of Sciences, visited

our laboratory at the

Smithsonian, and we agreed to

new contracts and new areas

of collaboration between the

Institute and our Department.

On Professor Tseveendorj’s

return to Ulaanbaatar he

learned about the recent

discovery of early hominid

remains in the northeastern

part of Khentii aimag, about

500 km east of Ulaanbaatar.

Our analysis of the large cranial fragment supports the

Institute’s original belief that it might be Homo erectus or

Neandertal. Consequently, I traveled to Mongolia in

December 2006 to visit the Institute and the field site. An

agreement was reached for the Smithsonian to conduct an

initial investigation of the Khentii site in May and June of

2007 with a joint Mongolian -American team.

At this time we are continuing the analysis of data from

our Hovsgol burial mound

excavations in 2005 and 2006

as well as information from

the Khentii hominid site. We

have asked for advice from a

variety of scholars in New

Zealand, Denmark, the

American Museum of Natural

History in New York, the

Henry C. Lee Institute of

Forensic Sciences in New

Haven, the University of

Bradford, The George

Washington University, and

of course our own experts at

the Smithsonian. So far, we all

agree we are in possession of

the most northern Homo

erectus find, or the most

eastern Neanderthal, or a new and exciting find of early

Archaic Homo sapiens which may lead to new ideas and

understandings of Mongolia’s role in migrations to the New

World.

The burial mound research, our ongoing research on the

Gobi mummies found in 2004 and the mass burials excavated

in 2003, and now the new Khentii find are all results of the

excellent collaboration between the Mongolian Academy of

Sciences and the Smithsonian. As usual, we will bring

updates on both the scientific and the logistic front in upcoming issues of this newsletter.

2006 Joint American Mongolian field crew for

investigations of burial mounds in Hovsgol aimag,

Mongolia.

Recently discovered Homo erectus fossil sparks new

research project in Mongolia.
 ASC Newsletter 43

3D SCANNING MONGOLIA’S ANCIENT DEER

STONES

By Vicky Karas and Rae Beaubien

The Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI)

In June 2006, three MCI conservators – Rae Beaubien,

Vicky Karas and Leslie Weber – traveled to northern

Mongolia as part of the joint Mongolian-Smithsonian Deer

Stone Project (DSP). They brought with them an exciting

new addition to their conservator’s toolkit: together with the

scalpels, brushes, and adhesives of their profession, the

conservators packed along a structured light 3D scanning

system to document some of Mongolia’s magnificently

carved ancient deer stones. 3D scanning has been part of

the DSP since 2005, when Beaubien and Karas, along with

model maker Carolyn Thome, from the Smithsonian’s Office

of Exhibits Central (OEC), first pilot tested this technology at

several deer stone sites in the Darkhat region, using a 3D

laser scanner.

Laser and structured

light scanning are two

cutting edge technologies

being used by

archaeologists,

conservators, and museum

specialists to collect

valuable information about

an object’s surface without

having to touch or move the

object. The ability to

accurately record three

dimensional data using a

non-contact approach is

very new to the field of

heritage conservation and of

particular value in the case

of at-risk artifacts.

Mongolia’s deer stones are

considered to be at-risk

because of the extreme

environmental conditions

that have affected them for

thousands of years. The

degradation caused by yearly freeze-thaw cycles is clearly

visible in the spalling (splitting or chipping) of the stones’

surfaces. Wind and water erode them. Harmful lichens

physically and chemically decay the stones, while animals

wear away at them with rubbing. Human degradation ranges

from graffiti to looting. In extreme cases the natural bedding

planes (formational weaknesses) in the stones cause entire

sections to shear off.

Despite this continuing degradation, the elaborate

images of deer and decorative accessories carved almost

three thousand years ago can still be seen on almost every

deer stone. These stones provide rare evidence of an

ancient nomadic peoples living on the Mongolian steppes

and are now considered to be among the most important

archaeological treasures of Central Asia.

The unique cultural status of Mongolia’s deer stones

makes efforts to understand and preserve these national

icons a high priority. Their at-risk status drives the

documentation program being carried out by MCI

conservators. The 3D digital data collected by laser and

structured light systems are now being used to complement

traditional documentation methods, such as high quality

photography, condition notes, and drawings.

Recording all Three Dimensions

Producing a 3D record has long been of interest to the DSP,

but until the MCI conservators began using 3D scanning

technology, only more traditional methods were an option.

In 2002, a small team headed by experienced model makers

from the Smithsonian’s Office of Exhibits Central [OEC]

produced the DSP’s first physical 3D record. Model makers

used a direct molding and casting technique to replicate one

deer stone, famous for its rare depiction of a human face, its

beautiful carving, and its great height (#14 at Ushkiin Uver).

In this case the stone was deemed strong enough to

physically withstand this technique. It took two days to

produce a mold of this stone. The mold was then brought

back to the United States, and two casts were made. One

was given to the

National Museum of

Mongolian History, in

Ulaanbaatar, for

permanent display. The

other is now in the

collection of the

Smithsonian’s National

Museum of Natural

History (NMNH) and

was used in their 2002

exhibition Modern

Mongolia-Reclaiming

Genghis Khan. This

cast is currently being

used here in the

NMNH’s family

festival, Chinggis

Khaan: 800 Years of

Mongolian Statehood.

Traditional molding

and casting can be

extremely successful

and accurate in

documenting an

artifact’s topographic and dimensional details. The

application and removal of mold materials, however, pose a

serious risk to sensitive object surfaces, such as those of

weathered deer stones. As an alternative, 3D computer

technology provided a way to carry-out a virtual molding

process at a much more rapid rate and without fear of

harming the stones’ surfaces. In 2005, the conservation team

used a Polhemus FastScan Cobra 3D laser scanner to

document 12 deer stones at sites in Northern Mongolia. The

laser light used in this type of scanning system is of

extremely low energy and frequency, and harmless to

humans and stones. As it was slowly swept above the deer

stone surface, the hand-held scanner would emit a single

laser line, used by the camera and computer components to

triangulate the details of the surface in 3D space. In 2006,a

Breuckmann GmbH TriTos structured light scanner was

used to scan 14 deer stones and several stone fragments at

Ushkiin Uver. The MCI conservators also completed a full

scan of the tallest known deer stone (ca.4m) at the site of

R. Beaubien (right) and L. Weber (left) scan deer stone #2 at the site of

Ushkiin Uver during the night. Darkness increases the pattern definition of the structured light projected by the scanner. As seen here, the

structured light pattern appears as vertical stripes across the stone’s

surface. [Photo: V. Karas 2006]
44 ASC Newsletter

SHAMANISM AND TRADITIONAL PLANT

KNOWLEDGE IN MONGOLIA

By Marilyn Walker

Mount Allison University,Canada

In June 2006, I accompanied William Fitzhugh and Paula de

Priest and their teams of researchers on the Smithsonian’s

Deer Stone project. As an anthropologist, I was interested in

ethnographic commentary on the archaeological, linguistic

and genetic evidence for Central Asia as the homeland of a

circumpolar complex extending from Siberia/Mongolia into

Alaska, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. While these

connections are highly speculative, I found many interesting

references to Deer Stone imagery both in Mongolian

shamanism and in traditional plant knowledge.

On the road trip from Ulaanbaatar to Muren, and then

into Tsaaganuur in the Hovsgol Aimag, I visited

archaeological sites to view the Deer Stones and carried out

approximately 40 interviews with Mongolians about both

traditional plant knowledge and shamanism. From

Tsaaganuur, three of us (Amara, Ayush, and myself) left

Bill’s and Paula’s teams and traveled by reindeer and

horseback up into the mountains to a Tsaatan spring camp.

Known as Tsaatan in Mongolia and Dukha in the

anthropological literature, the reindeer-herders are Tuvan by

ancestry but were isolated from their relatives in Tuva upon

closure of the Russian-Mongolian border after 1991. In the

West Darhad Valley, between Lake Khovsgol and the Tuva

border, the Siberian hunters/reindeer herders living in the

higher reaches of the mountains and Mongolian

herders (yaks, goats, sheep) of the grasslands in

the lower altitudes have co-existed and in some

ways, blended, thus giving this area a different

ethnic and historical character from “Mongolian”

culture, which has been heavily influenced by

Buddhism.

Tsaatan Mongolians – especially in this region

– retain a shamanic world view that has survived

persecution and neglect over many generations. It

embodies “core” elements of a shamanistic tradition

that forms a circumpolar pan-shamanic complex, for

instance: the sacredness of the horse; the shaman’s

drum as his/her ”vehicle” into the other world to

seek help for problems in this world (the semicircle

used on the back of some shaman’s drums is

described as the horse’s hoof); the shaman’s dress

as a representation of the shamanic tree of life; the

memorialization of helpful, ancestral spirits in the

Ulaan Tolgoi. The structured light scanner projects a pattern

of white light across an object’s surface. The deformation of

the pattern is recorded and processed by the camera and

computer components to locate details of the object’s

surface in 3D space.

The advantage of 3D imaging is that it produces a highly

accurate, high resolution archival record. These digital

records can then be manipulated on a computer monitor for

use in research, conservation, documentation, education, or

exhibition on a global scale. They can also be used to

produce a physical 3D record: the data can also be

transmitted to specialized machines to be milled or “printed”

in positive or negative forms.

3D Scanning Under Shade and Starlight

3D scanning in the field poses many challenges to

conservators. Both the laser and structured light scanning

systems are sensitive to light. In order to collect good data

shade shelters needed to be built over every stone scanned.

For daylight scanning, the conservators, assisted by their

Mongolian drivers, devised shelters using about 70 meters

of canvas and long wooden poles borrowed from

neighboring animal corrals. In 2006, collapsible ger (yurt)

walls were added to the shelter construction, allowing for

increased mobility around the stone and added structural

support. Once a stone was scanned the shelters were

dismantled and moved to the next stone. Both scanning

systems are portable and light-weight and are easily

powered by a small Honda generator. However, only the

structured light scanner will operate in cold nighttime

temperatures. Because of this, the structured light scanner

offered a great advantage over the laser scanner as it

allowed the conservators to work through the night,

eliminating the need to construct shade shelters and

therefore expediting the scanning process. By the end of the

2006 field season, conservators were using shade shelters

for daylight scanning until about 11pm, at which time they

packed up the canvas, poles and ger walls and continued

scanning under the night sky until 5am.

Using the Data

The successful results from both DSP field seasons are

encouraging for the continued use of 3D imaging in heritage

conservation applications. For Mongolia’s enigmatic deer

Conservators constructed two types of shade shelters. The foreground

shows the unfinished construction of a shelter using collapsible ger walls

and heavy canvas. Long poles and more canvas were added to cover the

stone for complete shade during daytime scanning. [Photo: R. Beaubien

2006]

stones this technology provided a safe, non-contact

approach for recording in accurate detail the rare cultural

evidence of Mongolia’s ancient nomads. MCI conservators

are now beginning the next phase of the scanning program

which involves data processing. This phase will create

digital graphic files that can be studied, exhibited, physically

replicated and archived. Over time these records can play a

pivotal role in monitoring changes in the stones and can

become integral in the development of strategic plans for

conservation and preservation.
 ASC Newsletter 45

Darhad shaman's drum showing the "horse's

hooves" and the chevron design

Chulu talking about Tsaatan plant use.

shaman’s toolkit; the use of trance as a path to knowledge;

and the use of archetypal symbols such as the circle, spiral

and equidistant cross to represent and invoke natural forces

and subtle energies.

Some Preliminary Observations

Shamanism throughout Mongolia has been heavily

influenced by Buddhism and in many areas, the two

traditions have blended and co-existed. Some lamas, for

example, are also shamans. At other times, shamanism was

suppressed by Buddhism, as it was by the Russian state,

such that shamans and shamanists were severely

persecuted at various times in history.

Today, both shamanism and Buddhism are undergoing

revitalization and in some cases, are being reshaped by new

conditions and influences. Ecotourism is becoming an

important industry in Mongolia, and shamanism is attracting

interest from academics, health professionals, trekkers,

environnmentalists and others. Today, shamans are

traveling internationally to meet other shamans and, since

many of the ancestral lineages have been broken, are

training one another or sharing resources across

communities.

Shamans are traveling to give workshops in North

America and Europe, or to perform ceremonies at music

festivals in Ulaanbataar. Taking shamanism outside the

“home” and community is controversial. It brings in much

needed income (many families make no more than $200 a

year), but some people believe real shamans do not charge

for their services. I asked one shaman how he worked

differently in his home and in a place like Ulaanbataar: “I

don’t call up all my [helping] spirits as I do at home, only

some of them. It would be disrespectful otherwise. They

would be offended and they might not help me when I need

them.”

Traditional Plant Knowledge

Mongolia offers a wide variety of plants, many of which

migrated (as people did!) throughout the circumpolar

regions and further south into the southern parts of Canada

and beyond. While plant use was not the prerogative of

shamans, some shamans did use plants to minister to both

humans and animals. The Tsaatan shaman, Suyan, who died

at over a hundred years of age in the spring of 2006, was

known for her reindeer medicine.

The survival of shamanic peoples depends on a

reciprocal connection with the land. Relations amongst

place, animals and people are mediated by a shamanic world

view and sometimes directly by shamans. A shaman ensures

people’s livelihoods through ceremonies that, I was told,

bring the rain “that makes the plants and animals happy.” If

they are “happy,” then they can be generous to the people

whose lives

are

interdependent

with theirs.

Since

traditional

plant use and

a shamanic

world view are

interconnected

in Mongolia, I

began to

compile an

ethnobotany

of Mongolia.

With Chulu, I

documented

plants used by the Tsaatan, identifying plants that are used

for humans and the reindeer they rely on – for food,

medicine, technology and spiritual uses. Among the plants

she mentioned was Lilium pumilum (white potato). This is

eaten raw when people are outdoors, and is also boiled in

reindeer milk or steamed. She also described how the twigs

of the shrub Caragana are bundled together to make a

broom or sweeper.

The burning of sacred plants is common in shamanic

cultures everywhere. In Mongolia, junipers are preferred for

cleansing and purification, where they are available. Juniper

is burned in an open fire or it is pounded into a powder and

sprinkled onto the little iron stoves in the Mongolian gers

and the Tsaatan tipis. The smoke drives away bad spirits and

pleases good spirits. Some people say they just like the

scent.

Whether shamans use plants to any extent depends on

their personal preferences, and perhaps also on their

ancestral spirits and the kind of knowledge they had when

they were living. Certainly plant use is not the prerogative of

shamans. Many people spoke to me about the plants they

gather and use for their families and their animals, although

some, such as Sanjim (Chula’s husband), are known for their

extensive knowledge.

Next summer I am planning to spend time with Sanjim,

Chulu and their son and daughter (who are shamans).

Working with a family will provide me with information on

how Tsaaten shamanic and plant knowledge is shared

between men and women and passed on inter-generationally.

I will be identifying plants in the field and documenting

important aspects of traditional plant knowledge, such as

protocols about collecting, times of the day or year that

determine the plant’s efficacy, whether the root, stems,

leaves and flower should be used together or separated, and

how plants are combined in medicines. I expect this to be a

long-term project. As one friend, a shamanist, told me years

ago, “Every plant is medicine...if you know how to use it.”

I would like to thank the following for assistance to my

project: William Fitzhugh, Paula DePriest, A. Ochir, J.

Oyuuma, Oyunbileg, Badamtsetseg (Badma), Adiyabold,

Amara (my translator), and Ts. Ayush.
46 ASC Newsletter

BERGY BITS

WORKSHOP ON NORDIC AND SAAMI RELIGION

On April 20, Noel Broadbent and Professor Rose-Marie

Oster (University of Maryland) hosted a lecture series and

seminar on Nordic and Saami Religion at the University of

Maryland. With support of the

NSF Office of Polar Programs,

Professor Thomas Dubios

(University of WisconsinMadison) was able to

participate.

Noel Broadbent also lectured

at Brown University and the

Haffenreffer Museum in Rhode

Island, the University of

Northern Michigan at

Kalamazoo, the University of

Tromsø in Norway and the

American Anthropological

Association Annual Meetings in

San Jose.

INDIGENOUS ARCHAEOLOGY PANEL

Collaborative research with northern native communities

has long been a hallmark of ASC anthropology. From a

historical perspective this is derived from several directions.

1) Stephen Loring’s commitment to community archaeology,

to conducting archaeological research in a collaborative

setting with Labrador Inuit and Innu has been a prominent

feature of his research since before he joined the Arctic

Studies Center, 2) One delightful consequence of Bill

Fitzhugh’s exhibition of northern ethnographic collections

(The Far North, Innu, Crossroads, Crossroads Alaska,

Ainu, and Viking) has been the opportunities they have

afforded in creating

collaborations with northern

native communities, native

scholars, historians and

artisans. 3) Close collaboration

with the Repatriation Office has

afforded several opportunities to

work closely with Alaskan native

communities. Together these

trends in community

involvement and participation

signal a new way of doing

anthropology in the north. This

evolving research climate was

evoked by the National Museum

of the American Indian which

hosted a panel discussion,

Indigenous Archaeology:

Respecting Objects, History and

Place, as the feature event of

American Indian Heritage Month at the Smithsonian last

November.

From Australia to the Arctic rim, indigenous peoples are

becoming more and more involved with archaeology.

ARCTIC IRON SYMPOSIUM

In the spring of 2006, the Arctic Studies Center hosted Dr.

Randi Haaland, an archaeology professor from the

University of Bergen in Norway. On Thursday, April 20th,

Stephen Loring and Dr. Haaland presented an evening

program - The Archaeology of Iron: New Discoveries and

Perspectives - for the Smithsonian Associates; on Friday,

April 21st, following a noon-time screening of Dr. Haaland’s

film The Ethiopian Iron Smelter and His World: Technology,

Organization and Symbolism in Transformation of Nature,

Stephen Loring, Randi Haaland, Noel Broadbent, and

William Fitzhugh participated in an Anthropology

Department mini-symposium on The Archaeology of Iron.

REVEREND DR. MICHAEL JAMES OLESKA VISITS

MSC COLLECTIONS

In June the Arctic Studies Center and the National Museum

of the American Indian were delighted to host a visit by the

Reverend Dr. Michael James Oleksa to visit the Yup’ik

ethnographic collections at the Museum Support Center and

the Cultural Resource Center in

Suitland. A leading scholar of

Russian American history in

Alaska Dr.Oleksa has spent the

last 35 years in Alaska, serving as

village priest, university

professor, consultant on

intercultural relations and

communications, and authoring

several books on Alaska Native

cultures and history. A 1969

graduate of Georgetown

University and of St. Vladimir’s

Orthodox Theological Seminary,

Father Oleksa earned his doctoral

degree in Presov, Slovakia, in

1988. His four-part PBS television

series, “Communicating Across

Cultures”, has been widely

acclaimed. He is the recipient of

numerous awards from local, state and federal agencies, as

well as the Alaska Federation of Natives. He currently serves

as the rector at the Saint Alexis Mission in Anchorage. By

dint of having spent over thirty years in rural Alaska he has

Indigenous archaeologists are creating new ways of

understanding the links between the past and the present to

create a distinctly Native viewpoint within the discipline. The

Indigenous Archaeology panel discussion included ASC’s

Stephen Loring, NMNH’s Repatriation Office archaeologist

Dorothy Lippert, the NMAI Cultural Protocols Program

specialist John Beaver, Janine Bowechop, the executive

director of the Makah Cultural and Research Center and

Jereldine Redcord a traditional Caddo/Potawatomi potter,

educator and historian. Julie Hollowell, Killam Fellow at the

University of British Columbia, moderated the discussion.

Noel Broadbent

Indigenous Archaeology program at the NMAI:

John Beaver, Janine Bowechop, Richard West,

NMAI director, Jereldine Redcord, Stephen

Loring, Dorothy Lippert and Julie Hollowell.
 ASC Newsletter 47

ANOTHER AWARD WINNING PUBLICATION FROM

THE ARCTIC STUDIES CENTER

Last year’s publication of Anguti’s Amulet (Angutiup

anguanga in Inuktitut) marked an important milestone in the

Central Coast of Labrador Community Archaeology Program.

The booklet tells the story of the archaeological research

conducted at Long Tickle in the Adlavik Islands south of

Makkovik, at a small mid-18th century Labrador village site

between 1999-2003. The book was co-authored by the entire

Adlavik archaeology team with significant input from Joan

Andersen, Stephen Loring and Leah Rosenmier and

delightfully (!!!!) illustrated by Cynthia Colosimo of Forteau.

The entire community archaeology-publication team was

honored (and thrilled!) to receive recognition for their work

by two awards that the book has garnered. In March, in St.

John’s, the Central Coast of Labrador Archaeology Project

was named the recipient of the Historic Sites Association’s

Manning Award for Excellence, receiving the “National

Manning”, for preserving and presenting the history and

heritage of the Adlavik Island, Makkovik and surrounding

area and for encouraging public participation in the history

of the province. Later in the spring, Anguti’s Amulet

received the Public Communications Award from the

Canadian Archaeological Association.

Anguti’s Amulet (Angutiup ânguanga), edited by Stephen

Loring and Leah Rosenmeier, 2005, Eastern Woodland

Publishing, Millbrook First Nation: Truro, Nova Scotia.

(Contact S. Loring for copies)

Central Coast of Labrador Community Archaeology

Award Recipients. Joan Andersen (center), flanked by

Lena Onalik (left) and Cynthia Colosimo (right) at

Government House in St. John’s receiving the National

Manning Award for excellence in preserving and

presenting the history and heritage of the province of

Newfoundland-Labrador. Publication of Anguti’s

Amulet, with illustrations by Cynthia Colosimo, has

been the most visible aspect of the project to date.

had the opportunity to acquire an extraordinary insight and

familiarity with Athabascan, Yup’ik, Aleut, Alutiiq and Tlingit

cultures, language and history. Father Oleksa spent two

days examining the Smithsonian Yup’ik collections for

insights about traditional clothing, subsistence technologies

and evidence of shamanistic practices. The study trip had

been prompted by his recollection of carved ivory chains

that had been part of the Crossroad’s Exhibition.

Accompanying Father Oleksa was his wife Xenia, Father

Gregory Safchuk, Alexandra Safchuk, Katherine Vitko and

a local videographer Jim Karabin. On June 8th Father Oleska

presented a lecture on the early history of the Orthodox

Church in Alaska at the NMNH’s Baird Auditorium.

ESKIMOS IN EUROPE

A recent book of interest to our readers is R. Bonnerjea’s

Eskimos in Europe: How They Got There and What

Happened to Them Afterwards (2004) a curious compilation

of accounts of the Canadian and Greenland Inuit natives

who appear in Europe from –perhaps as early as the 14th

century (!!!) through the late-19th century. While much of

the material and most of the historical personages are known

to Inuit historians and anthropologists this volume is the

first to be devoted entirely to the early history of Inuit

visitors to Europe and will intrigue the experts, students and

scholars and an Inuit readership who may not be as aware of

the details and history surrounding the Inuit discovery of

Europe. Bonnerjea appears unaware of some of the

scholarly literature, including articles by Garth Taylor and

Gert Nooter among others, but he has resurrected some

intriguing historical records, unearthed a few new ones, and

assembled all in an intriguing volume. Even the devotees of

this literature will find something new and interesting. The

volume is available through the author at 175 Rosendale

Road, West Dulwich, London, SE21 8LW, UK.
48 ASC Newsletter

EDWARD MORSE’S LEGACY REEXAMINED

Today, Edward S. Morse (1828-1925) is frequently

remembered for his extensive collection of historic Japanese

pottery, one of the most extensive outside of Japan. Yet, the

pottery collection of this distinguished Peabody Museum of

Salem director and scientist was but one of his interests that

spanned a range of disciplines including Zoology,

Archaeology, Architecture, and Ethics. Morse’s encounter

with Japan that began in 1877 was a fortuitous one. Japan’s

recently established Meiji government was opening to the

West, and Morse, who was an ardent follower of Charles

Darwin, hoped to study samples of brachiopods that were

common in Japanese waters. Soon after his arrival in Japan,

Morse was offered a faculty position at the newly organized

Imperial University in Tokyo. Soon thereafter, Morse had

founded the first biological laboratory in the Pacific and

greatly contributed to starting the modern practice of

Archaeology in Japan. In the few years that Morse spent in

Japan, he traveled widely, collected intensively, and took

mountains of notes, many of which were later published and

provided a tantalizing peek into the life of the Japanese

people at a time of rapid social change. Morse also lectured

widely on his many areas of expertise, enthralling crowds

with his stories of faraway lands as well as his ability to

draw detailed sketches with both hands simultaneously

while lecturing! Today, SI has two accessions of prehistoric

artifacts from archaeological excavations undertaken during

Morse’s early trip to Japan. Ali Ghobadi, a graduate student

in Archaeology at American University researching Japanese

archaeological practice, has been working with Stephen

Loring (Arctic Studies Center) to reexamine the artifacts and

to rediscover the significance of Morse’s historical

donation.

DANISH CONFERENCE HONORS H. C. GULLØV

The SILA Research Center in Copenhagen hosted “The

Thule Conference – New Perspectives in Inuit Prehistory”

honoring Hans Christian Gulløv at his 60th birthday in late

October. Featuring Gulløv’s special expertise, the conference

brought together scholars of the Thule culture for an

exciting three-day meeting with all the bells and whistles our

imaginative Danish hosts have become known for, including

a memorable banquet aboard a historic vessel in stormtossed (pier-side) seas near the new opera house in

Copenhagen Harbor! Igor Krupnik could not attend, but his

paper, “Distant Lands and Brave Pioneers: the Original

Thule Migration Reconsidered,” read by Bjarne Gronnøw,

presented information from an ethnographic study he made

on a 20th century migration of a group of Siberian Yupik

Eskimos from the Provideniya region to an unoccupied

region of the southern Chukotka coast over a several-year

period. The paper documented an ethnographic migration

that is instructive for imagining the inspiration and

mechanics of prehistoric migrations such as the Thule

movement into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Bill

Fitzhugh presented “New Evidence on Inuit Penetration of

Southern Labrador and Quebec” from his excavations at the

Hare Harbor Basque site at Mécatina near Harrington

Harbor, and reviewed the current status of the “invisible

Inuit” in southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and Quebec’s

Lower North Shore, a subject of heated ethnohistoric debate

in the past that is beginning to be clarified by archaeological

data.

ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE

MARKET: A CONFERENCE IN JUNEAU

Complex cultural and economic issues have arisen from

the pressure of a world-wide private and museum market that

deals in artistic ivory treasures from Old Bering Sea and

Okvik period archaeological sites on St. Lawrence Island.

Widespread digging and sales of artifacts by Yupik residents

are completely legal and provide a rare source of critically

needed cash income. Yet the devastation of 2000 year old

sites is troubling for all concerned. A serious and wellattended discussion of the situation took place in Juneau on

Oct. 6 at the annual conference of Museums Alaska, the

ANTARCTIC EAST BASE FINDS

The archaeological investigation of the East Base

research station on Marguerite Bay, Antarctica was carried

out when Noel Broadbent was a program officer at NSF. This

historic site includes huts, vehicles and equipment from two

expeditions. The first expedition was the United States

Antarctic Service Expedition from 1949-1941, and the second

expedition was the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition

from 1947. In conjunction with the clean-up of East Base, a

representative sample of objects was brought back to the

U.S. This material has been catalogued and turned over to

the Naval Historical Center at the U.S. Navy Yard in

Washington, D.C. Official contact with the Naval Center has

been established through Curator Gail Munro. Plans are

being made to display this material at the Navy Yard.

Collection of historic Japanese pottery from the Morse

collection.
 ASC Newsletter 49

statewide association whose members represent over 50

large, small, and tribal museums from around the state. The

session, entitled Cultural Heritage, Archaeology, and the

Market: Looking for Solutions on St. Lawrence Island,

included presentations by Julie Hollowell (Department of

Anthropology and Sociology, University of British

Columbia), Jonella Larson (Museum Studies, Harvard

Extension School), Kaci Fullwood (Kawerak Inc.), and

organizer Aron Crowell (Arctic Studies Center). The

panelists approached the issue from different backgrounds –

Hollowell from her research on the ivory market and

curatorship of the Princeton University Art Museum

exhibition Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories from the

Bering Strait; Larson from her Yupik cultural ties to the

island and commitment to cultural heritage issues; Fullwood

as program manager for developing a Beringia Museum in

Nome to represent the cultures of the Bering Strait; and

Crowell from his archaeological research on St. Lawrence

Island and long involvement with Alaska Native museums

and exhibitions. One consensus reached by both panel and

audience was that Native-run museums – in Nome and

possibly on St. Lawrence Island itself – could be part of the

answer to keeping the region’s archaeological heritage from

disappearing entirely, but that destructive digging of sites is

almost certain to continue as long as strong international

demand for ivory artifacts continues.

SMITHSONIAN

JOURNEYS TO THE

BERING SEA

Aron Crowell participated

as Study Leader for this

summer’s Bering Sea

educational travel tour

organized by Smithsonian

Journeys and Zegrahm

Expeditions. Co-sponsors

of the trip included the

National Audubon Society,

the World Wildlife Fund,

and the Harvard Museum of

Natural History. The two week voyage on board the 120-

passenger Clipper Odyssey began at Nome on July 4 and

touched at Little Diomede Island, Providenya, St. Lawrence

Island, the Pribilofs, the eastern Aleutian Islands, and the

Alaska Peninsula before ending at Homer.

This summer, in early July 2007, Bill Fitzhugh will lead a

Smithsonian Associates cruise titled “A Symposium on

Global Warming and Climate Change” from Alaska to remote

Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic, along with NBC

commentator Tom Brokaw. The cruise aboard the Russian

icebreaker, Kapitan Khlebnikov will feature other experts on

Arctic wildlife and geography who will lecture on the

unprecidented warming in the Arctic and its consequences

for nature, andimals, and people not just in the Arctic but

throughout the world. Berths are still available. Contact

Barbara York at SI Travel Program, or on the SI website.

INUA EXHIBIT CASES FIND NEW HOMES IN

ALASKA

Exhibit cases and crates built for the European tour of

the 1984 ASC exhibition Inua: World of the Bering Sea

Eskimo, which also took the show north to Barrow for the

opening of the Inupiat Heritage Center in 1999, are

continuing their world travels. Five of the cases shipped out

to Unalaska this fall as an ASC donation to the Museum of

the Aleutians, where director Zoya Johnson will use them for

future displays of Unangan cultural heritage, archaeology,

and art. With the assistance of Holly Cusack McVeigh

(Kenai College), another case was sent to the western

Alaskan village of Hooper Bay. The case will be used for

exhibits in the village’s new high school. The old school

burned to the ground along with 35 other buildings in an

early August inferno that destroyed much of the town’s

infrastructure and left over 50 people homeless.

PARTNERSHIP WITH BAIKAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL

PROJECT

Last year the ASC and Baikal Archaeological Project of the

University of Alberta signed an MOU to share research and

publication opportunities connected with mutual interests in

archaeology and

paleoenvironment studies of

southern Siberia and northern

Mongolia. The Baikal Project

(baikal.arts.ualberta.ca),

directed by Andrzej Weber,

recently received a major

Canadian grant for research

and education in the Baikal

region of Eastern Siberia, where

it has been conducting

research for the past several

years. The new grant expands

the Baikal Project and creates

opportunities for sharing

publications and educational

materials and participation in

research conferences.

ALASKA NATIVE ART FOUNDATION COOPERATION

During the past two years the ASC has been collaborating

with ANAF, a Washington DC- and Anchorage-based

foundation directed by Alice Rogoff promoting cultural

education and marketing of Alaska Native arts and crafts.

ASC and ANAF produced the Alaska Native Arts Festival at

the National Museum of Natural History in November, 2005,

and ANAF plans to work with the ASC and the Princeton

University Art Museum on educational programs in

connection with the Gifts for the Ancestors exhibit in

Princeton in 2008. We expect more opportunities to work

together after the opening of expanded ASC facilities and

exhibits at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in

2010.

Almost 140 years of SI work in the Bering Strait! From Dall

in 1870 to Crowell, Fitzhugh, and Krupnik..
50 ASC Newsletter

GIFTS FROM THE ANCESTORS

Princeton University Art Museum recently received a major

NEH award for the exhibition, Gifts for the Ancestors:

Ancient Ivories from the Bering Strait. Curated by Julie

Hallowell and PUAM curator Jonathon Pohl, with

assistance from Bill Fitzhugh, Aron Crowell and many

others, the exhibition will present several hundred pieces

from the PUAM collections with loans from many other fine

public and private collections of Okvik, Old Bering Sea,

Ipiutak, and Punuk art in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. The

exhibition will include modern ivory art and perspectives

from contemporary Bering Strait artists. In addition to

presenting many specimens never previously shown, this

exhibit distinguishes itself from previous exhibitions by

presenting the dilemma of preserving of archaeological sites,

materials, and cultural heritage under modern conditions of

private ownership, subsistence economies, and global art

market interest. The exhibit will open in mid-2008 at PUAM

and will travel to several other (as yet undetermined)

venues. In addition to an illustrated catalog, the exhibition

will be supported by a technical monograph authored by

leading Russian and American scholars, an extensive

educational website, lecture series, artist workshops, an

opening symposium, and sales of modern native art.

FITZHUGH LABRADOR MONOGRAPH ON-LINE

The Smithsonian Institution Library has digitized the entire

Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology monograph

series and put them on-line at:

www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/Anthropology/

Volume 16 is Fitzhugh’s Environmental Archaeology in

Hamilton Inlet, Labrador published in 1972, complete with

all illustrations, photgraphs, and back matter.

LENA SHARP’S GREAT ESCAPE TO CAMBRIDGE

Lena has quit SI-archeology cold turkey in a vain attempt to

live above the poverty line. She is doing event planning and

marketing for Alexandria Real Estate Equities in Cambridge,

MA. Though the new job is fun, she finds herself missing

the dirt and mosquitoes as well as her old ASC home!

Lena Sharp’s farewell canoe trip. Stephen Loring and Emiliana

Donadi do some stealthy log scrambling in the background.

TOPS OF THE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY

Bill Fitzhugh and Noel Broadbent attended a stimulating

conference organized by Hans Peter Blankholm in early

November to consider historical, environmental, and

comparative perspectives of cultural developments in the

circumpolar arctic and subantarctic. Hosted by the

Department of Archaeology of the University of Tromsø in

an early winter blizzard that became the envy of the Eastern

North Americans, for whom snow is now only a distant

memory, the conference explored theoretical and historical

issues that have been simmering for several decades, but

which are now re-emerging due to better chronologies and

regional cultural history. The papers by scholars working in

southern South America were of particular interest and

revealed a great advance in knowledge of a region still littleknown to most northern hemisphere scholars.

Newfoundland, Labrador, northern Scandinavia, and the

Russian arctic were also represented. The conference

generated interest in developing a special IPY focus on

‘polar’ archaeology, particularly on the need to preserve and

protect sites impacted by global warming.

ASC ANCHORAGE INTERNS 2006

ASC Anchorage would like to thank interns Bill and Jan

Walton and Saundra Hedrick-Mitrovich for their

contributions to the Alaska Collections Project. In June of

2006, Bill and Jan edited English transcripts of the

collections

research trip to

NMNH and

NMAI with

Tlingit and

Haida Elders and

plan to return to

work on Russian

materials for the

Sharing

Knowledge web

site in the future.

Bill is a Russian

Linguist in the

U.S. Air Force,

and Janice is

pursuing a BA in

Anthropology at

University of

Alaska

Anchorage.

Prior to moving to Anchorage, Bill and Janice lived for two

years in Moscow where they worked at the U.S. Embassy. In

the fall of 2006, Saundra edited and posted Russian

translation work for the Sharing Knowledge web site and

also edited collections research trip transcripts. Saundra is

pursuing doctoral degree in American Indian Studies at

Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, and is a member

of the Tyme Maidu Tribe of California.

Bill and Jan Walton
 ASC Newsletter 51

HERB POHL (1930-2006): NORTHERN CANOEIST

The Arctic Studies Center joins the fraternity of northern

canoeing adventurers and wilderness travelers in mourning

the passing of Herb Pohl who drowned during a sudden

squall while canoeing the northern shore of Lake Superior.

He was retired from McMaster University, where he had

been an instructor in the Biology Department. Herb was

known and greatly admired for his passion for solo travel on

northern Canadian rivers, and especially on the remote

wilderness rivers of Labrador.

Regularly a featured speaker at wilderness travel

symposiums, Herb wrote and spoke about his northern

experiences with both passion and humility. Asked once

about his solo travels, Herb replied that they were, “a

wonderful way to get some realization of your own

insignificance. You’re out there and you see the immensity

of space. It’s an overpowering feeling of liberation. You see

there is a much grander design than anything that could be

attributed to you. It frees you. You don’t worry. You’re not

in charge.” A regular contributor to Nastawgan: the

Quarterly Journal of the Wilderness Canoe Association, he

recently wrote, “Being alone in the wilderness, paradoxically,

calms the soul and excites the senses. Soon the clouds gave

way to blue skies, the sun sparkled on the waves, and as so

often in the past, I was overcome by a feeling of undeserved

privilege.” (vol. 27, Spring 2000).

Stephen Loring first met Herb Pohl in a canoe in the

middle of Voisey’s Bay, a treacherous sea for small boats

with conflicting winds and tides. And some years later their

paths crossed again in Davis Inlet where Herb had just

abandoned the canoe-kayak he had used in a descent of the

Notakwanon River. An awkward looking boat to begin with,

its lines had not been improved by an ugly nose constructed

of silver duct tape over a framework of sticks. After one

exhausting day, and still many miles from salt water, Herb

had fallen asleep while waiting for his kettle to boil. His fire

escaped and burned a path to his canoe. Herb awoke to find

the front of his boat melted away. Having put the fire(s) out,

Herb finished his cup of tea and went back to sleep with

confidence that he would figure something out in the

morning. The

abandoned

boat was quite

a conversation

piece around

Davis Inlet, and

eventually it

made its way to

Newfoundland,

where it

continues to

evoke wonder

and

appreciation at

the character

that was Herb

Pohl.

DORIS SAUNDERS OF LABRADOR

By Lynne Fitzhugh

Many ASC

associates

found their

first “arctic”

on the wild

coasts of

Labrador, and

several of us

never needed

to go any

farther.

Though most

have been

students of its

prehistoric

peoples, all are

indebted to

the welcome

and guidance

provided by

the

Labradorians

of today

whose

ancestors we

study. None of

these hosts and friends has been more generous of her

hospitality or her friendship over the years than Doris

Saunders. But Doris’s greatest gifts to us, to the world, to

history, to her own people are the narratives of old-time

Labradorians she collected and published in Them Days

Magazine from its inception in 1975 to her retirement in 2002.

In May 2006, shortly before her 65th birthday, Doris Jean

Martin Saunders passed away, a victim of Alzheimer’s.

Born in the small coastal community of Cartwright in

1941, Doris, like nearly all her neighbors, was a descendant

of 19th century white settlers and indigenous Inuit women.

The men had come as fishermen, trappers, tinsmiths,

carpenters, hoopers, and ship-builders for the British

companies which set up operations on the Labrador coast

after the Seven Year’s War. The women were daughters of

Inuit families attracted to these posts by opportunities for

trade and employment. They brought with them subsistence

survival skills that enabled the men to set off on their own

when their terms of service to the companies had been

fulfilled. They were true partners, these couples, and

together they forged a colorful wilderness life cherished in

the memories of their ethnically and culturally mixed

descendants.

From early childhood Doris loved hearing the old-timers’

stories of hardships and disasters, celebrations and

humor—a kind of frontier life still prevalent in Labrador at

that time and which she herself experienced as a child. It was

a subsistence lifestyle based mainly on winter fur trapping

and the summer cod fishery. The fruits of everyone’s labors

were exchanged at the posts for such necessities as they

TRANSITIONS

Herb Pohl

Doris Saunders
52 ASC Newsletter

were unable to make for themselves; cash was rarely used,

and what we would call poverty (but which they considered

normal ups and downs) was endemic. However, things were

already changing on account of the region’s strategic

location in World War II. Construction of Goose Bay Air

Base the year Doris was born brought jobs, and people from

coastal communities like Cartwright, still struggling to

recover from a decline in fish stocks and depression of fur

prices in the 1930s, flocked to the Base. A cash economy

began to replace the old credit system; Canada took over

responsibility for Newfoundland and Labrador from Britain;

and gradually the region entered the modern world.

Doris is remembered as a cheerful, spunky tomboy by

her childhood friends. Cartwright was a regional

headquarters for the Grenfell Mission so, unlike most other

communities, it had a hospital and a school, and girl children

were taught crafts with which they would always be able to

supplement their husbands’ fish and fur earnings. Today the

famous Grenfell hooked rugs command high prices from

collectors. Doris herself won national acclaim for singlethread embroidery, and her fine pieces were always an

important source of extra income for her. She was an apt

student at the Cartwright school as well and won a

scholarship to complete her education at the new high

school in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the community that grew

up to house families working at the Base. At a time when few

Labradorians completed elementary school, Doris left her

family in Cartwright to live with her aunt and uncle in Happy

Valley, where she made it through Grade 11 before marrying a

young man from the north coast, Frank Saunders, and

starting a family of her own. She lived for the rest of her life

on the homestead they built on the banks of the Churchill

River, always called “Grand” by the old-timers who trapped

its wooded shores.

In 1975 the Labrador Heritage Society, cognizant of the

rapidly disappearing lifestyle that had characterized

Labrador before construction of the Base and Confederation

with Canada in 1949, advertised for a person to compile a

book of oral histories from the old-timers before they passed

away. Doris jumped at the opportunity to create a repository

of the wonderful stories she had so loved listening to as a

child. With no publication experience and almost no funding,

she began taping interviews of her wide-ranging family,

neighbors, and friends. She learned photography and began

developing not only her own pictures but restoring and

duplicating those given to her by the subjects of her

interviews.

From the outset, Doris did nearly all the interviews and

the transcriptions for the book herself. She cut-and-pasted

the magazine by hand, then did all the packaging and

distribution of copies. She often worked nights and

weekends and, when funds were especially tight, went for

long periods without pay. Outsiders inspired by her work

came on a variety of Canadian grant funds to help out with

photography and collecting stories on specific topics. Later

the magazine itself received modest government support

enabling its Board to hire young people to help with special

short-term projects. Everyone who worked with Doris,

perhaps especially us outsiders accustomed to the false

sophistication and cynicism of more worldly urban peers,

was enchanted by her candor, her eternal enthusiasm and

energy, her dedication, charm, and wit. A quintessential

Labradorian, she was quick and funny, never calculating,

initially reserved but unabashedly affectionate and

unstintingly generous with people she liked, many of whom

she adopted as family. I am eternally grateful, awed even, to

have been included in this category, for ours became one of

the most cherished friendships of my life.

The single “book” Doris had been hired to create

became a periodical still published four times a year and

which earned Doris both honorary university degrees and,

in 1986, the prestigious Order of Canada. From the tapes and

photos she collected grew an archive of historical

documents now considered among the most valuable

records of early life in all Canada. She became a

spokesperson for Labrador, an advocate for its rights under

the often overbearing and exploitive governance of

Newfoundland, and a voice for its indigenous people.

Through Them Days, she, perhaps more than anyone else, is

responsible for the sense of cultural identity and pride

Labradorians feel today.

Doris never let public recognition of her achievements

go to her head. Ever modest and self-effacing, she was quick

to pass the credit on to others—and indeed there were many

others who deserved their share. Nor did her many

international friendships ever diminished the pleasure she

took in longtime Labrador friends and family, who remained

dear to her until the end. Her heart was huge, big enough for

all of us, big enough for a whole country and its people.

Thanks to her work, not only future generations of

Labradorians but strangers like me can open the portal she

created and step into a past world so different from our own

as to be almost unimaginable yet even more real, intimate,

and immediate than one’s own neighborhood today.

Imagine if the people who once populated the prehistoric

sites we study, where only bones and stones remain as

records of their passing, imagine if they’d had a Doris

Saunders how much richer we’d be, and how much better

our understanding of their cultures!

Doris Saunders

received the

Order of Canada

Award in 1986

for publication of

Them Days from

1975-2002.
 ASC Newsletter 53

THE DEER STONE PROJECT MONOGRAPH

PUBLISHED

A new ASC publication, The Deer

Stone Project: Anthropological

Studies in Northern Mongolia

2002-2004, documents three

years of field research from 2002-

2004 in Hovsgol aimag, northern

Mongolia. Edited by W.

Fitzhugh, J. Bayarsaikhan, and

P. Marsh, the work contains

proceedings of interdisciplinary

research, conservation, collection

management, and exhibition

techniques. Published by the

Arctic Studies Center and the

National Museum of Mongolian History, the monograph

includes project overviews and archaeological reports of

Neolithic, Bronze Age, and later finds; rock art and burial

mound surveys; mummy cave finds dating to the Mongol

Empire period; geographic, botanical, and

paleoenvironmental reports; ethnology of the Tsaatan

(Dukha) reindeer-herders; and papers on conservation,

collection management, and exhibition techniques. Authors

include Mongolian and American team members. Long

Mongolian abstracts are provided. Available from the ASC

website (www.si.edu/arctic/) or by mail order.

THIN ICE: INUIT

TRADITIONS WITHIN A

CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

By Anja Nicole Stuckenberger

As the Smithsonian exhibition A

Friend Acting Strangely has

shown, climate change is a

pressing and much debated

phenomenon of our time. The

Hood Museum of Art’s exhibition

Thin Ice: Inuit Traditions within

a Changing Environment

explores the Inuit concept and

perception of ‘sila’ (weather, the

outside, universe, intelligence) as an integral part of their

culture and how climate change will potentially put at risk

Inuit hunting ways of life that are at the core of the social

and spiritual fabric of their society. The exhibition displays

objects such as hunting tools, boat miniatures, clothing, and

art that are exemplary of Inuit’s close relationship to the

Arctic environment.

Contextualizing the objects thematically and historically,

the catalogue expands on the various themes addressed in

the exhibition: Inuit policy perspectives on managing climate

change in a preface by Aqqaluk Lynge, perspectives on

climate change in an introduction by Krupnik, Virginia and

Yalowitz; and an essay on the traditional and contemporary

Inuit notion of ‘sila’ by Nicole Stuckenberger. William

Fitzhugh and Kesler Woodward examine in respective

essays Dartmouth’s long tradition of polar research and its

relevant collections of objects and manuscripts both at

Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art and at the Rauner Special

Collections Library. The catalogue is fully illustrated

providing the reader with the opportunity to explore

prominent objects in the Hood Museum of Art’s Arctic

collections and objects and manuscripts from the Stefansson

Collection of Polar Exploration at Rauner Special Collection

Library as well as loans from the Canadian Museum of

Civilization (Ottawa) and the Hudson’s Bay Company

Archives, Manitoba. It also includes photographs of the

region by Nicole Stuckenberger and Cherry and Brian

Alexander.

Catalog ordering data: Thin Ice: Inuit Traditions Within a

Changing Environment, by Nicole Stuckenberger, with

contributions by William Fitzhugh; Aqqaluk Lynge; Kesler H.

Woodward, and an introduction by Igor Krupnik, Ross

Virginia, and Ken Yalowitz, and a foreword by Brian

Kennedy.

Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art,

Dartmouth College. 2007. ISBN: 0-944722-33-4; price: $24.95.

Distributed by University Press of New England, Hanover

and London: One Court Street, Lebanon, New Hampshire

03766 (www.upne.com).

PUBLICATIONS

THE ARCHAIC OF THE

FAR NORTHEAST

The papers from the Archaic

conference held several years ago

in Orono have just been

published, edited by D. Sanger

and M.A.P. Renouf. This

hardcover ‘modern bible’ is

available from University of Maine

Press, 126A College Avenue,

Orono, ME 04473.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF NAIN, LABRADOR TO APPEAR

Bryan C. Hood’s monograph, “Toward the Archaeology of

Nain, Labrador” will be publicated in the ASC’s

Contributions to Circumpolar Archaeology in 2007. The

monograph reports research from the 1980s-90s on Maritime

Archaic, Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Labrador Inuit sites. Much

of the study is a detailed description and analysis of the

Nukususutok-5 Maritime Archaic site collections and

settlement data using K-means, correspondence, and other

methods. Bryan’s model study is the most extensive

contribution to northern Labrador culture history and

analytical studies and will be of interest to a wider audience

for its comprehensive application of method and theory. His

final chapter looks at Maritime Archaic and Pre-Dorset cooccupations from a synthesized processual and postprocessual perspective.
54 ASC Newsletter

Aron L. Crowell (2006)

2006 Aron L. Crowell. The Outer Coast Project: Kenai

Fjords Oral History and Archaeology, Final Technical Report.

National Park Service, Kenai Fjords National Park, Seward,

Alaska.

William Fitzhugh (2006)

2005 Taymyr: The Archaeology of Northernmost Eurasia.

Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Vladimir V. Pitulko. Arctic

Studies Center, Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, 5.

236pp. Washington D.C.

2006 Cordage and Wood from the Avayalik Dorset Site in

Northern Labrador. In: Jette Arneborg and Bjarne Grønnow.

Dynamics of Northern Societies: Proceedings of the SILA/NABO

Conference on Arctic and North Atlantic Archaeology. Pp. 153-

175. Studies in Archaeology and History, 10. Copenhagen: Danish

National Museum. (with Haeyendecker, Adovasio, and Jorden)

2006 Cultures, Borders, and Basques. Archaeological Surveys

on Quebec’s Lower North Shore. In: From the Arctic to Avalon:

Papers in Honour of Jim Tuck. Edited by Lisa Rankin and Peter

Ramsden. BAR International Series 1507:53-65.

2006 Gateways Project: 2005 Field Report. In Archaeology in

Newfoundland and Labrador 4:25-31. Provincial Archaeology

Office Newsletter. Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/pao/Newsletters/Newsletters

2006 The Gateways Project 2005: Surveys and Excavations

from Mutton Bay to Harrington Harbor. Edited by William W.

Fitzhugh, Yves Chretien, Erik Phaneuf, and Helena Sharp. 56pp.

Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History,

Smithsonian Institution.

2006 Mongolia Deer Stone Project: Field Report 2005. Edited

by William Fitzhugh and compiled by George Michael Leader. 151

pp. Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History,

Smithsonian. (ASC website)

2006 Chinggis Khaan: 800 Years of Mongolian Statehood.

Arctic Studies Center Newsletter Mongolia Festival Supplement.

October 2006. Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural

History, Washington, D.C., 14pp.

Igor Krupnik (2006)

2006 IPY 2007-08 and Social/Human Sciences: An Update.

With Grete K. Hovelsrud. Arctic 59(3): 341-348.

2006 Landscapes, Faces, and Memories: Alexander Forshtein

Eskimo Photographs, 1927-1929 (in Russian). With Elena A.

Mikhailova. Antropologicheskii Forum, 4:188-219. St. Petersburg,

Russia.

2006 Faces of Chukotka: Waldemar Bogoras’ Historical

Photographs, 1900-1901, as Beringia Heritage Resource. With

Nadezhda Vukvukai, Valentina Itevtegina, and Barbara Mathé. In

Beringiia – Most druzhby/ Beringia – Bridge of Friendship. L.A.

Nikolaev, ed. Tomsk, pp.250-267 (in Russian, pp. 43-60).

2006 We Have Seen These Warm Weathers Before.

Indigenous Observations, Archaeology, and the Modeling of Arctic

Climate Change. In: Arneborg, Jette and Grønnow, Bjarne (eds.):

Dynamics of Northern Societies. Proceedings of the SILA/NABO

Conference on Arctic and North Atlantic Archaeology.

Publications from the National Museum, Studies in Archaeology

and History, Vol. 10. Copenhagen, pp. 11–21.

2005 “When our words are put to paper.” Heritage

documentation and reversing knowledge shift in the Bering Strait

region. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 29(1-2): 67–90 (Préserver la langue et

Anguti’s Amulet/Angutiup-nguanga. Edited by Stephen Loring

and Leah Rosenmeier, 2005

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Edited by William W.

Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil. 1999.

From the Playground of the Gods: The Life & Art of Bikky

Sunazawa. By Chisato O. Dubreuil. 2004. Distributed by

University of Hawaii Press.

The Earth is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic

Environmental Change. Edited by Igor Krupnik and

Dyanna Jolly. ARCUS, 2002.

Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific

Expedition, 1897-1902. Edited by Igor Krupnik and

William W. Fitzhugh. Contributions to Circumpolar

Anthropology 1, 2001.

Honoring Our Elders: The History of Eastern Arctic

Archaeology. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh, Stephen

Loring, and Daniel Odess. Contributions to Circumpolar

Anthropology 2, 2001.

Akuzilleput Igaqullghet: Our Words Put to Paper. Edited by Igor

Krupnik, Willis Walunga, and Vera Metcalf.

Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology 3, 2002.

Constructing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas

and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Edited by Laurel

Kendall and Igor Krupnik. Contributions to Circumpolar

Anthropology 4, 2003.

PUBLICATIONS AVAILABLE FROM THE ASC

ASC STAFF PUBLICATIONS FOR 2006

les savoirs / Preserving language and knowledge. Louis-Jacques

Dorais and Igor Krupnik, eds.

2005 Introduction: La préservation des langues et des savoirs

du Nord/ Introduction: Preserving languages and knowledge of the

North. With Louis-Jacques Dorais. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 29(1-2): 5-

30 (Préserver la langue et les savoirs / Preserving language and

knowledge. Louis-Jacques Dorais and Igor Krupnik, eds.)

2005 Foreword. With William W. Fitzhugh. In Taymyr. The

Archaeology of Northernmost Eurasia. By Leonid P. Khlobystin.

Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology 5. Washington, DC:

Arctic Studies Center, pp. xiii-xv.

2006 Classification of Siberian Nomadism: Traditional

Patterns and Modern Transformation (in Japanese) In: Kanhoku

taiheyo no kankyo to bunka (Peoples and Cultures of the North

Pacific Rim). Okada Junko, ed. Hokkaido Museum of Northern

Peoples. Abashiri, Japan, pp. 88-104 (reprint of 1991).

2005 Review of Ernest S. Burch, Jr., Alliance and Conflict:

The World System of the Iñupiaq Eskimo. Journal of

Anthropological Research 2006, 62:407-409.

2005-2006 IPY 2007–2008: The Clock Is Ticking. With Grete

Hovelsrud. Northern Notes. The Newsletter of the International

Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA). Fall/Winter 2005/

2006. Pp.7-10.

Stephen Loring (2006)

2006 Smithsonian Research in Labrador, 2005. In, Archaeology

in Newfoundland and LAbrador 4:55-60. Provincial Archaeology

Office Newsletter. Governement of Newfoundland and Labrador.

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/pao/Newsletters/Newsletters

2007 Further documentation supporting the former existence

of Grizzly Bears (Ursus arctos) in northern Quebec-Labrador.

(with Arthur Spiess) Arctic 60 (1): 1-10.
 ASC Newsletter 55

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS

Alaska Humanities Forum

The American Center for Mongolian Studies

Anchorage Museum Foundation

Anchorage Museum of History and Art

Robert Bateman Fund

Chinggis Khan Foundation

The Embassy of Mongolia

Inlingua/Santis Corp.

James VanStone Estate

Malott Family Foundation

Mongol~American Cultural Association

The Mongolia Society, Inc.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Admin.

National Geographic Society

National Museum of Natural History

National Park Service

National Science Foundation

Edward and Elizabeth Nef

Rasmuson Foundation

Royal Danish Embassy

Sealaska Corporation

Edward T. and Josephine Vinson Story, Honorary

Consul to Mongolia

Trust For Mutual Understanding

Tshikapisk Foundation

U.S. Department of State (Mongolian Ambassadors

Grant)

Wenner~Gren Foundation for Anthropological

Research

ASC STAFF

William Fitzhugh, Director and Curator: fitzhugh@si.edu

Aron Crowell, Alaska Director: acrowell@alaska.net

Igor Krupnik, Ethnologist: krupniki@si.edu

Stephen Loring, Museum Anthropologist: lorings@si.edu

Noel Broadbent, Archaeologist: broadben@si.edu

Christina Leece, Research Assistant: leecec@si.edu

Dawn Biddison, Alaska Collections Project:

biddisondd@ci.anchorage.ak.us

Rocco Milano, ASC Publications: milanor@si.edu

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES

Ernest Burch Jr., Harrisburg, PA, Esburchjr@aol.com

Douglas Causey, University of Alaska Anchorage,

afdc@uaa.alaska.edu

Anne Fineup-Riordan, Anchorage, AK, riordan@alaska.net

Joan Gero, American University, jgero@american.edu

Norman Hallendy, Carp, ONT, tukilik@rogers.com

RESEARCH COLLABORATORS

Ted Timreck- New York City, theodore.timreck@verizon.com

Will Richards- Georgetown, ME, will@wrichphoto.com

CONTACT INFORMATION

Arctic Studies Center, Dept. of Anthropology

Natural History Building, MRC 112

Smithsonian Institution

P.O. Box 37012

10th and Constitution N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

(202) 633-1887

(202) 357-2684 (fax)

Taymyr: The Archaeology of Northernmost Eurasia. Leonid P.

Khlobystin in Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology,

vol. 5, 2005.

Northern Ethnographic Landscapes: Perspectives from

Circumpolar Nations. Igor Krupnik, Rachel Mason and

Tonia Horton, editors. Contributions to Circumpolar

Archaeology 6, 2004.

Sikugmengllu Eslamengllu Esghapalleghput. Watching Ice and

Weather Our Way. Conrad Oozeva, Chester Noongwook,

Christina Alowa, and Igor Krupnik. Arctic Studies Center,

Washington D.C. 2004. Distributed by the Arctic Research

Consortium of the United States (ARCUS).

Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W.

Fitzhugh and Elizabeth Ward. 2000. Harper Collins.

Ordering information for publications can be found at:

www.mnh.si.edu/arctic

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR ASC INTERNS AND

VOLUNTEERS

Matthew Bass-Mongolia Report

Abigail Brazee-Newsletter

Clare-Estelle Daitch-McFarlane Collection

Emiliana Donadi-Sanchez - MSC agent provocateur

Avital Friedman – Goro photography project

Jacquelyn Graham - Sweden Field Work Report

Saundra Hedrick-Mitrovich- ASC Anchorage

Joan Hobbs- Quebec Report

Michael Leader - Mongolia Report

Rocky Milano - ASC Publications

Andrea Neighbors - IPY Collections

Esther Perman - Quebec Field Work

Bill Walton-ASC Anchorage

Jan Walton-ASC Anchorage

ASC Anchorage

Arctic Studies Center at the Rasmuson Center

121 West 7th Ave.

Anchorage, A.K. 99501

(907) 343-6162

(907) 343-6130 (fax)

This newsletter has been produced by William Fitzhugh, Abigail

Brazee, and Christina Leece.