February 2007 Number 14www.mnh.si.edu/arctic National Museum of Natural HistorySmithsonian Institution 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 earth- changes 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. Two- thirds of these will be from NMNH Anthropology collections and one-third from NMAI. This past spring the ground- breaking 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 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ 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 rain- swollen 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 pre- view 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 co- sponsors. 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 ½ kopeck (1/200 of a ruble) are among the artifacts found at the site, along Opening reception for Sharing Knowledge preview exhibit 3 ½ 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 well- preserved 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 snow- white 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 well- attended 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 eth- nology 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 on- line 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 mid- March 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 three- day 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) featur- ing 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 April- July 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 collection- based 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 self- taught 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 Claire- Estel 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 Mongo- lian 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 develop- ment of comparable datasets between regions. The macro- regional 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 Cioffi- Revilla, 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 human- environmental 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 amphi- Atlantic (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 human- mediated 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 long- term 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 Euro- Asian 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 over- wintered 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 Hull- Walski 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 Donadi- Sanchez, 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, so- called 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 red- cheeked, 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 wall- hangings 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 underestimated- particularly when trying to assemble a ger. Mongolian- American 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 political- military 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, demon- strates 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 non- wrestlers 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 Khushugiin Devseg Deer Stone 2, F1 horse tooth: cal BC 360 to 40Christie and Bayaraa with “the smallest deer stone in the 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 small- scale 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, herd- building 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 sub- adult. 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 up- coming 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 defini- tion 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 Wisconsin- Madison) 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 storm- tossed (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 well- attended 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 little- known 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 single- thread 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 co- occupations from a synthesized processual and post- processual 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.