Life at Swift Water Place
Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact
by Anderson, Douglas D.
Anderson, Wanni W.
400 p., 130 halftones, 7 x 10
Format: Paper and electronic
Price: $45.00
2019
A multidisciplinary study of the early contact
period of Alaskan Native history that integrates
ethnohistoric, bio-anthropological, archaeological
and oral historical analyses of a major hunting and
fishing Inupiaq group at a time of momentous
change in their lifeways. It was a time of food
shortage along the Kobuk River prompted by the
decline in caribou, one of their major foods. But
also the time when European and Asian trade
items were first introduced into their traditional
society. The first trade items to arrive, a decade
ahead of the Europeans themselves, were glass
beads and pieces of metal that the Inupiat expertly
incorporated into their traditional implements.
Inter-ethnic group relations as reconstructed from
oral history place the Amilgaqtauyaagmiut as the
most powerful group in the area.
Douglas D. Anderson is professor emeritus of
anthropology and director of the Laboratory for
Circumpolar Studies, Brown University. He has
conducted archaeological and anthropological
research in northwest Alaska since 1960, and has
authored numerous articles including Onion Portage:
The Archaeology of a Stratified Site from the Kobuk River,
Northwest Alaska and Kuuvangmiit Subsistence: Traditional
Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century (co-authored
with Wanni W. Anderson).
Wanni W. Anderson is emeritus adjunct professor of
anthropology and research affiliate, Haffenreffer Museum
of Anthropology, Brown University. Her work among the
Inupiat from the Kobuk and Selawik rivers since 1965,
culminated in numerous publications including The Dall
Sheep Dinner Guest, also from the University of Alaska
Press.