Biogeographic barriers and coastal erosion: understanding the lack of interaction between the Eastern and Western Regions of the North American Arctic

ABSTRACT

For most of the past 5,000 years, the North American Arctic has seen distinct cultural developments in its eastern and western regions, with the boundary between them located in the Amundsen Gulf region in northwestern Canada. This boundary was traversed by two major migration episodes that define the ‘big picture’ of North American Arctic archaeology, but for much of the remainder of prehistory, there are only rare indications of communication or movement across it. In this paper, we assess the reasons for this boundary, the evidence for interaction across it, and the implications for cultural developments on both sides. In order to approach these issues, we also attempt to understand the significant gaps in the archaeological record caused by the region’s severe coastal erosion, currently accelerating due to warming climates.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic
• archaeology
• interaction
• Mackenzie Delta
• coastal erosion
• biogeographic barriers

Acknowledgments

This paper is based in part on research conducted as part of the Arctic Cultural Heritage At Risk project. TMF gratefully acknowledges support from the Inuvialuit Cultural Centre and the Aurora Research Institute, and funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant number 435-2012-0641) and the Polar Continental Shelf Project. MJEO thanks the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, and Aurora College/The Aurora Research Institute. We also thank Shelby Anderson for useful discussions about Alaskan ceramics. Lisa Janz and two anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2012-0641].

Notes on contributors

T. Max Friesen

T. Max Friesen is an archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He has worked in several regions of the North American Arctic, with an emphasis on Victoria Island and the Mackenzie Delta Region. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-author of Out of the Cold: Archaeology on the Arctic Rim of North America (Society for American Archaeology, 2017).

Michael J. E. O’Rourke

Michael J. E. O’Rourke is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, where he is assessing the impacts of climate change on Inuvialuit cultural landscapes. His research interests include the archaeology of the western Canadian Arctic, heritage value/significance, cultural landscape management/stewardship, and geographic information systems (GIS) methods and theory as applied to heritage research.