Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood

Download or read book Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood written by Robert Jarvenpa and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood is a cross-cultural ethnoarchaeological study of the gendered nature of subsistence in northern hunter-gatherer-fisher societies. Based on field studies of four circumpolar societies, it documents the complexities of women?s and men?s involvement in food procurement, processing, and storage, and the relationship of such behaviors to the built landscape. Avoiding simplistic stereotypes of male and female roles, the framework of ?gendered landscapes? reveals the variability and flexibility of women?s and men?s actual lives in a manner useful for archaeological interpretations of hunter-foragers. Innovative in scope and design, this is the first study to employ a controlled, four-way, cross-cultural comparison of gender and subsistence. Members of an international team of anthropologists experienced in northern scholarship apply the same task-differentiation methodology in studies of Chipewyan hunter-fishers of Canada, Khanty hunter-fisher-herders of Western Siberia, S¾mi intensive reindeer herders of northwestern Finland, and I_upiaq maritime hunters of the Bering Strait of Alaska. This database on gender and subsistence is used to reassess one of the bedrock concepts in anthropology and social science: the sexual division of labor.