university of nebraska press circumpolar lives and livelihood a comparative ethnoarchaeology of gender and subsistence mar 2006

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Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood
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Circumpolar Lives
and Livelihoo d
A Comparative Ethnoarchaeology

of Gender and Subsistence
Edited by Robert Jarvenpa and
Hetty Jo Brumbach
university of nebraska press • lincoln and london
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© 2006
by the
Board of Regents
of the
University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Manufactured
in the
United States of America

⅜
ϱ
Set in Minion and Gill Sans
by Bob Reitz.
Designed by R. W. Boeche.
Printed by
Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Circumpolar lives and
livelihood: a comparative
ethnoarchaeology of
gender and subsistence /
edited by Robert Jarvenpa
and Hetty Jo Brumbach.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical
references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-8032-2606-7
(cloth: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-8032-2606-3
(cloth: alk. paper)
1. Arctic peoples—Social
conditions. 2.Arctic
peoples—Economic
conditions. 3. Hunting and
gathering societies—Polar
regions. 4. Traditional
fishing—Polar regions.

5. Subsistence
economy—Polar regions.
6. Sexual division of
labor—Polar regions.
7. Ethnoarchaeology—Polar
regions. 8. Polar
regions—Social conditions.
9. Polar regions—Antiquities.
I. Jarvenpa, Robert. II.
Brumbach, Hetty Jo, 1943–
gn673.c568 2006
306.3'64'09113—dc22
2005021947
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For our Chipewyan, Iñupiaq, Khanty, and Sámi hosts, friends, and teachers
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Contents
List of Illustrations viii
List of Maps ix
List of Tables x
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction:
Gender, Subsistence, and Ethnoarchaeology 1
Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Br umbach
2. Chipewyan Society and Gender Relations 24
Hetty Jo Brumbach and Robert Jarvenpa
3. Chipewyan Hunters:
A Task Differentiation Analysis 54
Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Br umbach
4. Khanty Society and Gender Relations 79
Elena Glavatskaya
5. Khanty Hunter–Fisher–Herders:
A Task Differentiation Analysis of Trom’Agan
Women’s and Men’s Subsistence Activities 115
Elena Glavatskaya
6. Sámi Society and Gender Relations 158

Jukka Pennanen
7. Sámi Reindeer Herders:
A Task Differentiation Analysis 186
Jukka Pennanen
8. Iñupiaq Society and Gender Relations 238
Carol Zane Jolles
9. Iñupiaq Maritime Hunters:
Summer Subsistence Work in Diomede 263
Carol Zane Jolles
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10. Conclusion: Toward a Comparative
Ethnoarchaeology of Gender 287

Hetty Jo Brumbach and Robert Jarvenpa
Notes on Contributors 325
Index 327
Illustrations
3.1. A Chipewyan girl and her great-grandmother
at the family’s fish-drying/smoking facility 57
3.2. A woman’s log smoking and storage cache 64
3.3. Women cooperate in removing hair and flesh
from a moose hide 65
3.4. A Chipewyan woman and her personal
hide-making toolkit 66
3.5. Close-up of a woman’s toolkit 67
4.1. A Khanty man from Pim River checks a fish trap 94
4.2. A Khanty woman from Trom’Agan removes
feathers from a duck she shot 100
4.3. A woman tends her reindeer herd 105
5.1. A Trom’Agan woman uses a knife and her teeth
for the initial processing of a reindeer skin 134
5.2. A Trom’Agan girl, age 12, comes ashore
in her own boat 141
7.1. Elli Palojärvi milks a reindeer 205
7.2. Inger-Anni Palojärvi feeds “home reindeer”
at her Kultima homestead 214
7.3. Berit Siilasjoki cuts owner’s marks
in a reindeer’s ears 219
7.4. Inkeri Siilasjoki prepares her wooden
laavu for smoking meat 222
7.5. A family picks cloudberries together 233
8.1. The two Diomedes 241
8.2.Aqag

·
sriq and meat racks, 1928 254
8.3. A Diomede school with bell, upkut, and meat racks 256
9.1. The Ingaliq community, Little Diomede Island,
Alaska, March 2002 264
viii contents
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9.2. A leg trap used by young girls and boys to trap auklets 273
9.3. Traditional or handmade birding tools 277
9.4. Views of Bob’s family’s uua, or meat hole 280
9.5. A view of Bob’s family’s uua in winter 281
9.6. An idealized view of an upkut with a saiyuq 282
Maps
1.1. Circumpolar locations of Chipewyan, Khanty,

Sámi, and Iñupiaq 4
2.1. Southern Chipewyan territory in
central subarctic Canada 25
3.1. Moose-hunting locales near Patuanak and
associated seasonal settlements 60
3.2. The spring beaver–muskrat hunting route of an
all-female team. Inset: women’s daily
rabbit-hunting trails 73
4.1. Khanty territory in western Siberia, Russia 80
4.2. The Surgut region and the Trom’Agan
and Pim river drainages 82
4.3. A Khanty family territory or estate and
their seasonal settlements 86
4.4. The distribution of living, storage, and
processing facilities in a Khanty summer settlement 87
4.5. The distribution of living, storage, and processing
facilities in a Khanty family fall settlement 91
6.1. Sámi territory in northwestern Finland 161
6.2. Official reindeer husbandry districts in
the Käsivarren Paliskunta 162
6.3. Kultima village and family household clusters 168
7.1. The annual reindeer-herding cycle
in the Kultima region 190
7.2. Salvasjärvi summer village with marking
and separation corrals 192
7.3. A communal village corral at Kultima 199
7.4. The configuration of living, storage, and processing
features for a reindeer-herding homestead in Kultima 223
illustrations ix
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8.1. Iñupiaq territory in the Bering Strait between Alaska
and eastern Siberia. Inset: Little Diomede Island
(United States) and Big Diomede Island (Russia) 240
8.2. Map of Ingaliq showing semisubterranean meat
storage areas and wooden storage sheds 252
10.1. Women’s and men’s storage spaces in a contemporary
Chipewyan satellite village of Patuanak 291
10.2. Historic Chipewyan winter staging community site 293
10.3. The distribution of meat storage hole chambers in
the central part of Ingaliq settlement 311
Ta b l e s
1.1. Four-way Circumpolar comparison 13
2.1. Types of southern Chipewyan hunting teams 43
3.1. Chipewyan resource clusters 55

3.2. Location and distance factors in moose hunts 59
3.3. Moose hunting and processing toolkits 63
3.4. Moose hunting formation processes 68
3.5. Location and distance factors in rabbit hunting 74
3.6. Rabbit hunting and processing toolkits 75
5.1. Khanty interview consultants 116
5.2. Khanty resource clusters 119
5.3. Khanty moose hunting and processing toolkits 133
7.1. Sámi resource clusters 188
7.2. Location, time, and distance factors in
traditional reindeer breeding 191
7.3. Location, time, and distance factors in
modern reindeer breeding 196
7.4. Reindeer breeding and processing toolkits 217
7.5. Reindeer breeding formation processes 226
7.6. Location, time, and distance factors in gathering 231
7.7. Berry gathering and processing toolkits 235
9.1. Consultants: formal and informal adult
and intern respondents 268
10.1
. Shifting Chipewyan gender dynamics and the
forager–collector gradient 296
10.2. Subsistence variables and gendered landscapes
in four Circumpolar societies 312
x maps
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Acknowledgments
The seeds of this volume were planted in the early 1990s, when we began ex-
perimenting with ethnoarchaeological approaches to gender and subsistence
in northern Canada. We are especially grateful for the patient guidance and
insights of our Chipewyan friends and colleagues Albert Aubichon, Cecile Aubi-
chon, Margaret Aubichon, Albert Black, Mary Black, Rose Campbell, Mary
Djonaire, Bernadette George, Christine George, the late John John, Mary Jane
John, Christine Lariviere, Mathias Maurice, J. B. McIntyre, and the late Agnes
Roy of Patuanak and Knee Lake, Saskatchewan. Their testimony and everyday
lives revealed unexpected intricacies and flexibility in women’s and men’s work
roles. They challenged many of our previous assumptions about the sexual
division of labor and suggested new ways of thinking about gender and the
archaeological landscape. Ultimately, these experiences were pivotal in devel-
oping the perspective and methods for carrying the research forward to the

comparative, cross-cultural analysis presented in this book.
This work would not have been possible without a dedicated international
team of professional collaborators in Russia, Finland, and Alaska. We are in-
debted to Dr. Elena Glavatskaya, Dr. Jukka Pennanen, and Dr. Carol Zane Jolles
for joining us in this (ad)venture. Their creativity and insight, their expertise
and hospitality in the field,andtheirconsiderable efforts in interpreting the data
and writing their respective chapters for this volume made a logistically com-
plex project viable and rewarding. Graduate assistants Riitta-Marja Leinonen
and Scott Williams provided invaluable help in Finland for which we are grate-
ful, and Scott also skillfully prepared the final version of many of the maps in
this volume.
The bulk of our research was generously supported over several years by a
National Science Foundation grant (No. opp-9805136). Dr. Fae Korsmo, former
director of the Arctic Social Sciences Program, Office of Polar Programs at
nsf, has our gratitude for her consistent encouragement and advice. We also
received support from the Canadian Studies Faculty Research Program, Aca-
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demic Relations Office, Canadian Embassy, and from a Faculty Research Awards
Program grant, University at Albany, suny, for conducting the initial stages of
this project.
In recent years we have enjoyed a lively interchange of ideas with scholars
exploring similar terrain. We owe special thanks to Janet Spector for her pio-
neering work on gender and task differentiation. We are also grateful to Alice
Kehoe, Sarah M. Nelson, the late Susan Kent, Barry Isaac, Cheryl Claassen,
Rosemary A. Joyce, Lynne Goldstein, Nancy L. Wicker, Bettina Arnold, Marcia-
Anne Dobres, Robert Janes, Lisa Frink, Rita S. Shepard, Gregory A. Reinhardt,
Rita Wright, and Cathy Costin.
We are deeply grateful to Gary Dunham at the University of Nebraska Press
for his kind encouragement and insightful suggestions for enhancing our book.
We also appreciate the anonymous reviewers, much of whose thoughtful advice
helped in revising our work. Renae Carlson at Nebraska and Mary M. Hill
deserve special thanks for their fine handling of the production and copyediting
processes.
Our largest debt is to the people of the communities who collaborated in this
project and kindly invited us into their homes. The Chipewyan of the English
River First Nation, Canada, the Khanty of the Trom’Agan and Surgut region,
Russia, the Sámi of Kultima, Finland, and the Iñupiaq of Little Diomede Island,
Alaska, have our deepest respect and gratitude. We trust that readers of this
book will share this respect as they learn of these peoples’ lives and livelihood.
Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Br umbach
xii acknowledgments
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1. Introduction
Gender, Subsistence, and Ethnoarchaeology
Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach

Scene 1: The woman quickly butchered the seal her husband had de-
posited on the boulder-strewn shore. Her young daughter observed at-
tentively. Deft slices from two different-sized ulus (woman’s butchering
knives) separated the hide and, in turn, transformed the hindquarters,
forequarters, rib cage, and other sections into neat packets of meat,
which were placed in plastic sacks. As the woman finished her task
the daughter began hauling the meat homeward up a steep slope. The
woman’s eldest son arrived to retrieve the hide. Remaining packets
were quickly distributed to those who wanted them. A middle-aged
man selected a “bag of ribs for frying,” and the final packet was given
to a small boy with explicit instructions about who should receive the
meat. (Iñupiaq community on Little Diomede Island, Bering Strait,
Alaska)
Scene 2: The moose is an unexpected windfall that the two men in-
terpret as a sign indicating future hunting and trapping success in the
area. Clearly, however, one man is more enthusiastic about the kill. He
values the prospect of fresh meat in camp and is eager to replenish the
larders of his family and relatives in the village. The second man cer-
tainly values the meat, but he is concerned about logistical problems.
The two hunting partners are to return to the village in six days, by
which time they must have their trapping cabin built. In their isolated
situation the men are without women to complete the fine butchering
and smoke drying of the meat. The second man is uneasy that the time
needed to process the meat properly will interfere with their primary
goal of cabin construction. (Near the Chipewyan community of Patu-
anak, Saskatchewan, Canada)
Scene 3:“Themordy [fish basket traps] were about 7 kilometers away
from home at the farthest. I was allowed to check them when I was
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14, and until then I wasn’t strong enough for that. But there was a
morda near our house which I used to check since the age of 11 or
12. I wasn’t allowed to check them because a morda is rather big and,
when soaked with water and considering the fish inside, it wasn’t an
easy matter for a girl to pull it ashore. But when I grew older, I did it
in a cunning way. A morda can be opened, so I tried to pull the end
out and put it on the ground and then scooped the fish out. It was
much easier.”(Middle-aged Khanty woman from Trom’Agan drainage,
western Siberia, Russia)
Scene 4: “We have a very good division of labor. We do not talk about
those tasks, and they are not written down anywhere, but they get
done, however. . . . We kind of have a system that nobody is irreplace-
able. . . . My man says that if you put water in a drinking glass and

put your finger in the glass, if a hole stays, then you are irreplaceable.”
(Sámi woman from Kultima, Finland)
Overture
Daily events and conversations such as those described above are part of the
empirical backbone of this book, which examines the interplay of gender dy-
namics and subsistence systems among hunter–gatherer and hunter–herder so-
cieties. More pointedly, how do variability and subtlety in female and male
economic behaviors both reflect and affect utilization of the landscape and the
way that tools, structures, and facilities are constructed, used, and discarded?
This volume’s authors are concerned with relationships between gender roles
and ideologies, on the one hand, and processes that influence the formation
of the archaeological record, on the other. Ultimately, we seek to bridge the
gap between the observable present, where gender dynamics play out, and the
archaeological past, where women’s and men’s lives and livelihoods must be
deciphered from static sites and residues.
As we argue throughout this book, gender is a highly malleable and adaptive
feature of human social and cultural life. It is, therefore, worthy of attention by
both ethnologists and archaeologists, especially in small-scale societies of the
kind featured in this comparative study. To whatever degree sexual differences
are biogenetically programmed, gender is socially constructed and negotiated.
Accordingly, our approach regards gender as far more than a list of things that
women cannot do or may be forbidden from doing. By the same token, actual
2 jarvenpa and brumbach
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allocations of labor rarely, if ever, conform to simple “man the hunter/woman
the gatherer” stereotypes. All societies have a sexual division of labor, surely,
but these are broad ordering principles that allow considerable flexibility, sub-
stitutability, and switching in women’s and men’s work regimens. In this light
we view gender, including the ability of humans to creatively construct and alter
female and male roles and personae, as a significant set of social behaviors that
allow for adaptation to different environments and to historical and evolution-
ary changes in these environments.
To address the foregoing concerns this volume develops an ethnoarchae-
ological approach for analyzing and modeling gender and subsistence in in-
digenous communities across the Circumpolar North. Among other findings,
the research reveals that women’s and men’s food acquisition and processing
activities are considerably more complex and flexible than commonly assumed.
Moreover, gender-constructed behaviors can be modeled as part of the process
distributing artifactual and faunal materials across the landscape, generating
archaeological remains, sites, and settlement systems with distinctive female
and male patterning.
Building upon the editors’ previous studies of gender and subsistence (Jar-
venpa and Brumbach 1995; Brumbach and Jarvenpa 1997a), the present book
extends the same research strategy to a larger sample of societies representing

several major biogeographical zones and cultural–linguistic traditions in the
Circumpolar North. This approach provides a four-way controlled comparison
between (1) Chipewyan hunter–fishers of central subarctic Canada, (2) Khanty
hunter–fisher–herders of western Siberia, Russia, (3) Sámi reindeer herders of
northwestern Finland, and (4) Iñupiaq maritime hunters of the Bering Strait,
Alaska (see Map 1.1). Implemented by an international team of collaborating
anthropologists with prior experience and expertise in the foregoing commu-
nities and regions, this study highlights “task differentiation” analysis with both
female and male consultants as a key for identifying the social, spatial, temporal,
and material dimensions structuring the acquisition, processing, storage, and
management of subsistence resources. By systematically including the input of
such consultants, it is suggested that our interpretations of the past are less likely
to be distorted by preconceived stereotypes of female and male behavior.
Supplemented by participant observation and settlement mapping, the task
differentiation protocol provides the basis for making empirical generalizations
and comparative statements about women’s and men’s economic roles and their
impact upon the formation of the archaeological record. Ultimately, analysis
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1.1 Circumpolar locations of Chipewayn, Khanty, S´ami, and I˜nupiaq.
of the data is directed toward developing a typology or gradient of “gender
ecology” for the Circumpolar North that links alternatives in subsistence or
resource management with (1) types or degrees of differentiation in female and
male economic roles and (2) several types of archaeologically visible signatures
or “gendered landscapes.”
Our controlled comparison also yields broad implications for interpreting
women’s behavior and gender dynamics in archaeology and anthropology gen-
erally. Beyond the larger theoretical issues, however, this book provides a rich
storehouse of new ethnographic information on women’s and men’s actual uti-
lization of the landscape and creation of a built environment. Fine-grained, sub-
stantive accounts linking women’s and men’s behaviors to material features and
discards are in short supply, yet they are sorely needed to temper the abundant
rhetorical assertions and epistemological arguments about androcentric bias in
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archaeology and women’s importance in prehistory. This book contributes to
that tempering.
Conceptual Perspectives and Precedents
A comprehension of gender dynamics requires penetrating analyses of women
in relation to men (the latter until recently the de facto focus of most research),
an endeavor that brings us closer to achieving one of anthropology’s most
worthwhile goals: to achieve a comprehensive understanding of human social
life and culture. Our field’s long-lived scholarly focus on men has concealed half
of human experience and, in turn, given rise to some peculiar interpretations
of our species’ historical development and recent biocultural adaptations.
Consider a hypothetical zoologist who studies polar bears, auklets, or per-
haps dung beetles but observes only males because purportedly “they are more
visible” or “they are more interesting” or “they contribute more to the archae-
ofaunal record.” Should such a research design be taken seriously? How would
it affect our understanding of polar bear life? Indeed, how can we know the
male polar bear or the male auklet without understanding how each fits into
a social structure of females, juveniles, and elders and a complex of supraindi-
vidual behaviors and relationships that ultimately impact both the histories of
individuals and the adaptability of the species? To do otherwise conflates the
subject of the research with the zoologist himself or herself, who admires the

“majestic and ferocious” male bear rather than Thalarctos maritimus as it exists
in the real world.
Gender research, therefore, involves far more than a“remedial”job of simply
“adding women” to an existing data set (Conkey and Spector 1984; Wylie 1991).
Not only can we achieve a more complete understanding of the human con-
dition, but also we are asking essentially new questions, designing innovative
research strategies, and developing novel interpretations of the female–male
nexus. Based in part on biological reproductive behaviors and in part on ne-
gotiated ideology and social relations, gender is deeply rooted in all societies.
Indeed, some view it as the oldest and most fundamental distinction shaping
human social existence. In a related vein, Sassaman argues that “gender is the
primary social variable of the labor process in forager or hunter-gatherer soci-
eties” (1992:71). Thus, when we probe the complexities of gender we are neither
celebrating the “majestic” male nor attempting to privilege a rediscovered “ma-
jestic” female. Rather, we are practicing anthropology in its most holistic sense.
The goal of this book is not merely to recognize women’s presence but rather
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to investigate the impact that gender relations and gender ideology have in
the construction of social landscapes and the processes that contribute to the
formation of the archaeological record. In this sense an ability to “see” women
or men as valid subjects of inquiry is only a starting point. The way this sighted-
ness (or insight) generates stimulating new questions and interpretations about
gender dynamics is our ultimate concern.
Two decades ago Conkey and Spector (1984) raised serious questions about
the lack of interest in gender by archaeologists. This lack stands in contrast
to developments in sociocultural anthropology in recent years where the im-
portance of gender relations, sexual stratification, differences in female and
male visions of society and culture, and gender bias and blindness in social
research have been prominent themes (Dahlberg 1981;Leacock1978, 1981, 1983;
Morgen 1989; Ortner and Whitehead 1981; Quinn 1977;Reiter1975; Rosaldo
1980; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974; Sacks 1979; Sanday 1981). Archaeological
research, however, has only begun to address the dynamics of gender in past
times and places (Arnold and Wicker 2001; Claassen 1991; Claassen and Joyce
1997;Gero1991; Gero and Conkey 1991;Kehoe1990; Nelson 1990, 1997; Spector
1993; Spector and Whelan 1989; Watson and Kennedy 1991; Wicker and Arnold
1999;Wright1996).
Despite a long-standing lack of interest in formal analyses of gender, archae-
ologists have not been silent about women’s and men’s behavior. Rather, the
archaeological literature is “permeated with assumptions, assertions, and pur-
ported statements of ‘fact’ about gender” (Conkey and Spector 1984:2). Some
of these assumptions concern women’s roles in foraging societies. Without an

explicit acknowledgment of the gender ideology informing one’s scholarship,
there is always a risk that some version of Western ideology will be privileged.
The familiar man the hunter/woman the gatherer (or “man the hunter/woman
the child bearer–lactator”) model (Washburn and Lancaster 1968), for example,
persists as a way of interpreting domestic economies and the division of labor in
many archaeological studies of nonagricultural societies. Yet this view may be
less a reflection of past male and female behaviors than an uncritical imposition
of American postwar values and sexual ideology on others. One might term it
“Ozzie and Harriet do prehistory.”
One of the goals of this book is to show that women’s roles are more flexible
and expansive, even in the hunting-intensive contexts of the northern latitudes,
than is typically recognized when it is assumed that plant collection and pro-
cessing and hunting follow a more or less strict division of labor. Women’s
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economic roles are neither so rigid nor so limited in scope. Our own work
with the Chipewyan suggests that a revised view of women’s roles is particularly
salient for northern latitude hunter–gatherer communities where plant foods
do not contribute substantially to the diet in terms of calories. Women clearly
participate as hunters and procurers of animals, a pattern recognized by other
ethnoarchaeologists working in northern settings (Albright 1984; Janes 1983).
Increased consciousness regarding the importance of women and gender
relations by archaeologists, however, has not been matched by intentional re-
search designs and planned field research exploring such issues. Kent’s (1998)
work in southern Africa is a notable exception, and we concur with her view
that the power of ethnoarchaeology resides in its potential for constructing
meaning-laden models for interpreting past behaviors. Methodologically and
analytically, this is a distinctly different enterprise than searching for analogies
about gender in the extant ethnographic record created by other scholars for
rather variable purposes. This book, therefore, breaks new ground in two ways:
(1)itisaplanned ethnoarchaeological investigation of gender dynamics and
subsistence, and (2) it employs a cross-cultural controlled comparison to reveal
meaningful similarities and variability in these behaviors and institutions.
While our approach to ethnoarchaeology has grown and evolved over the
past 25 years, it is part of the general field of inquiry recognized by Stiles as
embracing “all the theoretical and methodological aspects of comparing ethno-
graphic and archaeological data” (1977:88). This broad paradigm includes not
only varying uses of ethnographic analogy but also the strategies of “living ar-
chaeology”(Gould 1980) or“archaeological ethnography”(Janes 1983:4; Watson
1979) that entail ethnographic study of living societies in order to link mate-
rial remains to the behaviors and processes producing them. Efforts to define
ethnoarchaeology more narrowly are not in agreement and invite semantic

hairsplitting (David and Kramer 2001:6–13;Kent1987:33–39). More restrictive
definitions tend to privilege the interests and needs of archaeologists only while
excluding from analysis, among other valuable sources of knowledge, the testi-
mony of previous occupants of historical archaeological sites.
A less restrictive view of ethnoarchaeology is relevant for the present study.
Much ethnoarchaeological research has been conducted by archaeologists pri-
marily for an archaeological audience. However, our heavy input from cultural
anthropology and ethnography, including judicious use of Native voice and in-
terpretation, arguably provides our style of ethnoarchaeology with a distinctive
edge and currency. Years ago, Conklin (1982) suggested that ethnoarchaeology
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could be enriched if cultural anthropologists paid more systematic attention to
technology and material culture. Heeding Conklin’s wisdom, we have always
conceived of our approach to ethnoarchaeology as a three-way dialogue be-
tween a cultural anthropologist (Jarvenpa), an archaeologist (Brumbach), and
our Native collaborators regarding the material consequences and meanings of
their behavior (Brumbach and Jarvenpa 1990).
There is a creative tension in this dialogue in that each party serves as a
check upon and challenge to the assumptions of the others. Not surprisingly,
the prominence and salience of the ethnographer’s, archaeologist’s, and con-
sultants’ information and interpretations tend to ebb and flow over time as the
research unfolds and as new lines of inquiry emerge from previous projects.
The present work may be regarded as “ethnographically enriched” in the
sense that the various members of the research team, cultural anthropologists
and archaeologists alike, had extensive prior ethnographic field experience in
their respective study regions and communities. From the outset this provided
a fine-grained understanding of the social and cultural context of people’s
lives in the Chipewyan, Khanty, Sámi, and Iñupiaq communities. Nonethe-
less, our research strategy is emphatically ethnoarchaeological. All collaborat-
ing researchers employed the same task differentiation methodology to reveal
how women’s and men’s subsistence behaviors differentially impacted the con-
structed landscape or built environment. Our emphasis in this study is upon
the architectural landscape of dwellings, storage features, food processing facil-
ities, and other larger structures and upon gendered spatial organization within
homesteads, encampments, and settlements. Less emphasis is paid to smaller
artifacts. The life cycles of these smaller residues offer a promising avenue for
future research by ourselves and/or other researchers.
Why Northern Circumpolar Ethnoarchaeology?
We emphasize the gendered dimension of subsistence primarily because it offers
a direct linkage to the kinds of implements, facilities, and faunal materials, and
their associated spatial distributions, likely to be accessible in the archaeological

record. Women’s and men’s involvement in power relations, religion, and other
aspects of social life, while no less compelling, present thornier problems in
modeling for archaeological interpretation and will be treated only indirectly
in this study.
Many historically familiar forms of food acquisition and processing still
occur in northern Native communities where sea mammal hunting, fishing,
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terrestrial hunting, foraging, and reindeer herding are often central in the daily
economic life of family households. The fact that these subsistence activities
have become intertwined with cash and wage economies and with government
programs and regulations in complex ways does not make the behaviors any

less compelling or worthy of analysis. Women and men are still active upon the
landscape, utilizing materials and resources that have been significant in local
economies and cultural traditions for centuries. Indeed, in many cases their
activities are still creating “archaeological sites.” Such conditions are well suited
to ethnoarchaeological approaches.
Behavioral–cultural persistence is not a trivial issue, especially when direct
historical analogies can be used to illuminate gender relations. Archaeologists
sometimes refer to the difficulty of “seeing” women or the residues of women’s
activities in the archaeological record. Yet the visibility of men is rarely ques-
tioned. This reductio ad absurdum will be eliminated by this book’s findings.
The main point here is that both women and men in contemporary Circum-
polar communities are highly visible harvesting, processing, distributing, and
consuming resources in ways that have useful analogical connections with be-
haviors of their immediate female and male ancestors in the recent historical
past. These ongoing patterns hold potential as a guide for interpreting women’s
economic roles in the archaeology of this area (Brumbach and Jarvenpa 2002).
Archaeologists have regularly used ethnographic data both as a general
framework for analysis and as a source of direct analogies. This has been most
pronounced in the New World, where extant human communities are often di-
rect descendants of archaeological populations. The recency of the prehistoric–
historic transition in the North permits, if not invites, a creative interplay and
corroboration between ethnographic (and ethnohistoric) and archaeological
sources of information. A number of influential northern anthropologists have
conducted both ethnographic and archaeological field research in an effort to
demonstrate continuities and developmental trends for particular cultures and
culture areas. VanStone’s (1971, 1979) analyses of changing settlement systems
among Ingalik and Nushagak River Eskimo, Clark and Clark’s (1974) studies of
Koyukon houses, and Campbell’s (1973) concern with Tuluaqmiut territoriality
and mobility come to mind.
In a related vein, the “living archaeology” investigations of Binford (1978)

with Nunamiut and of Janes (1983) among the Mackenzie Basin Slavey have
sought to model the “formation processes” creating archaeological residues.
Our earlier ethnoarchaeological research among Chipewyan, Cree, and Métis
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groups in central subarctic Canada combines the use of direct historical analo-
gies and a concern with site formation processes (Jarvenpa and Brumbach 1988,
1995; Brumbach and Jarvenpa 1989, 1997a).
More recently, Clark (1996) has elaborated upon her earlier analyses, at-
tempting to reconcile patterning in artifactual and archaeofaunal residues with
Koyukon informant testimony regarding household seating arrangements and
activity areas for women, men, elders, and children. The unexpected distribu-

tion of bear and lynx remains, for example, spiritually powerful animals assid-
uously avoided by premenopausal Koyukon women, requires an array of alter-
native interpretations. Aside from invoking exceptional circumstances, such as
inhabiting Koyukon houses with female shamans or I˜nupiat occupants, there is
also the possibility, as in most societies, that some degree of behavioral flexibility
operated in spite of or in contradiction to ideal norms and proscriptions.
Indeed, the latter point is nicely reinforced by Janes’s (1983) investigations
among the Slavey. While a division of labor with men as hunters and women
as food processors and preparers is emphasized in Slavey ideology, behavioral
realities are another matter. Across 38 major categories of subsistence and eco-
nomic activities, only 5.26 percent of the total are performed exclusively by adult
women and a scant 2.63 percent by men. However, children and adults of both
sexes all engage in nearly 35 percent of these tasks, including such things as small
mammal hunting, setting and checking fishnets, plucking and gutting fowl, and
processing furs, among other tasks.
This flexibility and mastery of a wide range of skills by both women and men,
including early transmission of this knowledge to children, is highly adaptive in
a demanding subarctic environment. The archaeological implications of these
observations are, perhaps, less encouraging, at least at the intrasite household
level. As Janes notes, “The fact that activity areas are all nearly multifunctional
at Willow Lake precludes the existence of sex-specific space” (1983:79). We will
return to these issues later in the book when considering historical changes in
intersite and intrasite gender dynamics among Chipewyan hunters.
Other recent ethnoarchaeological studies in arctic and subarctic contexts
are developing in several interesting directions. Frink’s (2002) observations of
contemporary Yup’ik (or Cup’ik) women at Chevak, Alaska, underscore their
prominent role as managers of multigenerational fish camps where they must
make complex decisions regarding the processing and storage of fish according
to species, intensity of spawning runs, and season. These decision-making dy-
namics, coupled with behaviors such as cutting of ownership marks on fish tails,

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