Hunters and fisherman of the Arctic forests
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Hunters and fisherman of the Arctic forests
AldineTransaction, 2009, c1974
- : pbk
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
"New paperback printing 2009"--T.p. verso
Bibliography: p. 135-140
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The great expanse of Arctic and Sub-Arctic lands that stretch across the northern edge of the American continent is as difficult and demanding to human beings as any in the world. The Athapaskan-speaking Indians who made it their home never captured the imagination of popular writers as did the Eskimo who lived on their northern borders and the Plains Indians who lived to the south. Except to anthropologists, the Athapaskans have remained in relative obscurity, known intimately only to the missionaries, the traders and trappers, and the prospectors who invaded their forbidding territory.
VanStone has captured the elements of the basic adaptive strategy by which these Indians mastered their intransigent environment and made it their home over many centuries, and in doing so, he has perhaps also found the reasons why they have not had as much impact on Western thought as other Native Americans. The Plains Indians, with the blood and thunder of their raidings, the individual drama of their vision quests, appealed to that part of our culture that was forged on the frontier where both action and isolation were primary qualities. The Eskimos, with their elaborate technology for extracting a livelihood from the Arctic ice appealed to Yankee ingenuity.
Athapaskan culture was of a different order--less dramatic, but no less adaptive. Northern lands are not richly endowed with sustenance for human life. These adaptations have not only required proficiency with tools and techniques for exploiting this difficult habitat, but also the creation of institutions for collaboration in these endeavors. Hunters and Fishermen of the Arctic Forests illuminates this relatively obscure area of the world and brings it, and the cultures it supported, into the context of modern anthropological research.
Table of Contents
- 1: The Natural Environment and Human Populations
- 2: The Subsistence Base and Settlement Patterns
- 3: Social Institutions
- 4: Religion and The Supernatural
- 5: The Individual and His Culture
- 6: The History Of The European Contact
- 7: Northern Athapaskans and The Modern World
- 8: Athapaskan Adaptive Strategy
- Appendix: The Ethnographic Literature and Future Research Needs
by "Nielsen BookData"