the eskimos and aleutsby don e. dumond

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The Eskimos and Aleuts by Don E. Dumond Review by: Charles D. Arnold Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie, No. 3 (1979), pp. 245-246 Published by: Canadian Archaeological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41102211 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 23:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Canadian Archaeological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.77.136 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 23:09:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The Eskimos and Aleutsby Don E. Dumond

The Eskimos and Aleuts by Don E. DumondReview by: Charles D. ArnoldCanadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie, No. 3 (1979), pp. 245-246Published by: Canadian Archaeological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41102211 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 23:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Archaeological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toCanadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.136 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 23:09:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The Eskimos and Aleutsby Don E. Dumond

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY No. 3, 1979 245

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

The Eskimos and Aleuts . Don E. Dumond. Thames and Hudson Ltd., London. 180 pp., 119 illus. US $12.95 hardcover.

For almost a decade, Arctic prehistorians have been awaiting a successor to Hans-Georg Bandi's Eskimo Prehistory, an updated compendium of archaeological information which could be used both as a basic reference and as a course book. Unfortunately, The Eskimos and Aleuts does not live up to this (admittedly lofty) expectation. It does, however, provide a refreshing, if controversial, re-vamping of Arctic prehistory that is sure to alienate some authorities who will see their carefully reasoned arguments disregarded, and to hearten others who have advanced facile interpretations which the author appears to have accepted with little scrutiny. In a word, it is provocative.

In this concise, well-written and well-illustrated book, Dumond has set out to present the prehistory of the Eskimos and Aleuts from the vantage of an area which encompasses the Bering Strait coasts, the Aleutian Islands, and the Alaskan Peninsula. This regional orientation no doubt reflects a bias which the author has developed over his two decades of fieldwork in southwestern Alaska. Nonetheless, as Dumond points out, it is an area which appears to have constituted a ' 'centre of gravity" for both population distribution and cultural developments within Arctic North America.

In order to integrate the 10,000-plus years of Eskimo- Aleut prehistory, Dumond has formulated (and in some cases re-formulated) a series of traditions, which are broken down into developmental stages. Nowhere in the book is the concept of tradition clearly defined. By inference, Dumond seems to be referring to a way of life manifest by a coherent technology; at least in the situations with which he is dealing, genetic and linguistic continuity are assumed to follow upon the implied cultural relationships. While this is certainly a logical manner in which to set up an interpretive framework, the procedure is sure to instigate debate between the so-called "lumpers" and "splitters" who perceive the degree of coherency within a set of archaeological assemblages in different ways. Clearly, Dumond prefers to lump.

The Eskimos and Aleuts starts at the ethnographic present with a chapter on early contact, the land and the people, wherein Dumond states that despite variation in language, physique, and culture, the weight of the evidence indicates that the Eskimos and Aleuts once constituted a single people. The reader is then taken back in time to the terminal Pleistocene to pick up the thread of continuity leading to the historic Eskimos and Aleuts. According to Dumond, the story begins with a set of highly variable artifact assemblages found in areas of northeastern Asia and northwestern North America that were untouched by ice during the last major glacial episode. While most archaeologists professing familiarity with the area look upon the assemblages in question as manifestations of at least several discrete cultures, Dumond throws all the archaeological eggs into one basket, and refers to them collectively as the Paleo-arctic tradition.

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Page 3: The Eskimos and Aleutsby Don E. Dumond

246 Reviews/Comptes Rendus

In that part of northwestern North America claimed by forests during the post-glacial period, the Paleo-arctic tradition was interrupted or intruded upon by cultures of southern origin comprising the Northern Archaic tradition. Apparently, this intrusion stopped short of the Alaskan coasts bordering upon the Pacific Ocean, which is the locus of one of the perennial problems in Arctic prehistory: the separation of the Aleuts from an ancestral Eskimo-Aleut stock. In Dumond's scheme of things, southwestern Alaska was occupied at approximately 4000 B.C. by the bearers of an Ocean Bay tradition (presumably descended from some aspect of the Paleo-arctic). Within a millenium, Ocean Bay had bifurcated into a Kodiak tradition encompassing the area occupied by the present day Pacific Eskimos, and an Aleutian tradition which had spread farther along the Alaska Peninsula and into the Aleutian Islands, the homeland of the historic Aleuts. The Aleutian tradition is said to have continued on in virtual isolation until the historic period, while starting in the first millenium A.D. the people of the Kodiak tradition received influences from their Bering Sea contemporaries, thus accelerating the divergence between the Aleuts and the Pacific Eskimos.

Turning northward, we are dealt out standard fare in an overview of the Arctic Small Tool tradition of the Arctic tundra and adjacent sea coast. In keeping with his theme of continuity, Dumond holds that the Arctic Small Tool tradition is derived from the Paleo-arctic, possibly from a Siberian variant. In the eastern Arctic, Dorset is removed from the Arctic Small Tool, and granted status as a separate tradition. The post- Arctic Small Tool cultures in Alaska are grouped together into a Norton tradition, comprised of Choris, Norton, and Ipiutak stages (the latter described as "somewhat variant"). In order to circumvent the rather vague connections between the Arctic Small Tool and Norton traditions, Dumond postulates that the latter developed within an interaction sphere that included both sides of the Bering and Chukchi Seas, drew in part upon Siberian Neolithic developments, and was influenced by cultures of the Kodiak tradition.

At a time when the last stages of the Norton tradition were thriving on the Alaskan mainland, the earliest inhabitants of St. Lawrence and other islands in the Bering Strait region developed towards an almost complete reliance upon maritime resources, giving rise to what Dumond calls the Thule tradition. Successful adaptations along these lines led to a remarkable territorial expansion. The climax of this expansion was reached during the most recent, or Thule, stage of this tradition, which was spread by migrants moving eastward into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, and into southwestern Alaska, displacing or amalgamating indigenous Dorset and Norton tradition cultures in the process. In this manner, a veneer of homogeneity was added to an area whose prehistory is more complex than would appear at first glance.

However, in The Eskimos and Aleuts this complexity is often glossed over, and one is left with the impression that the data have been fitted, rather forcibly at times, to a rigid framework. One would do well to keep in mind that Dumond's interpretation of Eskimo- Aleut prehistory is but one of a number of schemes, even though the reader is seldom given the facts which would allow him to weigh or even to recognize the alternatives. This error is compounded by an inadequate referencing system, and the book would be immeasurably improved if references were inserted directly into the text. On the positive side, Dumond's exposition may cause us to re-think certain aspects of Arctic prehistory. Perhaps the greatest good would be gained by viewing The Eskimos and Aleuts as a series of hypotheses worthy to be tested. Unfortunately, because of the appealing manner in which Dumond presents his case, this caution is far too easy to forget. Charles D. Arnold

University of Toronto

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