Anthropology in the Arctic: A Critique of Racial Typology and Normative Theory [and Comments and Reply]

The study of prehistory in the North American Arctic suffers from epistemological problems that have been resolved by scholars in other areas. The predominance of normative theory and racial typology as the foundations of Arctic anthropology has confined research in large part to the pursuit of raci...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current anthropology 1985-08, Vol.26 (4), p.475-500
Main Authors: Schindler, Debra L., Aigner, Jean S., Fitzhugh, William, Gulløv, Hans Christian, Harper, A. B., Laughlin, W. S., Meier, Robert J., Plumet, Patrick, Szathmary, E. J. E., Utermohle, Charles J., Weiss, Kenneth M., Workman, William B., Zegura, Stephen L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
America and Arctic regions
Archaeological paradigms
Archaeology
Arctic regions
Cultural anthropology
Cultural studies
Ethnography
Ethnology
Human ecology, environment
Human genetics
Linguistic anthropology
Morphological source materials
Paleoanthropology
Physical anthropology
Physical anthropology, ethnobiology
Population genetics
Prehistory and protohistory
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The study of prehistory in the North American Arctic suffers from epistemological problems that have been resolved by scholars in other areas. The predominance of normative theory and racial typology as the foundations of Arctic anthropology has confined research in large part to the pursuit of racial and cultural histories and seriously inhibited the generation of hypotheses that address questions of process in either cultural or biological adaptation. This paper aims to elucidate the constraints on anthropological archaeology in Arctic research and to draw attention to more productive approaches in biological anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology.
ISSN:0011-3204
1537-5382
DOI:10.1086/203310