A Relational Geography of Humans and Animals in the Bering Sea Region

Summary

New approaches to animal geography have rapidly emerged over the last twenty years and have challenged accepted views of human–animal relations in a variety of contexts. While archaeologists studying past relational ontologies have explored the spatial components of human interactions with animals, so far archaeology has not explicitly engaged with animal geography. This paper investigates how the “new” or “third wave” animal geography (Urbanik 2012) might inform our understanding of the human past. Using archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic data from the Bering Sea region, I explore how Yup’ik and Inupiaq Eskimo constructed, traversed, and maintained boundaries between human and animal worlds, focusing on the definition of human spaces relative to those of animals and on liminal spaces where land met water and ice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Dynamic Worlds, Shifting Paradigms: Relational Ontologies in Archaeology

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Spatial Coverage