Guest Editorial

Abstract

The papers in this issue of Arctic [v. 42, no. 2, 1989] represent major contributions to a relatively recent development in the study of northern peoples, namely the extensive use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric information to augment excavations at late prehistoric and historic Athapaskan and Eskimo archaeological sites. ... The lack of both language facility and experience in the critical evaluation of published and archival source materials has characterized northern research in the past, but the papers in this issue indicate that researchers are becoming more sophisticated and systematic in the use of the information available to them. At the same time, northern libraries and archives are building their own collections and their holdings are becoming better known. Historians interested in the North are producing more studies relevant to the interests of ethnographers and archaeologists, and documents in foreign languages are increasingly being translated, annotated, and published. Most important of all, perhaps, is the renewed interest in traditional ethnography and the knowledge that, in fact, it is not too late to collect information about historic archaeological sites from elderly informants. Interest in exploring the possibilities of oral history is being encouraged by Native peoples intent on documenting their relationship to the land. Involvement of Native peoples in the research and the subsequent feedback of information to the peoples on whose land sites are being excavated can create goodwill and increase the rewards to be expected from ethnographic inquiry. ...It is clear that boreal forest archaeologists working in areas occupied by Eskimos and Athapaskans have made much progress in determining and using new data sources. Ethnohistory, in the broadest sense of the term, bridges the gap between contemporary field observations and archaeology, thus making possible systematic studies of long-term social change.