Boreal Forest Adaptations: The Northern AlgonkiansA. Theodore Steegman The chapters making up this volume are not just a collection of parts which were more or less on the same topic and happened to be available for cobbling together. Instead, they were written especially for it. We had before us from the beginning the goal of creating a synthesis of interest to students of environmental adaptation, but adaptation broadly construed, and to one of the world's difficult environments-the boreal forest. This is anthropology-but not anthropology of the old school. A word of explanation may be in order. Ecologists and those in traditional biological sci ences may find some of what follows to be familiar in format and in intellectual approach. Others of our perspectives may feel less comfortable and in fact may seem to be refugees from scholarship more of the sort pursued by historians. All that is quite true and rather nicely reflects the dualities and potential of anthropology as a discipline. We have always drawn strength from the arts as well as the sciences. We have more recently tried to identify biological templates for human behavior, and to understand the reciprocal impact of behavior on the human organism. Anthropology is a discipline, part art and part science, which is at once historical, behavioral, societal, and biological. No species has left a clearer path through time than has ours, and none has made its way through such a diversity of challenging environments. Determining how humanity has managed to do that is our goal. |
Contents
The Northern Algonkian Project and Changing Perceptions | 1 |
History and Ecology of the Boreal Zone in Ontario | 9 |
Prehistory of the Interior Forest of Northern Ontario | 55 |
Copyright | |
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adaptation Albany Algonkian animals Anthropol Anthropology Arctic beaver behavior Big Trout Lake biological Bishop Blackfoot boreal forest Canada Canadian canoes caribou century changes Chapter climatic clothing cold Cree Cree foraging cultural Dawson death diet breadth disease ecological energy environment environmental epidemic Euro-Canadians European factors fire fish Fort Severn frostbite fur trade gene genetic distance habitat hare HBC-A Heagerty historical Hudson Bay Hudson's Bay Company human hunters Hurlich Indians James Bay located Manitoba Montagnais moose mortality muskeg Naskapi native North Northern Algonkian Northern Ojibwa northern Ontario occurred optimal foraging Ottawa patch-types patches pattern period population region relatively reported Rich River Rogers seasonal Severn Sioux Lookout Smallpox snow snowmobile snowshoes species spruce starvation Stearn and Stearn Steegmann subarctic summer Szathmary Table temperatures Thwaites Toronto trading posts trapping vegetation village Weagamow winter Winterhalder Woodland Wright York Factory