A Circumpolar Reappraisal: The Legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979)

A volume dedicated to the achievements of Norwegian archaeologist Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979). Contents: 1) Why a Circumpolar Reappraisal? An Introduction (Christer Westerdahl); 2) The Search for a Saami Past, and Some Reflections on the Gjessing Legacy (Noel D. Broadbent); 3) Shamanism and Material Culture in the Northern Circumpolar Area, brought to the fore by some newly discovered South-Saami Drums with Accessories in the Norwegian Mountains (Birgitta Berglund); 4) Northern Snow Patch Archaeology (Martin Callanan); 5) Surface Pressure Flaking in Northern Eurasia at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition-a technological virus? (Kim Darmark); 6) A Reappraisal of Circumpolar Microblade Technology (E. James Dixon); 7) Arctic Cultures and Global Theory: Historical Tracks Along the Circumpolar Road (William W. Fitzhugh); 8) Cross-cultural contacts between European whalers and Russian hunters (Louwrens Hacquebord and Ypie Aalders); 9) Interpreting bear imagery in the spirit of Gutorm Gjessing (Knut Helskog); 10) A Reapraisal of the Ainu Bear Festival (Takashi Irimoto); 11) Maritime Culture of the White Sea Littoral: Traditional Ships and Boats of Pomorye in the First Half of the 18th Century (Marek E. Jasinski & Oleg V. Ovsyannikov); 12) Major Changes in the Holocene Climate (Wibjorn Karlen); 13) On the Diffusion of the Bark Canoes, Skin Boats and Expanded Log Boats in the Eurasian North (Harri Luukkanen); 14) Early Spread of Pottery in Circumpolar Eurasia (Milton Nunez); 15) Feeding the Fire in the Circumpolar Hearths (Ulla Odgaard); 16) Archaeology as Social Anthropology (Knut Odner); 17) Potential Insights Cultural Material Conservation Can Contribute to Circumpolar Research Questions as Illustrated by Textile and Leather Artefacts Recovered from Archaeological Investigations of Two Russian Pomor Hunting Stations on Svalbard (Elizabeth E. Peacock); 18) Gutorm Gjessing and Norwegian Rock-Art (K. J. Sognnes); 19) Gjessing, Dialectics and the New Archaeology (Frans-Arne Stylegar); 20) Aesthetic Expressions in the Circumpolar North: Art Among Three Indigenous Peoples, the Ainu, the Netsilik, and the Sami (Tom G. Svensson); 21) Sea versus Land. An Arctic and Subarctic Cosmology? (Christer Westerdahl); 22) Ancient boats of the Sami in Fennoscandia. A brief survey with a focus on the inland environments, in particular those of the Forest Sami (Christer Westerdahl); 230 Visualizing Sami Waterscapes in Northern Norway from an Archaeological Perspective (Stephen Wickler); 24) A Reappraisal of Eurasian Shamanism: Continuity or Discontinuity of the Concept of Spiritual Beings (Takako Yamada); 25) Bibliography of Gutorm Gjessing.