A Comparison of Historical and Contemporary Skin Clothing Used in North Greenland: An Ethnohistorical Approach

Seamstresses played an integral part in the success of northern hunting and gathering lifestyles by providing functional clothing. Traditional clothing provided more than protection from the harsh arctic environment. It also communicated group identity, gender, age, and status. Changing lifestyles a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clothing and Textiles Research Journal
Main Authors: Oakes, Jill, Riewe, Rick
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 1992
Subjects:
Polymers and Plastics
General Business, Management and Accounting
Materials Science (miscellaneous)
Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous)
Arctic
Greenland
Qaanaaq
North Greenland
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0887302x9201000310
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0887302X9201000310
Description
Summary:Seamstresses played an integral part in the success of northern hunting and gathering lifestyles by providing functional clothing. Traditional clothing provided more than protection from the harsh arctic environment. It also communicated group identity, gender, age, and status. Changing lifestyles and the availability of new materials altered the procedures used to create traditional clothing styles. The purpose of this paper is to identify environmental, cultural, religious, and political factors influencing temporal variations in skin clothing production techniques used by seamstresses in highly traditional societies. Data was collected using participant-observation and attribute analysis in Qaanaaq, Greenland Cultural, economic, religious, environmental, and political factors influencing changes in style features, construction techniques, and materials used in traditional ensembles are discussed.

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