Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland
This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by wor...
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ftunivtoronto:oai:localhost:1807/71842 2023-05-15T15:01:47+02:00 Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland Walls, Matthew Friesen, Max Anthropology WITHHELD_TWO_YEAR http://hdl.handle.net/1807/71842 en_ca eng http://hdl.handle.net/1807/71842 Arctic Archaeology Enskilment 0324 Thesis ftunivtoronto 2020-06-17T11:27:02Z This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by working closely with a community in Greenland that builds kayaks and practices traditional hunting skills. Although kayaking is no longer a primary mode of subsistence, the community finds meaning in the persistence of the skill because it is an important mechanism of intergenerational experience, and because it contains types of cultural and environmental knowledge that can only exist through practice. The community is specifically focused on the physicality of enskilment – the process through which individuals develop unique capacities for awareness and response through environmentally situated practice. Through enskilment, kayakers attune their senses to subtleties and nuances of the environment which would not otherwise be apparent, and they embody a heritage of resilience and creative responsiveness in both the natural and social environment. Drawing on three field seasons of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, I document the process through which individuals become skilled kayakers and explore the constitution of the kayaking community through practice. As demonstrated in this dissertation, the acquisition of skill in kayaking is not a passive process where knowledge is simply handed from one generation to the other. This is an important observation for archaeologists who study the past through the interpretation of material culture. It will be argued that understanding the impermanence and inherent creativity through which environmentally situated knowledge is re-grown in the experiences of each generation allows for more nuanced archaeological narratives which emphasize skilled practice on the part individuals as causative agents at work in the deeper history of Inuit culture. PhD Thesis Arctic Greenland inuit Thule University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space Arctic Greenland |
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Open Polar |
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University of Toronto: Research Repository T-Space |
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ftunivtoronto |
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English |
topic |
Arctic Archaeology Enskilment 0324 |
spellingShingle |
Arctic Archaeology Enskilment 0324 Walls, Matthew Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
topic_facet |
Arctic Archaeology Enskilment 0324 |
description |
This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by working closely with a community in Greenland that builds kayaks and practices traditional hunting skills. Although kayaking is no longer a primary mode of subsistence, the community finds meaning in the persistence of the skill because it is an important mechanism of intergenerational experience, and because it contains types of cultural and environmental knowledge that can only exist through practice. The community is specifically focused on the physicality of enskilment – the process through which individuals develop unique capacities for awareness and response through environmentally situated practice. Through enskilment, kayakers attune their senses to subtleties and nuances of the environment which would not otherwise be apparent, and they embody a heritage of resilience and creative responsiveness in both the natural and social environment. Drawing on three field seasons of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, I document the process through which individuals become skilled kayakers and explore the constitution of the kayaking community through practice. As demonstrated in this dissertation, the acquisition of skill in kayaking is not a passive process where knowledge is simply handed from one generation to the other. This is an important observation for archaeologists who study the past through the interpretation of material culture. It will be argued that understanding the impermanence and inherent creativity through which environmentally situated knowledge is re-grown in the experiences of each generation allows for more nuanced archaeological narratives which emphasize skilled practice on the part individuals as causative agents at work in the deeper history of Inuit culture. PhD |
author2 |
Friesen, Max Anthropology |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Walls, Matthew |
author_facet |
Walls, Matthew |
author_sort |
Walls, Matthew |
title |
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
title_short |
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
title_full |
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
title_fullStr |
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
title_full_unstemmed |
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland |
title_sort |
frozen landscapes, dynamic skills: an ethnoarchaeological study of inuit kayaking enskilment and the perception of the environment in greenland |
publishDate |
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url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/71842 |
geographic |
Arctic Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Greenland |
genre |
Arctic Greenland inuit Thule |
genre_facet |
Arctic Greenland inuit Thule |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/71842 |
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1766333797525094400 |