Produced to accompany an exhibit by the same name at the Princeton University Art Museum (running through January 10, 2010), this volume is an outstanding collection of recent information about the people of the Bering Strait and their art. Carved from walrus ivory in the first millennium A.D. the nearly 200 small objects represent animals, mythical beasts, masks, and human figures. First discovered in the 1920s, these objects of technological complexity and aesthetic beauty were produced by the Arctic hunting cultures. They include hunting implement tools, ornaments, and ritual objects.
Twenty-four essays by an international team of archaeologists, ethnographers, art historians, and Native people examine the objects and the people and cultures that made them. Bill Fitzhugh, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center, leads the authors that also include Russian scholars and their reports on recent excavations on their side of the Bering Sea, appearing here for the first time in English. The section on the archaeology of the region, which describes excavations on both sides of the strait, lays the groundwork for the origins of the culture and objects. During the last Ice Age, lower sea levels produced a land bridge between Asia and North America that nomadic hunters traveled into the New World. Rising sea levels flooded the Bering Sea around 10,000 B.C., but much of this art reflects the common traditions of both continents
Most of the objects in the exhibit come from old settlements and cemeteries on the banks of the sea. More often than not, settlements are built upon older settlements over a very long period of time. Many of the objects are legally excavated by impoverished Eskimos and sold on the antiquities market, thus the term “Gifts from the Ancestors.” Sadly, much information about the past is thus lost. Increasingly, archaeologists are working with the Native leaders to conduct scientific research to better understand their heritage.
