About the Hearth ― Perspectiveson the Home, Hearth, and Hosuehold in the Circumpolar North

This collection of essays explores differing conceptions and modes of organizing "home" in the circumpolar north, largely in the Old World. The essays offer a blend of social science and humanities methodologies along with anthropological and historical work on vernacular architecture, household archaeology, environmental anthropology, and demographics. Chapter topics, after an editorial introduction, include: museum practice, mobile architecture, and caribou skin lodges; log cabins in Teetl'it Gwich'in country; Sami dwellings in Sweden and representations of Sami households at the turn of the 19th century; gender and household leadership in late 19th century northern Norway; reindeer hunting rituals among the Chukchi; medieval Sami hearth row sites and reindeer economies; virtuous practice and narrative in northern Siberia; and more. The contributors are mostly anthropologists and archaeologists teaching in northern European schools. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

David G. Anderson is Professor of Anthropology and Chair in Anthropology of the North at the University of Aberdeen. He was the leader of the collaborative research project entitled BOREAS Homes, Hearths and Households in the Circumpolar North and is presently the PI of an ERC-funded advanced grant entitled Arctic Domestication: Emplacing Human-Animal Relations in the Circumpolar North. He is the author of a monograph on Taimyr Evenkis and Dolgans, and the editor or co-editor of several collections published by Berghahn Books, most recently, The 1926/27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions (2011).