L’usage du bois en Alaska

Abstract

On the tundra of Alaska and the Arctic coast, Inuit people, like their ancestors, used mostly woods coming from afar, carried by wind and currents linking the inland forests to the northern coasts. This article describes an archaeological research program that includes a methodological framework and is building data sets for analyzing the numerous and remarkable wooden remains preserved in Bering Strait sites of the last two millennia AD. It shows that a holistic approach to the question of wood and its uses in arctic contexts can allow us to prise out otherwise obscured meaning out of these remains.

Keywords

• Artic
• dendrochronology
• ethnoarchaeology
• floated wood
• technique