Abstract
Modern Arctic Indigenous peoples face many interconnected pressures, not the least of which is anthropogenic climate change, which is emerging as one of the most dramatic drivers of social and economic change in recent memory. In this paper, we investigate whether or not insights into premodern strategies for coping with climate change—and especially the “deeper histories” of traditional ways-of-knowing—can play a useful role in future planning, management and mitigation efforts. We do this in two ways. First, we assess this special issue's 17 archaeological case studies, in order to determine whether they are conducted within a framework that is consistent with approaches to resilience in studies of modern Arctic communities. Second, we focus on three climate-driven challenges faced by Canadian Arctic Inuit: safe travel, food security and food safety. For each, we identify specific ways in which studies of past social-ecological systems intersect with modern climate adaptation. We conclude that since archaeological insights highlight the operation of decision-making processes within long-term culture-adaptive trajectories, they can offer unique insights into the much shorter-term processes currently underway. While we highlight many potential directions for productive collaboration, much more work is required in local and regional settings to demonstrate the full potential of archaeology for future-oriented planning and mitigation efforts.
Highlights
Indigenous peoples in the Arctic face many inter-connected social and economic pressures—all of which amplify the multiple challenges of everyday life in the region
In an effort to understand the ongoing transformation of indigenous communities and ecosystems across the Circumpolar North the Arctic Council commissioned the comprehensive Arctic Resilience Report (ARR) (Arctic Council, 2016)
The goal was to understand current cultural and ecological dynamics and assess risks and opportunities for sustainable development in the north; a key argument was that understanding and responding to these threats requires a systemic approach integrating both cultural and natural dynamics (Arctic Council 2016)
Summary
Indigenous peoples in the Arctic face many inter-connected social and economic pressures—all of which amplify the multiple challenges of everyday life in the region. Understanding how global changes affect the Arctic, and finding sustainable solutions to these challenges, is important for hunter-gatherer-fishers and reindeer pastoralists, who have traditionally relied heavily on climate-sensitive food webs, both wild and domestic. For all these communities, climate change is arguably the most substantial and pervasive driver of change, impacting the sustainability of food-webs, landscapes and environments, and generating an avalanche of existential challenges. Quaternary International 549 (2020) 239–248 and ecological datasets can play a vital role in improving understanding of how Arctic SES's have evolved and changed under the pressures of past climate change, and that these insights need to be better incorporated into future-oriented conservation, management, mitigation and planning processes. We conclude that improved understanding of long-term cultural responses to Arctic climate change can be used to inform, strengthen and invigorate the evolution—and critical evaluation—of new strategies that better equip Arctic communities for challenging and uncertain futures
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