Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea: Maritime Archaeology

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

  • 274 Accesses

Introduction and Definition

Physical Geography, Oceanography, and Climate

The Arctic Ocean is a unique place, with no analogue elsewhere on the planet. As the world’s largest confined ocean, its permanent sea-ice cover creates a hostile and difficult environment for human research and occupation, but is a crucial component of global climate and the ecology of the world ocean. The region’s oceanographic characteristics, climate regime, and human adaptations are not matched by any other, and these factors have been emphasized in recent years as indicators of global warming bring dramatic changes to the Arctic.

Oceanographers consider the Arctic Ocean and its bordering seas to be the body of water surrounding the North Pole and bordered by Europe, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, occupying an area of approximately 14 million km2 (Fig. 1). Major island groups are found off the European and Siberian coasts (Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 5,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Blankholm, H.P. 2009. Long-term research and cultural resource management strategies in light of climate change and human impact. Arctic Anthropology 46(1-2): 17-24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bockstoce, J.R. 1986 Whales, ice, & men: the history of whaling in the western Arctic. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delgado, J.P. 1997. Made for the ice: a report on the wreck of the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Baymaud, ex-Polarskibet Maud. Vancouver: Vancouver Maritime Museum and Underwater Archaeology Society of British Columbia.

    Google Scholar 

  • - 1999. Across the top of the world: the quest for the Northwest Passage. New York: Checkmark Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dixon, E.J. 1999. Bones, boats & bison: archaeology and the first colonization of western North America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzhugh, W.W. & E.I. Ward. (ed.) 2000. Vikings: the North Atlantic saga. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gulløv, H.C. 1997. From middle ages to colonial times: archaeological and ethnohistorical studies of the Thule culture in South West Greenland 1300-1800 AD. Meddelelser om Grønland, Man and Society 23. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacquebord, L. 1995. In search of Het Behouden Huys: a survey of the remains of the house of Willem Barentsz on Novaya Zemlya. Arctic 48(3): 248-56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacquebord, L. & D. Avango. 2009. Settlements in an Arctic resource frontier region. Arctic Anthropology 46(1-2): 25-39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hadleigh West, F. (ed.) 1996. American beginnings: the prehistory and paleoecology of Beringia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffecker, J. 2005. A prehistory of the North, human settlement of the higher latitudes. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Len’kov, V.D., G.L. Silant’ev & A.K. Staniukovich. 1992. The Komandorskii Camp of the Bering Expedition. Translated by K. Arndt, edited by O. Frost. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maschner, H., O. Mason & R. McGhee. (ed.) 2009. The northern world, AD 900-1400. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGhee, R. 2001. The Arctic voyages of Martin Frobisher: an Elizabethan adventure. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Minerals Management Service (MMS). 2007. Alaska continental shelf Chukchi Sea planning area. Oil and gas lease sale 193 and seismic surveying activities in the Chukchi Sea. Final environmental impact statement: 1-3. Anchorage: Minerals Management Service, Alaska OCS Region.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nuttall, M. & T.V. Callaghan. (ed.) 2000. The Arctic: environment, people, policy. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parks Canada. n.d. Available at http://www.pc.gc.ca/culture/franklin/sec02.aspx (accessed January 18, 2013).

  • Petersen, H.C. 1986. Skinboats of Greenland. Roskilde: The Viking Ship Museum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stroeve, J.C., M.C. Serreze, M.M. Holland, J.E. Kay, J. Malanik & A.P. Barrett. 2012. The Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: a research synthesis. Climate Change 110: 1005-27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wadhams, P. 2000. Ice in the ocean. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westerdahl, C. (ed.) 2010. A circumpolar reappraisal: the legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979) (BAR International series 2154). Oxford: Archaeopress.

    Google Scholar 

Further Reading

  • Anisimov, O., D.G. Vaughan, T.V. Callaghan, C. Furgal, H. Marchant, T.D. Prowse, H. Vilhjalmsson & J.E. Walsh. 2007. Polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic), in M.L. Parry, O.F. Cranziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. Van Der Linden & C.E. Hanson (ed.) Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: 653-685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barr, W. 2007. Discovery of the wreck of the Soviet steamer Chelyuskin on the bed of the Chukchi Sea. Polar Record 43: 67-70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coachman, L.K., K. Aagaard & R.B. Tripp. 1975. Bering Strait: the regional physical oceanography. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comiso, J.C., C.L. Parkinson, R. Gersten & L. Stock. 2008. Accelerated decline in the Arctic Sea ice cover. Geophysical Research Letters 35. doi:10.1029/2007GL031972

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzhugh, W.W. (ed.) 1975. Prehistoric maritime adaptations of the circumpolar zone. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fladmark, K. 1979. Routes: alternative migration corridors for early man in North America. American Antiquity 44: 55-69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grønnow, B. 1994. Qeqertasussuk – the archaeology of a frozen Saqqaq site in Disko Bugt, West Greenland, in D. Morrison & J.-L. Pilon (ed.) Threads of Arctic prehistory: papers in honor of William E. Taylor, Jr. (Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury series 149): 197-238. Hull (QC): Canadian Museum of Civilization.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herman, Y. (ed.) 1989. The Arctic Seas: climatology, oceanography, geology, and biology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, D.M., J.V. Matthews, Jr., C.E. Schweger & S.B. Young. (ed.) 1982. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kozlowski, J. & H. Bandi. 1984. The paleohistory of circumpolar Arctic colonization. Arctic 37(4): 358-72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krupnik, I., C. Aporta, S. Gearheard, G.L. Laidler & L.K. Holm. (ed.) 2010. SIKU: Knowing our ice – documenting Inuit sea-ice knowledge and use. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madsen, D.B. (ed.) 2004. Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, J.S. 2009. The Eliza Anderson: an early Puget Sound steamer shipwrecked in Dutch harbor, Alaska. The Sea Chest, Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society 43(2): 51-61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savours, A. 1999. The search for the North West Passage. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Jason Rogers

  2. Northern Land Use Research, Inc, Anchorage, AK, USA

    Jason Rogers

  3. Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Evguenia Anichtchenko

  4. Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, AK, USA

    Evguenia Anichtchenko

Authors
  1. Jason Rogers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Evguenia Anichtchenko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jason Rogers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Rogers, J., Anichtchenko, E. (2014). Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea: Maritime Archaeology. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_594

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_594

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation