Physical Geography, Oceanography, and Climate
The Arctic Ocean is a unique place, with no analogue elsewhere on the planet. 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 Siberian Islands) and throughout...
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.
Bockstoce, J.R. 1986. Whales, ice, & men: The history of whaling in the Western Arctic. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
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.
Delgado, J.P. 1999. Across the top of the world: The quest for the northwest passage. New York: Checkmark Books.
Dixon, E.J. 1999. Bones boats & bison: Archaeology and the first colonization of western North America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Fitzhugh, W.W., and E.I. Ward, eds. 2000. Vikings: The North Atlantic saga. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
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. Meddeleser om Grønland, man and society 23. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark.
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): 248–256.
Hacquebord, L., and D. Avango. 2009. Settlements in an Arctic resource frontier region. Arctic Anthropology 46 (1–2): 25–39.
Hadleigh West, F., ed. 1996. American beginnings: The prehistory and paleoecology of Beringia. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Hoffecker, J. 2005. A prehistory of the north, human settlement of the higher latitudes. New Brunswick/London: Rutgers University Press.
Maschner, H., O. Mason, and R. Mcghee, eds. 2009. The northern world, AD 900–1400. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Mcghee, R. 2001. The Arctic voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan adventure. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Mineral 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.
Nuttall, M., and T.V. Callaghan, eds. 2000. The Arctic: Environment, people, policy. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Petersen, H.C. 1986. Skinboats of Greenland. Roskilde: The Viking Ship Museum.
Stroeve, J.C., M.C. Serreze, M.M. Holland, J.E. Kay, J. Malanik, and A.P. Barrett. 2012. The Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: A research synthesis. Climate Change 110: 1005–1027.
Wadhams, P. 2000. Ice in the ocean. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Westerdahl, C., ed. 2010. A circumpolar reappraisal: The legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906–1979), BAR international series. Vol. 2154. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Further Readings
Anisimov, O., D.G. Vaughan, T.V. Callaghan, C. Furgal, H. Marchant, T.D. Prowse, H. Vilhjalmsson, and J.E. Walsh. 2007. Polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic). In Climate change 2007: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, ed. M.L. Parry, O.F. Cranziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. Van Der Linden, and C.E. Hanson, 653–685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barnes, P.W., D.M. Rearic, and E. Reimnitz. 1984. Ice gouging characteristics and processes. In The Alaskan Beaufort Sea: Ecosystems and environments, ed. P.W. Barnes, D.M. Schell, and E. Reimnitz, 185–212. Orlando: Academic Press.
Barr, W. 2007. Discovery of the wreck of the soviet steamer Chelyuskin on the bed of the Chukchi Sea. Polar Record 43: 67–70.
Barry, R.G. 1989. The present climate of the Arctic Ocean and possible past and future states. In The Arctic seas: Climatology, oceanography, geology, and biology, ed. Y. Herman, 1–46. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Blankholm, H.P. 2004. Earliest Mesolithic site in northern Norway? A reassessment of Sarnes B4. Arctic Anthropology 41 (1): 41–57.
Bonnichsen, R., B.T. Lepper, D. Stanford, and M.R. Waters, eds. 2005. Paleoamerican origins: Beyond clovis. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Brigham-Grette, J., A.V. Lozhkin, P.M. Anderson, and O.Y. Glushkova. 2004. Paleoenvironmental conditions in western Beringia before and during the last glacial maximum. In Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the last glacial maximum, ed. D.B. Madsen, 29–61. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Bronshtein, M. 2007. World of Arctic maritime hunters: Steps into the unknown. Exhibition catalogue. Moscow/Anadyr: State Museum of Oriental Art.
Coachman, L.K., and K. Aagaard. 1974. Physical oceanography of the Arctic and subarctic seas. In Marine geology and oceanography of the Arctic seas, ed. Y. Herman, 1–72. New York: Springer.
Coachman, L.K., K. Aagaard, and R.B. Tripp. 1975. Bering strait: The regional physical oceanography. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press.
Collins, H. 1937. Archaeology of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. Washington: Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 96(1).
Comiso, J.C., C.L. Parkinson, R. Gersten, and L. Stock. 2008. Accelerated decline in the Arctic Sea ice cover. Geophysical Research Letters 35. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL031972.
Cooke, A., ed. 1984. Sikumiut: “The people who use sea ice”. Ottawa: Canadian Arctic Resources Committee.
Dixon, E.J. 2011. Late pleistocene colonization of North America from Northeast Asia: New insights from large-scale paleogeographic reconstructions. Quaternary International 2011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.02.027.
Eicken, H., L.H. Shapiro, A.G. Gaylord, A. Mahoney, and P.W. Cotter. 2006. Mapping and characterization of recurring spring leads and Landfast ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Anchorage/Fairbanks: MMS Alaska Environmental Studies Program; University of Alaska Geophysical Institute.
Fitzhugh, W.W., ed. 1975. Prehistoric maritime adaptations of the circumpolar zone. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.
Fitzhugh, W.W., and J.S. OLIN, eds. 1993. Archeology of the Frobisher voyages. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fladmark, K. 1979. Routes: Alternative migration corridors for early man in North America. American Antiquity 44: 55–69.
Ford, J. 1959. Eskimo prehistory in the vicinity of point barrow, Alaska. New York: Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History.
Grønnow, B. 1994. Qeqertasussuk – The archaeology of a frozen Saqqaq site in Disko Bugt, West Greenland. In Threads of Arctic prehistory: Papers in honor of William E. Taylor, Jr, Archaeological survey of Canada, mercury series, ed. D. Morrison and J.-L. Pilon, vol. 149, 197–238. Hull/Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Herman, Y., ed. 1989. The Arctic seas: Climatology, oceanography, geology, and biology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Hill, J.C., and N.W. Driscoll. 2008. Paleodrainage on the Chukchi shelf reveals sea level history and meltwater discharge. Marine Geology 254: 129–151.
Hood, B. 2006. Towards an archaeology of the nain regin, labrador. Contributions to circumpolar anthropology 7, Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
Hood, D.W., and E.J. Kelly. 1972. Introduction. In Oceanography of the Bering Sea, ed. D.W. Hood and E.J. Kelly, xv–xxi. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Institute of Marine Science.
Hopkins, D.M. 1967. The Bering land bridge. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Hopkins, D.M., J.V. Matthews Jr., C.E. Schweger, and S.B. Young, eds. 1982. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press.
Hultén, E. 1937. Outline of the history of Arctic and boreal biota during the quaternary period. Stockholm: Borforlag Aktiebolaget Thule.
Jablonski, N., ed. 2002. The first Americans: The Pleistocene colonization of the New World, Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences number. Vol. 27. San Francisco: University of California Press.
Jakobsson, M., J.V. Gardner, P.R. Vogt, L.A. Mayer, A. Armstrong, J. Backman, R. Brennan, B. Calder, J.K. Hall, and B. Kraft. 2005. Multibeam bathymetric and sediment profiler evidence for ice grounding on the Chukchi borderland, Arctic Ocean. Quaternary Research 63: 150–160.
Knuth, E. 1952. The Danish expedition to Peary Land, 1947-49. The Geographical Journal 118 (1): 1–9.
Kozlowski, J., and H. Bandi. 1984. The Paleohistory of circumpolar Arctic colonization. Arctic 37 (4): 358–372.
Krupnik, I., C. Aporta, S. Gearheard, G.L. Laidler, and L.K. Holm, eds. 2010. SIKU: Knowing our ice – Documenting inuit Sea-ice knowledge and use. Dordrecht: Springer.
Len’kov, V.D., G.L. Silant’ev, and A.K. Staniukovich. 1992. The komandorskii camp of the bering expedition. Trans. K. Arndt, ed. O. Frost. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society.
Macinnis, J.B. 1985. The land the devours ships: The search for the Breadalbane. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.
Madsen, D.B., ed. 2004. Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the last glacial maximum. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Mathiassen, T. 1927. The Thule culture and its position within the Eskimo culture. Copenhagen: Gydendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.
Mcghee, R. 2009. When and why did the Inuit move to the eastern Arctic? In The northern world, AD 900–1400, ed. H. Maschner, O. Mason, and R. Mcghee, 155–163. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Mcmanus, D.A., J.S. Creager, R.J. Echols, and M.L. Holmes. 1983. The Holocene transgression on the Arctic flank of Beringia: Chukchi Valley to Chukchi estuary to Chukchi Sea. In Quaternary coastlines and marine archaeology, ed. P. Masters and M. Flemming, 365–388. New York: Academic Press.
Morrow, J.E., and C. Gnecco, eds. 2006. Paleoindian archaeology: A hemispheric perspective. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Nelson, W.H., and F. Barnett. 1955. A burial cave on Kanaga Island, Aleutian Islands. American Antiquity 20 (4): 387–392.
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.
Savours, A. 1999. The search for the north west passage. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Stroeve, J.C., M.M. Holland, W. Meier, T. Scambos, and M.C. Serreze. 2007. Arctic Sea ice decline: Faster than forecast. Geophysical Research Letters 34. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL29703.
Veer, G.D. 1964 (reprint of 1876). The three voyages of William Barentsz to the Arctic regions. New York: Burt Franklin.
Westerdahl, C. 1992. The maritime cultural landscape. International Journal of Nautical and Maritime Archaeology 21: 5–14.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Rogers, J., Anichtchenko, E. (2018). Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea: Maritime Archaeology. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_594-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_594-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities