From stories to material culture: European scholars in the Arctic HIMMELHEBER, Hans, 2000 Where the echo began: and other oral traditions from southwestern Alaska, Recorded by H. Himmelbert, translated by Kurt and Ester Witt, edited and Annoted by Ann Fienup-Riordan, Fairbanks, The University of Alaska Press, 224 pages Larsen, Helge, 2001 Deering: a men's house from Seward Peninsula, Alaska, Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark, Dept. of Ethnography: SILA, the Greenland Research Centre, Ethnographical Series 19, 145 pages. MARY-ROUSSELIÈRE, Guy, 2002 Nunguvik et Saatut: sites paléoeskimaux de Navy Board Inlet, île de Baffin, Hull, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury Series 162, 199 pages.

Published between 2000 and 2002, these three books provide critical information spanning 2000 years of Inuit life and adaptation to Arctic conditions. All three are original manuscripts, in the one case, translated and re-edited (Where the Echo Began) and in the others, edited and published for the first time following their authors’ passing (Deering and Nunguvik). Where the Echo began conveys through stories and ethnographic descriptions Cup’ik and Yup’ik ways of life during the 1930s respectively on Nunivak Island and on mainland southwestern Alaska (Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region). It provides words for social meanings of objects and people’s activities. Deering describes the material culture of a large Ipiutak feature in northwestern Alaska where preservation of organic materials has rarely been equaled in this part of the Arctic and for this time period (ca. AD 600-700); Nunguvik et Saatut reports on the archaeology of the Dorset culture (ca. 500 BC to AD 1000) in northern Baffin Island, Eastern Arctic, from two sites which, like Deering, are characterized by a remarkable amount of organic remains. The preservation of what are usually un-recovered objects provides us with a window into unknown or only imagined activities and technical knowledge and reflects a rare image of life in these regions during the first millennium AD. The volume is beautifully illustrated with original black and white photographs by Himmelheber himself. Many previously unpublished were printed by photographer James Barker from the original negatives. Himmelheber’s texts are introduced by Ann Fienup-Riordan who analyzes his writings and discusses their scholarly and ethnographic importance. Indeed, Himmelheber provides a glimpse into Cup’ik life, ceremonies and rituals on Nunivak at a time just before the influence of the Evangelical Covenant church. The richness of Himmelheber’s observations is due in part to his active participation in most of the ceremonies he describes but also to his unique perspective on art and people. As an art historian mostly specialized in African art, his interest was in the artists producing the art and the contexts in which it was produced as much as the art itself. He saw art as a narrative process with stories giving full meaning to art objects. His approach to the study of art, relatively unusual for his time, is well reflected in one of his major works, Eskimo Artists (1993), a book Ann Fienup-Riordan was also instrumental in making accessible to an English speaking audience. Fienup-Riordan sets Himmelheber’s writings in today’s perspective and discusses the question of narratives and their role as a teaching device and a way to experience life in Yup’ik/Cup‘ik societies. By hearing the stories, children and people in the community learned about the land and its landmarks, proper behaviors, historical events, etc., in other words about cultural values and heritage. The role of story telling and the power of narratives in Yup’ik and other cultures has been the object of several analyses (Cusack-McVeigh 2004; Morrow and Schneider 1995). Himmelheber arranges the stories in thematic categories (Creation stories, Myths, Animal stories, People’s stories, Ancestor’s stories) which do not reflect Yup’ik or Cup’ik categories. Fienup-Riordan, and Himmelheber himself, warn that the Frozen Path was written for a 1950s German audience. This led him to add titles to each story, something a Yup’ik story teller would never do. The question of the language in which the original stories were recorded and transcribed is addressed briefly in the introduction and more extensively in the last chapter of the book. Fienup-Riordan tells us that “unfortunately, the process of translation has erased many rhetorical characteristics peculiar to individual narrators that probably marked the originals,” (p. xxxi) but that, …