A number of aspects of the prehistory of northern Ontario are considered in these reports. Of central concern are the spatial variations of the Terminal Woodland ceramics and the evidence for the transition from the Laurel assemblage into Blackduck assemblage

Excavation at the Stampede Camp and the Saamis site, located in Medicine Hat, Alberta, resulted in the isolation of five site areas from which an abundance of artifacts were recovered, providing data for detailed typological analysis, cultural reconstruction and comparative studies. Together the two sites were occupied during the Middle Prehistoric, Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods.

This study is an analysis and functional interpretation of the cultural remains from a Middle Period bison hunters’ campsite situated in the parklands of central Saskatchewan. The Harder site, excavated by the author during 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972, and radiocarbon dated at 3,400 years, belongs to the Oxbow archaeological complex.

This report describes the results of excavations at the Banting and Hussey sites, two Paleo-Indian campsites located near Alliston in Simcoe County, southern Ontario, and the results of survey work along the strandline of glacial Lake Algonquin in the Alliston area.

Excavations at the Lagoon site (OjRl-3) on the southern coast of Banks Island, Northwest Territories have provided a database with which to formulate hypotheses concerning the Paleoeskimo culture history of the western periphery of the Canadian Arctic at ca. 500 B.C.

Excavations at the Washout site (NjVi-2), Herschel Island, Yukon Territory were conducted for two field seasons in order to obtain data on early Thule subsistence, and to determine the affinity of the site to later Mackenzie Inuit occupations.

Excavations in 1971 and 1972 reveal two major occupation levels at the Estuary Bison Pound site, located near the head of a large coulee on the south bank of the South Saskatchewan River, just below its confluence with the Red Deer River. They present strong evidence to suggest that the Old Women’s phase developed from the Avonlea phase.

A study of technology, subsistence and settlement patterns of the late Pre-Dorset people who occupied a large coastal site near Churchill, Manitoba around 3,000 years ago.

Analysis of the Atigun site based on work conducted in 1973 and 1974 on the North Slope of the Central Brooks Range, Alaska. The Atigun site is marginal to both Native and Inuit territory, thus the primary concern of this analysis is the cultural affiliation of its occupants. Conclusions point to late summer occupation of the site by Athapaskans between A.D. 1400 and A.D. 1800. This period is defined as the Kavik phase.

The chapters making up this volume are not just a collection of parts which were more or less on the same topic and happened to be available for cobbling together. Instead, they were written especially for it. We had before us from the beginning the goal of creating a synthesis of interest to students of environmental adaptation, but adaptation broadly construed, and to one of the world's difficult environments-the boreal forest. This is anthropology-but not anthropology of the old school. A word of explanation may be in order. Ecologists and those in traditional biological sci ences may find some of what follows to be familiar in format and in intellectual approach. Others of our perspectives may feel less comfortable and in fact may seem to be refugees from scholarship more of the sort pursued by historians. All that is quite true and rather nicely reflects the dualities and potential of anthropology as a discipline. We have always drawn strength from the arts as well as the sciences. We have more recently tried to identify biological templates for human behavior, and to understand the reciprocal impact of behavior on the human organism. Anthropology is a discipline, part art and part science, which is at once historical, behavioral, societal, and biological. No species has left a clearer path through time than has ours, and none has made its way through such a diversity of challenging environments. Determining how humanity has managed to do that is our goal.