This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Reprinted from the American Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 15 (part 1) 1901 and vol. 17 (part 2) 1907. Material culture, social organization, religion and folklore, based on observations by the author in 1883-84; also by George Comer, James S. Mutch and E.J. Peck in 1885-99 and later. (AB1734).

The present Yearbook (which is the sixth in the series) is subtitled Economy, Demography, Culture, and Cosmic Civilizations. To some extent it reveals the extraordinary potential of scientific research. The common feature of all our Yearbooks, including the present volume, is the usage of formal methods and social studies methods in their synthesis to analyze different phenomena. In other words, if to borrow Alexander Pushkin's words, ‘to verify the algebra with harmony’. One should note that publishing in a single collection the articles that apply mathematical methods to the study of various epochs and scales – from deep historical reconstruction to the pressing problems of the modern world – reflects our approach to the selection of contributions for the Yearbook. History and Mathematics, Social Studies and formal methods, as previously noted, can bring nontrivial results in the studies of different spheres and epochs. This issue consists of three main sections: (I) Historical and Technological Dimensions includes two papers (the first is about the connection between genes, myths and waves of the peopling of Americas; the second one is devoted to quantitative analysis of innovative activity and competition in technological sphere in the Middle Ages and Modern Period); (II) Economic and Cultural Dimensions (the contributions are mostly focused on modern period); (III) Modeling and Theories includes two papers with interesting models (the first one concerns modeling punctuated equilibria apparent in the macropattern of urbanization over time; in the second one the author attempts to estimate the number of Communicative Civilizations). We hope that this issue will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences.

After a discussion of the place of material culture studies in modern anthropology, the author shows the continuity of the Caribou Inuit kayak form from the Birnik culture. The reconstruction of general kayak development is given in detail as well as a thorough coverage of construction and use of the kayak.

In the summer of 1883, Franz Boas, widely regarded as one of the fathers of Inuit anthropology, sailed from Germany to Baffin Island to spend a year among the Inuit of Cumberland Sound. This was his introduction to the Arctic and to anthropological fieldwork. This book presents, for the first time, his letters and journal entries from the year that he spent among the Inuit, providing not only an insightful background to his numerous scientific articles about Inuit culture, but a comprehensive and engaging narrative as well. Using a Scottish whaling station as his base, Boas travelled widely with the Inuit, learning their language, living in their tents and snow houses, sharing their food, and experiencing their joys and sorrows. At the same time he was taking detailed notes and surveying and mapping the landscape and coastline. Ludger Müller-Wille has transcribed his journals and his letters to his parents and fiancé and woven these texts into a sequential narrative. The result is a fascinating study of one of the earliest and most successful examples of participatory observation among the Inuit. Originally published in German in 1994, the text has been translated into English by William Barr, who has also published translations of other important works on the history of the Arctic. Illustrated with some of Boas's own photos and with maps of his field area, Franz Boas among the Inuit of Baffin Island, 1883-1884 is a valuable addition to the historical and anthropological literature on southern Baffin Island.

Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt tells the remarkable story of Franz Boas, one of the leading scholars and public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first book in a two-part biography, Franz Boas begins with the anthropologist’s birth in Minden, Germany, in 1858 and ends with his resignation from the American Museum of Natural History in 1906, while also examining his role in training professional anthropologists from his berth at Columbia University in New York City. Zumwalt follows the stepping-stones that led Boas to his vision of anthropology as a four-field discipline, a journey demonstrating especially his tenacity to succeed, the passions that animated his life, and the toll that the professional struggle took on him. Zumwalt guides the reader through Boas’s childhood and university education, describes his joy at finding the great love of his life, Marie Krackowizer, traces his 1883 trip to Baffin Land, and recounts his efforts to find employment in the United States. A central interest in the book is Boas’s widely influential publications on cultural relativism and issues of race, particularly his book The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), which reshaped anthropology, the social sciences, and public debates about the problem of racism in American society. Franz Boas presents the remarkable life story of an American intellectual giant as told in his own words through his unpublished letters, diaries, and field notes. Zumwalt weaves together the strands of the personal and the professional to reveal Boas’s love for his family and for the discipline of anthropology as he shaped it.

Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.

This collection of 15 chronologically arranged papers is the first-ever definitive treatment of the intellectual history of Eskimology—known today as Inuit studies—the field of anthropology preoccupied with the origins, history, and culture of the Inuit people. The authors trace the growth and change in scholarship on the Inuit (Eskimo) people from the 1850s to the 1980s via profiles of scientists who made major contributions to the field and via intellectual transitions (themes) that furthered such developments. It presents an engaging story of advancement in social research, including anthropology, archaeology, human geography, and linguistics, in the polar regions. Essays written by American, Canadian, Danish, French, and Russian contributors provide for particular trajectories of research and academic tradition in the Arctic for over 130 years. Most of the essays originated as papers presented at the 18th Inuit Studies Conference hosted by the Smithsonian Institution in October 2012. Yet the book is an organized and integrated narrative; its binding theme is the diffusion of knowledge across disciplinary and national boundaries. A critical element to the story is the changing status of the Inuit people within each of the Arctic nations and the developments in national ideologies of governance, identity, and treatment of indigenous populations. This multifaceted work will resonate with a broad audience of social scientists, students of science history, humanities, and minority studies, and readers of all stripes interested in the Arctic and its peoples.