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The Caribou/Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Ernest S. Burch Jr.
Ernest S. Burch Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba
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Abstract

The caribou/wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) has been a major resource for many human populations in northern North America and Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. The species is generally represented by prehistorians as providing an ample, easily exploited, and highly reliable resource base for humans. In this paper a number of specific assumptions leading to this view are examined in the light of new data on North American caribou and caribou-hunting Eskimo groups. The conventional picture is found to be largely untenable.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 339 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1972

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