Sea ice and the midnight sun, flaming aurora and endless winter night--the arctic of traveler's tales and romantic novels is the unattainable dream of a vast and desolate world--the last imaginary place on Earth. Now, in this fascinating volume, renowned archeologist Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic. Combining anthropology, history, and personal memoir, this book dispels romanticized notions of the Arctic as a world apart, exotic and isolated, revealing a land far more fascinating than we had imagined. McGhee paints a vivid portrait of the movement of Viking farmers across the North Atlantic islands, and of the long and arduous searches for sea-passages to Asia. We meet the fur-traders who pioneered European expansion across the northern forests of Canada and Siberia, the whalers and ivory-hunters who ravaged northern seas, and patriotic explorers racing to reach the North Pole. Most important, McGhee offers far more coverage of the native peoples of the Arctic, societies that other histories usually neglect. We discover how northerners have learned to exploit a rich "hunter's world" where game is, contrary to our expectations, far easier to find than in more temperate lands. McGhee takes us to a thousand-year-old Tuniit campsite perfectly preserved in the Arctic cold, follows the entrepreneurial Inuit as they cross the Arctic in search of metal, and reveals the dangers that native people face today from industrial pollution and global warming. Flavored by McGhee's personal reflections based on thirty years of work and travel in the region, here is a wide ranging, enlightening look at one of the most culturally rich and fascinating areas of the world.

The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World

History

McGhee, Robert

World

Oxford University Press

The Arctic of towering icebergs and midnight sun, of flaming auroras and endless winter nights, has long provoked flights of the imagination. Now, in The Last Imaginary Place, renowned archeologist Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic world. Based on thirty years of work with native peoples of the Arctic and travel in the region, McGhee’s account dispels notions of the frozen land as an exotic, remote world that exists apart from civilization. Between the frigid reality and lurid fantasy lies McGhee’s true interest, the people who throughout human history have called the Arctic home. He paints a vivid portrait of Viking farmers, entrepreneurial Inuit, and Western explorers who have been seduced by the natural wealth and haunting beauty of this land. From lively accounts of fur trading, ivory hunting, and whaling to white-knuckle tales of the first, doomed expeditions, McGhee takes the reader on a whirlwind journey across this disorienting, dreamlike terrain that has fascinated mankind for centuries. “In prose infused by his position as curator of Arctic archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization—which has taken him to sites in several countries—McGhee demolishes some persistent illusions about the white North . . . evocative.”—Times Literary Supplement “[A] compelling account . . . [McGhee] believes that the Arctic is not so much a region as a dream—what he sees as a dream of a unique, attractive world . . . An archaeologist who has spent thirty years there, the author lets his love for the region shine through on every page.—Booklist “McGhee displays the powerful attractions of the top of the world . . . [his] prose . . . sparkles like frost in the midnight sun.”—Financial Times “McGhee has written a sensitive, fascinating and extremely important book.”—Canadian Geographic

Reference

University of Chicago Press

Canadian Arctic Prehistory

Arctic & Antarctica

Univ of Chicago Pr

Using reports from the men who participated in the venture, details preserved in the oral histories of the Inuit, and archaeological information recovered from the sites of Elizabethan activities on Baffin Island, Robert McGhee describes Frobisher's expeditions and offers new insights into this audacious undertaking. How could Martin Frobisher have convinced himself that a narrow bay on the coast of Baffin Island was a northwest passage to the Pacific? What became of the five members of his company who went ashore and were never seen again? What role, if any, did Frobisher play in the gold-mining fraud? Some of these questions may never be answered but, despite apparent failure, Martin Frobisher's ventures launched England's long period of intense exploration and discovery in this land.

The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Venture

Americas

Univ of Washington Pr

1978 Van Nostrand Reinhold oversize softcover, 1-5 number line. ISBN: 0442298137 The first book for the genral reader....introduction to the prhistoric ancetors of the Inuit, the native inhabitants of the Arctic.Illustrations of of ancient tools. weapons and bones...(with) ColorfulInuit myths and...descriptionsof the origins of ...the snowhouse and dogsled, .Back book blurb.

Canadian Arctic prehistory (Canadian prehistory series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Archaeology

Van Nostrand Reinhold Ltd.

Canadian Arctic Prehistory (Canadian Prehistory Series)

Canadian Museum of Civilization

Were the people who sheltered in the YukonÕs Bluefish caves some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago CanadaÕs first occupants? Why was a child buried with great ceremony on the Labrador coast 7,000 years ago? And why did the inhabitants of northern British Columbia build their extraordinary hilltop fortresses hundreds of years ago? Based on actual archaeological excavations, the author of this book vividly reconstructs fourteen scenes from Canadian prehistory. Robert McGheeÕs text is enhanced by the paintings of Gilles Archambault and the color photographs of Harry Foster, illustrations produced especially for this book. Robert McGhee is head of the scientific section of the Archaeological Survey of Canada, Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Ancient Canada (Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series)

Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World

Oxford Univ. Pr.

From the book: "They were five weeks out of England, driving through a storm on the icy edge of the world, when a sudden blast knocked Gabriel on her side. The helmsman tried frantically to turn the tiny ship into the wind that pinned it down, but the rudder had lifted clear of the surface and took no purchase. Water poured over the side, roaring into hatches as the wind drove the vessel across the waves and the crew clung frozen in despair. Only the captain acted, scrambling along the almost-horizontal upper sides, casting off lines to spill wind from the sails, forcing the crew into action to cut away the mizzenmast and the broken foreyard, then preventing them from doing the same to the mainmast. Finally Gabriel rose sluggishly, heavy with seawater but steering slowly off the wind. A tangle of broken rigging and sodden sails, she wallowed before the storm through the remainder of the day and all of the following night, while the captain restored order and set men to pumping the ship dry." Under orders from Queen Elizabeth I, Gabriel's captain B privateer and adventurer Martin Frobisher B took up the search for a northwestern route to Asia. A few days after enduring the storm of 14 July 1576, Frobisher sighted the most easterly outlier of Arctic North America and for the first time England became aware of this vast northern region. Over the next three summers it would be the scene of an adventure involving the fruitless search for a northwest passage, the first attempt by the British to establish a settlement in the New World, and the first major gold-mining fraud in North American history. Over 1,200 tons of rock were mined from Baffin Island and shipped to England, where they were found to contain not an ounce of gold. Yet Frobisher's claim of possession established British interest in northern North America and was the first step in the eventual establishment of British sovereignty over the northern half of the American continent. Using reports from the men who participated in the venture, details preserved in the oral histories of the Inuit, and archaeological information recovered from the sites of Elizabethan activities on Baffin Island, Robert McGhee describes Frobisher's expeditions and offers new insights into this audacious venture. The story ends on an ironic note B the capital of the new Territory of Nunavut, which restores to the Inuit a measure of the sovereignty claimed for England by Frobisher, lies at the head of the bay named after him, where over four centuries ago the English first ventured into Arctic America.

The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Adventure (McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series) (Volume 28)

McGill-Queen's University Press

Four thousand years ago, the Palaeo-Eskimos entered the far northern extremes of the North American continent, carving a living out of their bleak new homeland. Archaeologist McGhee reconstructs a picture of this life, discussing how they spread across the entire Arctic, and how they dealt with sharp climate changes. He also offers glimpses into their spiritual practices and world view, and speculates about their eventual demise. Includes many photographs of assorted art objects and tools found at archaeological sites. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Ancient People of the Arctic

Univ of British Columbia Pr

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