ABSTRACT
Studies examining the interface between weather, climate and culture are not new in Arctic anthropology or archaeology and have often formed the explanatory basis for understanding the temporal dimensions of changing landscapes, resources, societies, and economies in the north. In recent years, there has been a surge of climate-culture interaction studies in light of our global concerns about climate change and its regional impacts. This chapter explores how the people can contextualize contemporary perceptions of weather and climate within a greater temporal framework by linking archaeology and paleoenvironmental science with Inuit oral traditions. The study of cultural perceptions and classifications of the environment has a long history in the field of anthropology, and more specifically in the subfield of ethnoecology. The reconstruction of climate-culture interaction in temporal scales that span centuries requires multiple lines of evidence involving both the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records.
