Contrary to the opinion of early explorers who saw arctic peoples as isolated survivors of Ice Age cultures, research shows that these groups have in fact maintained close contacts with each other and with peoples to the south, and participated in many of the world's technological and social advances. Improvements in hunting technology, metallurgy and animal domestication pioneered in southern regions quickly became part of northern life, just as northern inventions like kayaks and snow goggles became adopted widely in the south. Today, with modernization reaching nearly all corners of the globe, cultural transitions have been especially dramatic in the Arctic, where until a few decades ago many Native peoples had economies based solely on hunting, fishing or reindeer herding.
Igor Krupnik has researched ethno-history and processes of cultural transformation in Russia and western Alaska. Research Associates Ernest J. Burch, Jr., Ann Fienup-Riordan and Norman Hallendy study ethnohistory, ritual and symbolic culture in Alaska and Canada. And ASC archaeologists have investigated Native-European contacts in Russian America, Labrador and Frobisher Bay as well as culture contact and change in Native traditions of Eurasia and North America.
