Introduction and Definition
Physical Geography, Oceanography, and Climate
The Arctic Ocean is a unique place, with no analogue elsewhere on the planet. As the world’s largest confined ocean, its permanent sea-ice cover creates a hostile and difficult environment for human research and occupation, but is a crucial component of global climate and the ecology of the world ocean. The region’s oceanographic characteristics, climate regime, and human adaptations are not matched by any other, and these factors have been emphasized in recent years as indicators of global warming bring dramatic changes to the Arctic.
Oceanographers consider the Arctic Ocean and its bordering seas to be the body of water surrounding the North Pole and bordered by Europe, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, occupying an area of approximately 14 million km2 (Fig. 1). Major island groups are found off the European and Siberian coasts (Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Blankholm, H.P. 2009. Long-term research and cultural resource management strategies in light of climate change and human impact. Arctic Anthropology 46(1-2): 17-24.
Bockstoce, J.R. 1986 Whales, ice, & men: the history of whaling in the western Arctic. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Delgado, J.P. 1997. Made for the ice: a report on the wreck of the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Baymaud, ex-Polarskibet Maud. Vancouver: Vancouver Maritime Museum and Underwater Archaeology Society of British Columbia.
- 1999. Across the top of the world: the quest for the Northwest Passage. New York: Checkmark Books.
Dixon, E.J. 1999. Bones, boats & bison: archaeology and the first colonization of western North America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Fitzhugh, W.W. & E.I. Ward. (ed.) 2000. Vikings: the North Atlantic saga. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Gulløv, H.C. 1997. From middle ages to colonial times: archaeological and ethnohistorical studies of the Thule culture in South West Greenland 1300-1800 AD. Meddelelser om Grønland, Man and Society 23. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark.
Hacquebord, L. 1995. In search of Het Behouden Huys: a survey of the remains of the house of Willem Barentsz on Novaya Zemlya. Arctic 48(3): 248-56.
Hacquebord, L. & D. Avango. 2009. Settlements in an Arctic resource frontier region. Arctic Anthropology 46(1-2): 25-39.
Hadleigh West, F. (ed.) 1996. American beginnings: the prehistory and paleoecology of Beringia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hoffecker, J. 2005. A prehistory of the North, human settlement of the higher latitudes. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
Len’kov, V.D., G.L. Silant’ev & A.K. Staniukovich. 1992. The Komandorskii Camp of the Bering Expedition. Translated by K. Arndt, edited by O. Frost. Anchorage: Alaska Historical Society.
Maschner, H., O. Mason & R. McGhee. (ed.) 2009. The northern world, AD 900-1400. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
McGhee, R. 2001. The Arctic voyages of Martin Frobisher: an Elizabethan adventure. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Minerals Management Service (MMS). 2007. Alaska continental shelf Chukchi Sea planning area. Oil and gas lease sale 193 and seismic surveying activities in the Chukchi Sea. Final environmental impact statement: 1-3. Anchorage: Minerals Management Service, Alaska OCS Region.
Nuttall, M. & T.V. Callaghan. (ed.) 2000. The Arctic: environment, people, policy. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Parks Canada. n.d. Available at http://www.pc.gc.ca/culture/franklin/sec02.aspx (accessed January 18, 2013).
Petersen, H.C. 1986. Skinboats of Greenland. Roskilde: The Viking Ship Museum.
Stroeve, J.C., M.C. Serreze, M.M. Holland, J.E. Kay, J. Malanik & A.P. Barrett. 2012. The Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: a research synthesis. Climate Change 110: 1005-27.
Wadhams, P. 2000. Ice in the ocean. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Westerdahl, C. (ed.) 2010. A circumpolar reappraisal: the legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979) (BAR International series 2154). Oxford: Archaeopress.
Further Reading
Anisimov, O., D.G. Vaughan, T.V. Callaghan, C. Furgal, H. Marchant, T.D. Prowse, H. Vilhjalmsson & J.E. Walsh. 2007. Polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic), in M.L. Parry, O.F. Cranziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. Van Der Linden & C.E. Hanson (ed.) Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: 653-685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barr, W. 2007. Discovery of the wreck of the Soviet steamer Chelyuskin on the bed of the Chukchi Sea. Polar Record 43: 67-70.
Coachman, L.K., K. Aagaard & R.B. Tripp. 1975. Bering Strait: the regional physical oceanography. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Comiso, J.C., C.L. Parkinson, R. Gersten & L. Stock. 2008. Accelerated decline in the Arctic Sea ice cover. Geophysical Research Letters 35. doi:10.1029/2007GL031972
Fitzhugh, W.W. (ed.) 1975. Prehistoric maritime adaptations of the circumpolar zone. The Hague: Mouton Publishers.
Fladmark, K. 1979. Routes: alternative migration corridors for early man in North America. American Antiquity 44: 55-69.
Grønnow, B. 1994. Qeqertasussuk – the archaeology of a frozen Saqqaq site in Disko Bugt, West Greenland, in D. Morrison & J.-L. Pilon (ed.) Threads of Arctic prehistory: papers in honor of William E. Taylor, Jr. (Archaeological Survey of Canada, Mercury series 149): 197-238. Hull (QC): Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Herman, Y. (ed.) 1989. The Arctic Seas: climatology, oceanography, geology, and biology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Hopkins, D.M., J.V. Matthews, Jr., C.E. Schweger & S.B. Young. (ed.) 1982. Paleoecology of Beringia. New York: Academic Press.
Kozlowski, J. & H. Bandi. 1984. The paleohistory of circumpolar Arctic colonization. Arctic 37(4): 358-72.
Krupnik, I., C. Aporta, S. Gearheard, G.L. Laidler & L.K. Holm. (ed.) 2010. SIKU: Knowing our ice – documenting Inuit sea-ice knowledge and use. Dordrecht: Springer.
Madsen, D.B. (ed.) 2004. Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Rogers, J.S. 2009. The Eliza Anderson: an early Puget Sound steamer shipwrecked in Dutch harbor, Alaska. The Sea Chest, Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society 43(2): 51-61.
Savours, A. 1999. The search for the North West Passage. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Rogers, J., Anichtchenko, E. (2014). Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea: Maritime Archaeology. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_594
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_594
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law