This research project, PI Ezra Zubrow, SUNY Buffalo, is the US portion of a larger international collaboration that was conceived under the European Science Foundation, EUROCORES Programme, BOREAS. The full ESF project is a collaboration of researchers from 4 countries, including the US, Canada, and Finland. This particular project, which represents the US NSF contribution to the BOREAS effort, focuses on the theme of social change in Nordic prehistory through the creation of a GIS database for archaeological and geographic data from the Yli-li area of Northern Finland and the Wemindji area of James Bay, Canada. By collecting and analyzing archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from these two geographically different regions, the investigators will shed light on issues of sustainable adaptive responses to climate change.
SCENOP identified cross-cultural regularities and differences in human responses to rapid environmental change in prehistory. It collected and analyzed archaeological and paleo-environmental data from two widely separated but environmentally comparable circumpolar paleo-estuaries, the Yli-Ii area of Northern Finland and the Wemindji area of James Bay in Quebec. The same methodologies of collecting and analyzing data were used in both areas so that the results would be comparable. There were four field seasons in Northern Finland and three in James Bay. New environmental and archaeological data were obtained by excavation, survey, and coring. The project provided information about how prehistoric groups created sustainable adaptive systems in response to the environmental challenges while developing historically unique sets of life-ways. SCENOP was a collaborative research project among McGill University, the University of Oulu, and the Social Systems GIS laboratory of the State University of New York at Buffalo in US (SSGIS). The aim of the U.S. research at the University at Buffalo was to develop GIS (geographical information systems) models of paleo-environmental and archaeological data within the larger objectives of SCENOP’s BOREAS project. Detailed data showed that in Northern Finland, there was a significant shift in occupation areas, settlement patterns, and housing types that correlated with mid-Holocene climate changes. Although climate change, environment and adaptations were similar in N. Canada, the Finnish patterns of human occupation, settlement patterns, and housing changes were not found in Northern Canada. Data from a third test area are being analyzed currently.
