Editor's Note

It is my sincere honor to have been passed the Arctic Anthropology editor mantle by Susan A. Kaplan, Director of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College, who worked tirelessly at its helm serving as editor for the past 11 years. Although I had met Susan on a few occasions, I really came to know her during a sabbatical year spent in Brunswick, Maine working with my colleague and friend, Genevieve LeMoine, on our archaeological collections from the Inglefield Land Archaeology Project (Greenland). I was daunted by the prospect of taking on the position of editor for a journal I have long admired as the leading venue for research in arctic anthropology; however, I was also excited by the opportunity to be exposed to new research on a diverse array of topics and geographic localities across the circumpolar region.

For those who have not met me, let me introduce myself. I was born and grew up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. My Scottish grandmother, Ena Gunn Swires, introduced me to archaeology through the many books in her West Vancouver apartment and a trip to central Mexico. She was also the one who first exposed me to Canadian Inuit culture and art with her continuously expanding collection of soapstone sculptures, felt tapestries, and ulus. I completed my degree in archaeology at the University of Calgary (1987-1991) where I also met my husband, John Darwent (who graciously agreed to serve as the new Assistant Editor and Graphic Designer for the journal). In 1992, John and I were married and then "honeymooned" on Little Cornwallis Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) with James Helmer and Genevieve LeMoine's archaeological research project focused on Late Dorset occupation of the central high Arctic. The faunal remains from Tasiarulik became the basis for my M.A. degree from Simon Fraser University (1995) under the supervision of Jon Driver. This project expanded into a large regional study of Paleoeskimo subsistence across the high Arctic from ca. 4000-1000 years ago, which included sites from Little Cornwallis (1992-1994 excavations), Kalivik, Devon, and Ellesmere Islands, as well as northern Greenland (Eigil Knuth's collections at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen), with funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Arctic Institute of North America. Many thanks to Bjarne Grønnow who suggested I study the Knuth collection when he worked with us in Canada in 1995.

I was fortunate to work with zooarchaeologist Lee Lyman for my doctoral research at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and it was here that I was also introduced to the rigors of scientific writing and journal editing with a course we affectionately referred to as "Write like Mike", taught by Michael O'Brien. I was hired at the University of California, Davis, in 2001, and completed my Ph.D. that same year. With a son born in late 1999, and teaching introductory courses at Missouri, such as four-field anthropology, I learned the art of juggling numerous balls at once (although I cannot say that I successfully keep all the balls in the air at the same time).

Having had the privileged to work for Bob Gal of the Western Alaska Regions, National Park Service in 1998, I was introduced to north Alaskan archaeology of the Kobuk River, the Kobuk Sand Dunes and Cape Krusenstern. As a graduate student this was an incredible summer that allowed me to work alongside such admired arctic researchers as Doug Anderson, Allen McCartney, Vladimir Pitul'ko, Jim Savelle, and Dennis Stanford, many of whom I have continued to collaborate with.

After being hired at UC Davis, I undertook a field season at Cape Krusenstern to investigate the possibility of intact deposits at the Old Whaling locality (published as Darwent and Darwent 2005) using "start-up funds" from my institution. However, my attentions since 2003 have been focused on understanding the origins and development of Thule-Inughuit culture and subsistence in Northwest Greenland (with thanks to the National Science Foundation). This work has been in close collaboration, not only with Genny LeMoine, but with my Greenlandic colleague Hans Lange and my husband John. We welcomed...