Moreau Sanford Maxwell (1918-1998)

Abstract

... Moreau Maxwell's first Arctic archaeological research took place during a five-month period in 1958, when, as a member of a Defense Research Board group participating in Canada's International Geophysical Year, he conducted an archaeological survey of the Lake Hazen vicinity on Ellesmere Island at 83 N. He reported on this work in 1960. During his tenure at Michigan State University, Max spent better than 15 field seasons in the Arctic, almost always with National Science Foundation funding, applying ecological and ethnoarchaeological approaches to Pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Thule adaptations. From 1960 on, Max focused his research on Baffin Island, primarily in Kimmirut (Lake Harbour) and Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) vicinities, but also at Markham Bay and the Savage Islands. He published a detailed monograph on this work through the National Museum of Man in 1973. Max and his family spent the 1964-65 academic year in Denmark on a Fullright Foundation Fellowship to the National Museum of Denmark, which allowed him to work with the Igloolik collections of Arctic archaeologist Jorgen Meldgaard. During this period, Max emerged as a prominent synthesizer of eastern Arctic archaeology, editing a Society for American Archaeology Memoir in 1976, reviewing the then-current status of Arctic and Subarctic archaeology in 1980 for the Annual Review of Anthropology, and publishing the landmark work Prehistory of the Eastern Arctic in 1985. ...