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Contact
Information
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Gerald F.
Bigelow
Adjunct Assistant
Professor of Anthropology
Department of
Geography-Anthropology
3700
College Avenue
Gorham, Maine 04038
USA
Phone
+207-780-5321
E-Mail:
gbigelow@usm.maine.edu
Education
B.A.
Anthropology, Columbia
University
Ph.D.
Archaeology,
University of
Cambridge |
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Research
Interests
I have worked for the past thirty
years in in North Atlantic archaeology, and have participated
in research projects in the Shetland Islands,
Greenland, Iceland, England, France, New York, and Maine. My
primary research areas include the reconstruction of maritime
economies, especially those based on marine fish exploitation,
and human adaptations to climate change on multiple temporal
and geographical scales.
Much of my research has taken
place in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost county in the
United Kingdom. Shetland is a northern archipelago of
over one hundred islands, with twelve inhabited
today. The islands have a boreal oceanic climate, with cool
summers and warm winters compared with most continental areas at the same latitude.
On current evidence, it appears
that humans first colonized Shetland sometime over 6,000
years ago, and the arrival of domesticated plants and animals
with Neolithic settlers a few hundred years later set the
stage for significant changes in the local ecology. My
work focuses largely on medieval and post-medieval
settlement, with special emphases on local impacts of the
Little Ice Age and inter-regional political
changes.
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