FRINK, Lisa, Rita SHEPARD and Gregory A. REINHARDT (eds), 2002 Many Faces of Gender: Roles and Relationships through Time in Indigenous Northern Communities, Boulder, University Press of Colorado and Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 257 pages.

This collection of 12 papers on gender research in the North developed from a 1998 Alaskan Anthropology Association conference session on the same theme. While the editors state only that the volume describes and analyzes northern Native gender roles, the authors of the concluding chapter suggest a more structured objective: to examine the influence of gender relations and gender ideology on the construction of social landscapes and the formation of the archaeological record (p. 196). The organization of the book into three sections: contemporary research (papers by Stewart, Ackerman and Jolles); historical and ethnoarchaeological approaches (papers by Shepard, Tobey and Frink); and material and spatial analyses (papers by Crass, Reinhardt, Hoffman and Whitridge), along with the editors’ introduction and a final chapter by Brumbach and Jarvenpa, reflects this worthwhile intent. In the lead article on contemporary research, Henry Stewart presents a unique type of gender change among the Netsilik through his long-term study of kipijuituq, male children raised as female for a period of time. Although he was not able to establish the function or the circumstances under which this practice occurs, his study, as Brumbach and Jarvenpa note (p. 207), draws attention to the gender transformations and third-gender phenomena of Inuit cultures as well as the difficulty of using Western dichotomies (for example, male/female) to explain non-Western cultural behaviour. Lillian Ackerman’s chapter on the Colville Indians of Washington State is out of place in a volume about circumpolar research and lies outside the scope of a review for Études/Inuit/Studies. The paper that follows is a life history narrative of Yupik educator Linda Womkon Badten. Carol Zane Jolles’ tribute describes their friendship and Badten’s contributions to Aleutian research, while highlighting the rapid cultural changes experienced over one lifetime. Both Rita Shepard and Jennifer Tobey draw largely on the work of other researchers to consider the impact of 19th-century religious missions on Alaskan household activity patterns and gender roles and suggest potential lines of inquiry. Lisa Frink’s exploration of subsistence fish production in western Alaska emphasizes the critical contributions of Yupik women by detailing their management of the processing, storage, distribution and consumption of this resource. These papers expand our understanding of Aboriginal gender roles in the North and provide a foundation for developing models to interpret the archaeological record. However, more than a decade after the publication of several books on the archaeology of gender, including Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey’s (1991) seminal volume, archaeologists should be well beyond “raising women’s visibility” and be engaged in the actual analysis of archaeological data. The following papers attempt to do just this. The last four chapters deal with material and spatial correlates of gender. Barbara Crass analyzes Inuit burials from across the Arctic to determine general trends in the post-mortem treatment of infants, children and adults. Gregory Reinhardt’s reassessment of an earlier study on gendered household space revisits the catastrophic preservation of a North Alaskan Thule house. Brian Hoffman replicates bone needles to explain the change in form from eyed to grooved that occurred in the Unangan material culture of the Eastern Aleutian Islands 1,000 years ago. Peter Whitridge’s interest in the roots of social complexity forms the basis of his paper on Thule gender and household status differences expressed in patterns of metal consumption. I have serious concerns with each of these chapters and review them in greater detail below. Crass’ examination of Inuit burial patterns argues for the need to include the study of children and infants in gender research but is frequently difficult to follow. For example, Table 8.5, which accompanies her discussion of multiple burials, does …