Have you ever wondered when reindeer were first domesticated?
We found many peer-reviewed scientific articles on the topic of reindeer domestication by searching ScienceDirect, a large, multidisciplinary database that provides access to scholarly publications in scientific, technical and medical research. It hosts content from over 4,000 academic journals and 30,000 ebooks.
You can use ScienceDirect to find answers to your own research questions and gain insights into trending research topics.
Photo by Robert Losey
The earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated reindeer use among the Sámi dates to the 14th century (Salmi et al. 2021) –
“The domestication of the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the development of reindeer herding among the Sámi of Northern Fennoscandia was a gradual and regionally variable process, probably beginning in the Late Iron Age and intensifying in the 15th to 17th centuries AD. It has been suggested that early reindeer herding in Fennoscandia was small-scale and that reindeer herding was supplemented by other means of livelihood such as hunting, fishing, and gathering. This kind of mixed subsistence pattern prevailed among the Sámi of Northeastern Fennoscandia into the 17th century and later, when large-scale reindeer nomadic reindeer pastoralism had already been established as the basis of the economy and society of the Sámi in Western Fennoscandia.”
“The lack of appropriate food at Christmas time could cause hungry crews to fantasise about feasts and delicacies. Pemmican was generally disliked on travelling parties for being bland and monotonous. Belcher reported that those who refused to take it were only induced to do so by large amounts of onion powder and cayenne pepper (Belcher Reference Belcher1855, II: 287). Living off pemmican, George Back’s exploring group cheated themselves ‘into as much mirth at the fancied sayings and doings of our friends at home, as if we had partaken of the roast beef and plum pudding’ (Back Reference Back1836: 219).”
The new eHRAF World Cultures application offers a fresh look and feel that combines the best aspects of the classic eHRAF interface with a host of added features and enhancements. For example, search filters have been expanded with new options, and users can customize how they would like their search results to be displayed on the page.
The Search Insights panel offers additional options for visualizing and drilling down through results sets. An exciting new development for researchers is the eHRAF Notebook, which allows paragraph search results to be saved, organized, annotated, and shared. In addition to the sleek new appearance, users will benefit from many performance upgrades enabling faster searching and more relevant paragraph results.
Collection XV has been added to our library in addition to collections I to XIV that are already available to us. A title list for this collection is available here. Now, when you search the JSTOR platform, you will have full text access to all of the collections.
JSTOR Lives of Literature is a collection of academic journals devoted to the deep study of writers and texts associated with core literary movements. Key topics include: Medieval Authors & Texts; Modernist Authors; Victorian, Edwardian & Gothic Authors; and Literary Theorists.
Explore a wide range of journals, ebooks, and research reports in the field of security studies. This content looks at security studies through a broad lens, encompassing research on international security and peace and conflict studies from all corners of the globe.
Discover a wide range of journals, ebooks, and research reports in the field of sustainability. The subjects of resilience and sustainability are explored broadly, covering research on environmental stresses and their impact on society.
Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) was founded in 1830. The learned Society promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes (as gores or mounted on stands) and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.
The Wiley Digital Archives-RGS collection also boasts over one hundred unique special collections. These include the Everest Collection; the David Livingstone Collection; the Sir Ernest Shackleton Collection; the Stanley Collection; the Younghusband Collection; the Speke Collection; and the Gertrude Bell Collection.
Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Archive is also available to access via the Databases A-Z.
We are pleased to announce that Cambridge University now have access to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology via this direct link.
Authored by the experts, Oxford Research Encylcopedia articles deliver in-depth thinking and analysis of a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and on emerging themes in the sciences.
Hunter-Gatherer, Farmer Interactions in Uganda — “The coexistence of the Kansyore-Later Stone Age (LSA) hunter-gatherer and the Early Iron Age (EIA)-Urewe-farmer cultural materials in the same cultural deposits and environmental space can no longer be dismissed as accidental admixture. At Kansyore Island in western Uganda, it is clear that the Kansyore hunter-gatherer and Urewe-farmers are two cultural periods presumed to be widely separated in time and space but that coexist together in the same stratigraphic contexts suggesting interaction and coexistence. …” – By Elizabeth Kyazike
JSTOR Lives of Literature is a collection of academic journals devoted to the deep study of writers and texts associated with core literary movements. Key topics include: Medieval Authors & Texts; Modernist Authors; Victorian, Edwardian & Gothic Authors; and Literary Theorists.
Explore a wide range of journals, ebooks, and research reports in the field of security studies. This content looks at security studies through a broad lens, encompassing research on international security and peace and conflict studies from all corners of the globe.
Discover a wide range of journals, ebooks, and research reports in the field of sustainability. The subjects of resilience and sustainability are explored broadly, covering research on environmental stresses and their impact on society.
Collection XV has been added to our library in addition to collections I to XIV that are already available to us. A title list for this collection is available here. Now, when you search the JSTOR platform, you will have full text access to all of the collections.
In addition to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) digital archive access, Cambridge University members have temporary access to the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Anthropological Institute digital archives via the Wiley Online Archives platform.
Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) was founded in 1830. The learned Society promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes (as gores or mounted on stands) and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.
The Archive includes Maps, Atlases, Charts and Plans; Expedition Reports; Fieldnotes, Correspondence and Diaries; Grey Literature; Photographs, Artwork and Illustrations; Journal Manuscripts; Photographs; Proceedings, Lectures, and Ephemera. The collection spans a wide variety of interdisciplinary research areas, and supports educational needs in Anthropology, Area Studies; Cartography and Visualizations, Colonial, Post-Colonial & Decolonisation Studies; Development Studies; Environmental Degradation; Historical & Cultural Geography; Historical Sociology; Human Geography; Identity, Gender & Ethnic Studies; Geology; International Relations; Trade and Commerce, and Law and Policy relating to Colonization.
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world’s longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense.
This archive includes maps, photographs and manuscripts.
Authored by the experts, Oxford Research Encylcopedia articles deliver in-depth thinking & analysis of a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and on emerging themes in the sciences.
The OREs cover both foundational and cutting-edge topics in order to develop, over time, an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Cambridge University now has access to all the OREs which currently comprise the following subjects: African history; American history; Anthropology; Asian history; Business & Management; Climate science; Communication; Criminology and Criminal justice; Economics and finance; Education; Social work; Environmental science; Global public health; International studies; Latin American history; Linguistics; Literature; Natural hazard science; Neuroscience; Physics; Planetary science; Politics; Psychology; Religion.
These online encyclopaedias have been made available through special funding provided by the University to support teaching and learning impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the unavailability of library resources on campus.
Cambridge anthropology is now supported by online access to the collections of the Anthropology Resource Library, including sound and video archives and digital transcripts of ethnographic fieldwork studies
Cambridge University now has access to the full wealth and range of the Anthropology Resource Library from ProQuest. The online library comprises the largest collection of ethnographic video documentaries and primary footage—over 1,500 hours, with many rare and exclusive titles from independent production companies and researchers.
The library also includes 2,000 historic field recordings from around the world, alongside their supporting field notes and ethnographers’ metadata, opening new paths for the study of music in its cultural context; 250,000 audio recordings from a wide range of labels including Smithsonian Folkways Recordings; rare and previously unpublished field research from partners such as the Royal Anthropological Institute, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and university archives such as the London School of Economics and Vassar College. The Anthropology Resource Library can be accessed via this link or you can go directly to the individual collections:
This fully indexed, primary-source database unfolds the historical development of anthropology from a global perspective—with archival collections from North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific — including key field notebooks, images, and recordings of the early- to mid-20th century. The collection brings together the work of scholars who shaped the theories and methods students learn about, critique, and reshape in their own fieldwork endeavors today. Content is focused around each scholar’s prominent expedition field experience, with comprehensive inclusion of fieldwork, contextualizing documents from the same time period, including correspondence, and subsequent writings that led to major publications, such as draft manuscripts, lectures, and articles. Users will see the full qualitative scholarly process unfold in all its iterations, from data gathering in the field to later analysis, early writings, and final publication
Anthropology Online brings together a wide range of written ethnographies, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human culture and behavior the world over. The collection contains the published versions of the research aggregated in Anthropological Fieldwork Online, making this database a perfect companion piece. When used together, the two collections present firsthand insight into the process that transforms field notes into finished manuscripts. The collection is a comprehensive resource for the study of social and cultural life throughout the 20th century, providing the works of such key practitioners and theorists as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Claude Levi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, Max Gluckman, David MacDougall, Paul Rabinow, E. E. Evans- Pritchard, Robert Borofsky, and more
Ethnographic Video Online contains documentaries, shorts, and ethnographies from every continent and hundreds of cultures, and include films from the most significant names in visual anthropology, such as the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) ethnographic film library, and many independent producers and distributors previously unavailable outside their regions. With footage from the early days of film in the field, contemporary counterpoints, and the classic titles, these films provide core visual materials for anthropology courses at all levels. Explore growing areas of study such as environmental anthropology, medical anthropology, and language preservation
Ethnographic Sound Archives Online is an initiative to digitize and make available previously unpublished field recordings that underpin the history of ethnomusicology and that represent research around the world. Curated to integrate field recordings with their contextualizing field notes and supporting field materials, the collection opens new paths for analyzing, interrogating, and connecting historic primary sources in context. Music is tightly woven into society and culture — it accompanies rituals and dances, and fills social spaces. It is the goal of the ethnomusicologist to document sound in this broader context, so field recordings are often accompanied by film footage, photographs, handwritten notes, and records of the larger soundscape. Where possible, the audio in this collection is presented along with its contextual materials, totaling more than 10,000 pages of field notes and 150 hours of film footage, recreating music’s relationship to its cultural context in a digital space
These new online collections have been made available through special funding provided by the University to support teaching and learning impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the unavailability of library resources on campus.
Electronic Collection Management 