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PHOTO: Archaeologists investigate a Peary-related site at Cape Sheridan, Ellesmere Island, Canada. (Cape Sheridan Archaeology Project photo)
AUGUSTA — The Kennebec Historical Society’s January Facebook Live Presentation is “Find a Way or Make One: New Perspectives on Peary’s North Pole Quest.”
The speaker will be Susan Kaplan, Arctic anthropologist and archaeologist professor of anthropology and director of the museum at Bowdoin.
The presentation is at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, airing live on the www.facebook.com/KHS1891″>KHS Facebook page. Those with questions during the presentations may submit them during the presentation via the comments function on Facebook. Because of copyright concerns, the presentation will not be available for future viewing.
For more than a decade, staff members at Bowdoin College’s Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center have studied original journals, artifacts and photographs related to Robert Peary’s efforts to be the first person to reach the North Pole. They have visited museums and archives, traveled to sites in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes with connections to the expeditions, and contacted descendants of expedition members.
In addition, Arctic archaeologists Genevieve LeMoine and Kaplan traveled to the edge of the Polar Sea to investigate one of Peary’s camps. In this illustrated lecture, Kaplan will discuss new insights they have reached about how Peary worked and the interpersonal dynamics on his last two expeditions.
Kaplan has studied some of the ways Inuit have responded to environmental change and contact with the West, as well as the history of Arctic exploration. She will also explain ways in which the Arctic of today differs from the Arctic of Peary’s time.
