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Thomas H. McGovern<br />
Maine, on October 16–19, 2009 (http://www.eaglehill.us/). The conference<br />
was generously funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation<br />
(NSF), Office <strong>of</strong> Polar Programs (OPP), Arctic Social Sciences Program, as<br />
part <strong>of</strong> President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.<br />
Our OPP grants <strong>of</strong>ficer, Dr. Anna Kerttula de Echave, played an invaluable and<br />
inspirational role before, during, and after what proved to be an incredibly energized<br />
and successful meeting. The Eagle Hill meeting grew out <strong>of</strong> discussions<br />
with the NSF about the desirability <strong>of</strong> harvesting fresh data and perspectives<br />
acquired by some <strong>of</strong> the large-scale projects funded under new cross-disciplinary<br />
initiatives, including the NSF Biocomplexity competition, the Human and<br />
Social Dimensions <strong>of</strong> Global Change program, and the International Polar<br />
Year (2007–2009), as well as various European interdisciplinary programs<br />
(BOREAS, Leverhulme Trust projects), to promote more effective interregional<br />
(especially north-south) communication and integration <strong>of</strong> teams, cases,<br />
and new ideas. In spring 2009 a team drawn from the North Atlantic Biocultural<br />
Organization (NABO) research and education cooperative (Andy Dugmore <strong>of</strong><br />
the <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Edinburgh, Sophia Perdikaris and Tom McGovern <strong>of</strong> CUNY,<br />
and Astrid Ogilvie <strong>of</strong> the <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Colorado</strong>) was tasked with organizing<br />
a working conference that would connect teams and scholars active in diverse<br />
areas <strong>of</strong> human ecodynamics research and involve students participating in<br />
Sophia’s Islands <strong>of</strong> Change Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)<br />
program. The October Eagle Hill meeting eventually had seventy-one faculty<br />
and student active participants, representing a dozen disciplines and nations<br />
worldwide. Prior to the meeting, participants interacted through the NABO<br />
website maintained by Dr. Anthony Newton (<strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Edinburgh), and<br />
this on-line collaboration and preparation proved critical to the success <strong>of</strong> the<br />
meeting (for a full report on the Eagle Hill meeting and a list <strong>of</strong> faculty participants,<br />
see http://www.nabohome.org/meetings/glthec2009.html).<br />
As part <strong>of</strong> the pre-meeting preparation we grouped participants into<br />
working groups, each with at least two chairs charged with organizing their<br />
groups, leading discussions before and during the meeting, and preparing presentations<br />
by each working group for discussion by the entire group. The teams<br />
and chairs were:<br />
• Methods, Data, and Tools (chairs Doug Price and Tina Thurston):<br />
New analytic tools allow transformation in our abilities to trace migration,<br />
reconstruct diet, and reconstruct settlement. Some specialties<br />
and approaches are very recent in origin (stable isotopes, aDNA), and<br />
others have recently been able to significantly upgrade their general utility<br />
through expanded data resources (archaeobotany, zooarchaeology,<br />
geoarchaeology).<br />
• Who Cares Wins (Shari Gearheard and Christian Keller): Education,<br />
community involvement, policy connections, and interdisciplinary<br />
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