Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 42

SOPHIA PERDIKARIS, GEORGE HAMBRECHT
AND RAMONA HARRISON
THREE DECADES IN THE COLD AND WET:
A CAREER IN NORTHERN ARCHAEOLOGY
Thomas H. McGovem has been a pioneering researcher in the North Atlantic
region for most of the past 40 years. He has taken his specialty in zooarchaeology
beyond counting bones to actually addressing questions about human
environment interactions and human response to extreme environmental events.
A prolific writer and researcher with a multitude of publications and an
impressive funding record, McGovern has always been a proponent of
multi-disciplinarity and intemational collaboration. His vision resulted in the
creation of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) that currently
has over 400 scientific partners and has been leading projects throughout the
Circum Atlantic for over 25 years. The interconnectivity of regions and global
events has always been the key to his research and as of last year with support
from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs, it resulted in the
creation of the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA) that is now taking
inter-disciplinarity and intemational collaboration to a global perspective.
Sophia Perdikaris, Brooklyn College CUNY and Doctoral Program in
Anthropology, New York, USA
Email: SophiaP@brooklyn. cuny. edu
George Hambrecht, Graduate School and University Center City University of
New York, USA
Email: ghambrecht@gmail.com
Ramona Harrison, Graduate School and University Center City University of
New York, USA
Email: ramonaharrison@yahoo. com
Keywords: Thomas McGovern, Zooarchaeology, Environment, NABO, Mývatn
Tom McGovern and the North
Atlantic
wonder of their own glory” with a very
jaundiced eye. He has taught several gen-
erations of students like ourselves that
archaeology is very much a team sport,
and that recognition needs to be fully
shared along with the abundant hard
work that makes modem international,
This is precisely the sort of paper that
will profoundly annoy Tom McGovem,
who has repeatedly adopted a Tolstoyan
view of the historical process that looks
at self-identified leaders often “lost in the
ARCHAEOLOGIA ISLANDICA 8 (2010) 40-50