Combines a descriptive study of inter-societal relations in early nineteenth-century Northwest Alaska with a theoretical treatise on the structure of the world system as it might have been in ancient times. This work presents one aspect of the traditional lives of the Inupiaq Eskimos. It includes accounts of specific people, places, and events.

Accounts of specific people, places, and events add an immediate, experiential dimension to the work, complementing its theoretical apparatus and sweeping narrative scope. Provocative and comprehensive, Alliance and Conflict is a definitive look at the greater world of Native peoples of Northwest Alaska. Ernest S. Burch Jr. is a research associate of the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of The Inupiaq Eskimo Nations of Northwest Alaska and a co-editor of Key Issues in Hunter-Gatherer Research.