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This paper unpacks the material practices and narrative strategies surrounding the aerial work of the 1924 Oxford University Arctic Expedition to Spitsbergen (now Svalbard). Examining the fluid nature of British tropes of polar heroic masculinities, the paper illustrates the adaptability of such tropes in the face of technological change. Specifically, it demonstrates how aviation was mobilised to construct a masculinist explorer subject conceived as simultaneously traditional and modern at a time when the Heroic Era of British exploration was said to have subsided. Significantly, the 1924 expedition was organised largely by and for undergraduate explorers, many of whom saw polar travel as a rite of passage not unlike military service. Hence, the expedition narrative connects to a culture of undergraduate Arctic exploration emerging from Oxbridge during the 1920s. In tracing the 1924 air programme, the paper examines the tensions between polar heroics and new technologies of travel, the significance of nationalist rivalries and failed ambitions in negotiating the status of polar aviation, and problematises the separation of aerial and earth-bound perspectives on polar travel. Focusing on the labour dedicated to bringing aerial technology to the north, the corporeality of the aerial perspective, and iterations of the vertical reciprocity between ground and air, the paper draws out how aircraft was configured both as an instrument for dispassionate observation and as a legitimate vessel for passionate exploration, mirroring and adapting nineteenth century rhetoric of British polar heroics. It is suggested that understanding such historically rooted mechanisms and their adaptability to cultural and technological change remain relevant in terms of contextualising British imaginaries of the Arctic. • Traces the aerial programme of the 1924 Oxford University Arctic Expedition. • Analyses adaptations of heroic travel narratives to technological change. • Hones in on cultures of varsity exploration emerging from Oxbridge in the 1920s. • Problematises the separation of aerial and earth-bound perspectives on polar travel. • Aviation used to form masculinist explorer subject, at once traditional and modern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Variability in and significance of hunter-gatherer aggregation sites are reviewed. • The Cadfael archaeological site is a Dorset aggregation in the Canadian Arctic. • The aggregation site contains stone longhouses as well as ritual features. • Change over time at the site results from interaction between Dorset and Inuit. Most hunter-gatherer lifeways revolve around periodic large gatherings – aggregations – that serve as social, ritual, and economic anchors for their annual cycles. However, in archaeological contexts they are often difficult to recognize. This paper describes and interprets a particularly large and well-preserved example of a warm season aggregation site dating to the Late Dorset period in the eastern North American Arctic. This site extends for over 750 m along coastal beach ridges and contains four boulder-outlined "longhouses" of up to 38 m in length as well as hundreds of other features used for storage, cooking, and ritual activities. In addition to interpreting the range of activities occurring on the site, this paper discusses the clear evidence for change over time in the ways its inhabitants interacted with the built environment, and with each other. Because these changes took place mainly during the 13th century CE, they likely represent a reaction to the arrival in this region of ancestral Inuit, who migrated from Alaska during this period and ultimately replaced Dorset populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]