2025 Conference Program
Please stay tuned for our Schedule-at-a-glance and complete conference program!
The following sessions have been accepted for the 2025 annual meeting:
Current Research in Aleutian Archaeology
Chair: Ariel Taivalkoski (University of Alaska Anchorage)
The 69 islands of the Aleutian archipelago stretch over 6,800 miles and were occupied by the ancestral Unangax̂ for over 9000 years. Archaeology along the chain has been sporadic both spatially and temporally. Recent research projects have broadened our understanding of the dynamic and complex lifeways throughout the archipelago. This session will highlight current research themes and projects within the Aleutian Islands.
Destination: Katmai
Chairs: Evguenia (Jenya) Anichtchenko, Sebastian Wetherbee (Katmai National Park, NPS)
Katmai National Park and Preserve and the broader northern Alaska Peninsula represents a region of cultural diversity and exchange across at least 9 thousand years of human presence. It encompasses a swathe of land from Lake Iliamna in the North, to Aniackchak National Monument and its affiliated communities in the South. The region is a melting pot of Yupiik, Alutiiq, Unangan, and Na-Dene people, alongside more recent Russian and Anglo-American immigrants. This session aims to bring together researchers in cultural anthropology, archaeology, and history working on the northern peninsula to foster increased academic interest in these lands – both those administered by Katmai National Park and Preserve, as well as the surrounding lands and affiliated communities.
Public, Community, and Indigenous Engagement with the Past
Chairs: Emily Fletcher and N. Buster Landin (Purdue University)
This session will present a variety of approaches to engaging various publics with the past. Community- based knowledge production presents many challenges, which are further complicated when working with historically marginalized communities, including Alaska Natives. Recent multi-modal strategies have demonstrated success by engaging with youth, building lasting relationships with community members, and challenging colonial forms of knowledge production. This session will engage with the discourse surrounding these practices and present varies strategies that have successfully engaged communities with a vested interest in the outcomes of their ancestors’ past.
Exploring Current Questions in the Kodiak Archipelago
Chairs: Trevor Lamb (Boston University) and Sarah Simeonoff (University of Colorado Boulder)
Professional anthropologists have worked across the Kodiak Archipelago for almost a century, and the region continues to be a locus of research in anthropology and related disciplines. This symposium brings together current researchers to highlight the range of anthropological work currently underway on the archipelago. Three major trends are driving new insights on deep-time relationships between people and place: (1) new site sampling strategies, (2) collaborative, interdisciplinary, and community based work, and (3) the application of new archaeological methods and the broadened perspective of established ones. By bringing together archaeologists, anthropologists, museum professionals, and others, this session emphasizes the breadth and depth of Kodiak research and provides a consolidated place for updates about research presented at past annual meetings.
Subarctic Archaeology
Chairs: Gerad Smith (University of Alaska Anchorage), Ben Potter (University of Alaska Fairbanks)
This session focuses on recent research in the subarctic regions of Alaska and Canada. The session highlights new field research, techniques, technology, and theoretical insights into understanding the anthropogenic past.
Alternative Methods in Zooarchaeology
Chair: Diane K. Hanson (University of Alaska Anchorage, Alaska Consortium of Zooarchaeologists)
A number of methods including isotopic analysis, ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry), DNA analysis from organisms in site sediments (sedaDNA or eDNA) or bone (aDNA), growth line analysis, elemental analysis, and other increasingly innovative techniques to answer questions using data from archaeological fauna. Participants in this session discuss their use of alternative methods of faunal
analysis to answer anthropological questions relevant to current populations, or more archaeological focused research about Alaska populations of the recent or distant past. This symposium is sponsored by the Alaska Consortium of Zooarchaeologists.
Stories of Land and Sea: Archaeological and Anthropological Insights from the Northwest Coast
Chairs: Kelly Monteleone (Sealaska Heritage Institute) and Karen Grosskreutz (College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, UAF)
The Northwest Coast of North America is a region renowned for its cultural and environmental richness, offering unparalleled opportunities to explore the intersection of archaeology and anthropology. This session invites papers examining the region’s deep histories and living traditions, showcasing innovative research, partnerships, and interdisciplinary approaches. Together, we will illuminate the interconnectedness of past and present, amplify Indigenous voices and research, and celebrate the diverse exploration embodied by this geographic and cultural area.
By bringing together diverse voices and perspectives, this session aims to foster dialogue, challenge assumptions, and expand our understanding of the Northwest Coast’s archaeological and anthropological landscapes. Join us as we uncover stories etched into the land and sea, offering new insights into the resilience, adaptability, and creativity of Northwest Coast communities, past and present. Or simply come share pictures of what you did last summer in this extraordinary region!
Indigenous Oral Narratives and Methodologies: Lessons Learned and Applied
Chair: Yoko Kugo (University of Alaska, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies)
This session invites students, researchers, and writers who engage with Indigenous oral narratives. The idea of the session originated from the recently taught class, Indigenous Oral Narratives and Methodologies, offered by the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies at UAF. This course examines oral narratives and methodologies using decolonial oral history approaches. The presenters will demonstrate how their journey (re-searching) of exploring written and verbal narratives from Indigenous perspectives expand in holistic ways, while engaging with storytellers and comprehending narrators’ Indigenous worldviews. Our lessons continue.
Alaska Housing Design Storytelling
Chairs: Todd Nicewonger and Stacey Fritz (Virginia Tech and Alaska Adaptable Housing LLC)
This session explores housing design storytelling in Alaska as both a framework and a practice to address housing insecurity in the North. The urgent need for accessible, healthy housing is widely acknowledged, with estimates indicating that construction must increase by 90% to address the severe overcrowding prevalent in many remote Alaska communities. These communities, often located off the road system, have historically received homes designed in the lower 48, with little consideration for ways of living or extreme weather conditions. Rising sea levels, flooding, rapid permafrost degradation, and erosion present formidable challenges for coastal and interior communities but focusing solely on disaster risk overlooks the resilience and ingenuity of communities that have thrived in these environments for thousands of years. Stories have the power to convey meaning on multiple levels, capturing complexity in ways that transcend both relational and analytical frameworks. By thinking about Alaska housing design through storytelling, we can extend this narrative power to a host of sociopolitical debates with real-life implications for Alaskans. This session invites researchers and practitioners to share stories highlighting innovative housing methodologies. Together, these stories will foster a dialogue that rethinks housing as a collaborative, situated, and adaptive practice.
Round Table Panel (Session): Time perspective argumentation and the Dene-Yeniseian Hypothesis (2024)
Chair: James Kari (Alaska Native Language Center, UAF)
Sapirian Time Perspective argumentation is well suited to discuss hypotheses that cross several scientific fields. The LTDD (Kari 2024) is a comprehensive record of this Dene language that integrates LT’s cosmographic-environmental-grammatical concepts as well as LT’s prolific mechanisms for Dene word formation. Several features of this Lexware band label dictionary promote research on Comparative Dene or Dene-Yeniseian.
Kari 2024, Append. H-2 provides evidence that at least seven Yeniseian ichthyonyms from the upper Yenisei Basin were brought into the middle Yukon River Basin and rearranged. Cognation within fish lexicon (also anatomical and landscape) implies a rapid initial movement of cohesive pre-Proto-(Na-)Dene bands in the late Pleistocene, without an intervening marine adaptation.
The search for ancient Eurasian hydronyms can include the proposed DY (Vajda 2022:229-230) *dejxʷ Y. ‘sandbar, shoal, river’: westmost: Ob-Irtysh River Basin PY *–tes, des ‘river’; eastmost: Canadian Shield PD *deˑshʳ. ‘river’. Fig M-39 raises the question: were the Northern Dene hydronymic districts invented in Siberia?
Kari 2019 presents “The Nen’ Yese’ Ensemble,” a group of about twenty hydrologically informative rule-driven Ahtna/Dene place names that were coined by eyewitnesses to the Susitna R-to-Copper R drainage shift in the first half of the 11th millennium. Alaska Dene place names can be more than 10 millennia in age, yet can be reliably analyzed at underlying and surface levels. Glacial Lake Atna is the only periglacial lake in the world with a documented network of fully analyzable place names in one family of Indigenous languages.
Kari, James. 2019. The Resilience of Dene Generative Geography, Considering “”the Nen’ Yese’ Ensemble.”” Alaska Journal of Anthropology vol. 17(1-2):44-76.
Kari, J. 2024 Lower Tanana Dene Dictionary. Fairbanks: ANLC, 912 pages.