Archaeology, heritage, and transdisciplinary research in the Aleutian Islands: 9,000 years of Unangam resilience informs us about our shared world and future

This presentation focuses on Unangam and environmental histories in the Aleutian Islands as revealed by collaborative archaeological, ethnohistoric, and multidisciplinary research. Collaborative research across disciplines that uses inclusive theoretical approaches and makes space for Unangam perspectives changes our questions and interpretations. And, ever-improving technologies to examine midden remains allow us to know a lot about past ecosystems, making archaeology in the Aleutian Islands increasingly useful for examining contemporary critical environmental issues. These combined approaches and diverse views of the past and the present are allowing us to move toward a more nuanced understanding of ancestral Unangam resilience mechanisms and the dynamic environment we all share.

Dr. Caroline Funk is research faculty at the University at Buffalo, a research affiliate of the Museum of the North and a research associate of the Museum of the Aleutians. Funk has worked to learn about human and environmental intersections on three continents since 1994. Her recent research focuses on Unangam ancestral archaeology in the Aleutian Islands. Funk works in research teams to understand both the history of the subarctic environment that Unangam ancestors expertly managed and the material results of their curated knowledge and technological innovation left behind in ancestral village middens. Currently, Funk is collaborating with faculty from the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on the Aleutian Mercury Dynamics Project, a multidisciplinary program aimed at understanding the dynamics of mercury accumulation in Arctic food webs.