Max Friesen
Max Friesen, Ph.D. (McGill University, 1995)
Professor, St. George Campus
(416) 978-4505
Office: AP 400A
Lab: AP 400
Field: Archaeology, zooarchaeology, hunter-gatherers, culture contact, ethnohistory; North America, Arctic
Research
Since obtaining his Ph.D., Dr. Friesen has worked in three regions in the Canadian Arctic. In the Mackenzie River Delta, Northwest Territories, he studied long-term changes in the social organization and economy of Inuvialuit beluga whale hunters. Near Baker Lake, Nunavut, he worked as project zooarchaeologist with a Parks Canada team, and is developing a general framework for the interpretation of caribou bones from functionally different sites. Since 1999, however, his focus has been on a large scale project at Iqaluktuuq, a very important archaeological hotspot near Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island. This project is performed in collaboration with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society, a Cambridge Bay organization consisting largely of Inuit elders whose aim is to preserve traditional knowledge from the region. The goal of the archaeology at Iqaluktuuq is to reconstruct, and compare, the lifeways of the several very different peoples who have lived there over the past four millennia.
Recent Publications
2009 "The Last Supper: Late Dorset Economic Change at Iqaluktuuq, Victoria Island." In The Northern World AD 900-1400, edited by Herbert Maschner, Owen Mason, and Robert McGhee, pp. 235-248. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
2009 "The Cache Point Site: An Early Thule Occupation in the Mackenzie Delta. In On the track of the Thule Culture from Bering Strait to East Greenland, edited by Bjarne Grønnow, pp. 63-74. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark.
2007 "Hearth Rows, Hierarchies, and Arctic Hunter-Gatherers: The Construction of Equality in the Late Dorset Period." World Archaeology 39(2):194-214.
2006 With Matthew W. Betts. "Declining Foraging Returns from an Inexhaustible Resource? Abundance Indices and Beluga Whaling in the Western Canadian Arctic." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology25:59-82.
2006 "Architectural Variability in the Mackenzie Delta Region: The Role of Social Factors." In Dynamics of Northern Societies, edited by Jette Arneborg and Bjarne Grønnow, pp. 177-186. Publications from the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. Studies in Archaeology and History, Vol. 10.
2006 With Matthew W. Betts. "Archaeofaunas and Architecture: Zooarchaeological Variability in an Inuit Semi-Subterranean House, Arctic Canada." In Integrating Zooarchaeology, edited by Mark Maltby, pp. 64-75. Oxbow Press, Oxford.
