Max Friesen
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto
Canada
Biography
Max Friesen is an arctic archaeologist. His research explores how the linkages between social organization, world view, economy, technology, environment, and landscape have shaped northern peoples’ lives over the past 5,000 years. He has performed fieldwork in the Cambridge Bay region of Victoria Island, the Barrenlands of southern Nunavut, the Mackenzie Delta region of the Northwest Territories, and Kotzebue Sound in Alaska. His current project seeks to understand the unprecedented destruction of coastal archaeological sites in the Mackenzie Delta region, caused by modern climate change impacts such as higher sea levels, increased storminess, and thawing permafrost. The project, developed in collaboration with the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, will determine which threatened sites are most important, and will then excavate them in order to salvage critical heritage resources. The Anthropology Department at the U of T is an excellent place to perform graduate research, and Max is always interested in hearing from talented prospective graduate students.
Research Interest
Arctic, Archaeology, Zooarchaeology, Ethnohistory, Community Archaeology, Climate Change
