Adoption of Firearms in Northwest Alaska
David Gregg, graduate student

I am writing my dissertation on the adoption of firearms by the eskimo of northwest Alaska.  I am exploring how technological change takes place at a cultural level by using archaeological, documentary, and historical ethnographic data to answer the question, "Why did the practitioners of a technology adapted to their environment over centuries abandon it in the course of a few decades for articles that at least at the time of early contact were not evidently functionally superior?"  In this research I use 19th-century museum collections, whaling logs, commercial records, and published and unpublished explorers' accounts.  Also central to the research are my own excavations at the Kallarichuk Ranger Station site (XBM-046), on the Kobuk River, and others' excavations of sites throughout the region.  I have worked for the National Park Service for four summers on a variety of archaeological surveys and excavations.

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