Biography

Liam Frink’s research and scholarship interests include Arctic prehistory and colonial history. His current work has two main trajectories. He conducts ethnoecological field research in western Alaska and works in Yup’ik Eskimo villages where people continue to hunt, fish, and gather with many of the same subsistence techniques and tools that would have been used prehistorically.

He is particularly interested in how technology has changed as well as the social, economic, and health context of these various technologies. A primary goal of his interdisciplinary modern field- and lab-based studies is to better identify archaeological signatures as well as to pique new questions of the past material record. In addition to these studies, he is interested in the colonial period and the processes of change and persistence among native people. For these studies, he gathers interview data with elders who have interacted with early colonial institutions and practices as well as conducts archival and museum research.

Education 

Ph.D. : University of Wisconsin, Madison 2003

Expert Areas

Ethnoecology, experimental studies, colonialism studies, identity (gender, age), subsistence technology and production, hunter-gatherers, Arctic, and North America