Dr. Gabriel Yanicki is Curator, Western Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of History (full bio here). His research explores themes of intergroup relations and social identity in ancient North America, extending from the fur trade era of western Canada to the Late Pleistocene ice-free corridor. From 2009-2011, he worked with Elders and knowledge keepers from First Nations in southern Alberta and directed excavations to identify the probable location of Napi’s—or Old Man’s—Playing Ground, a traditional meeting place related in oral histories, fur trade journals, and ethnographic accounts over the past four centuries. Since 2011, he has been part of an international research team working at Utah’s Promontory Caves, examining interactions between the archaeologically known Fremont and Promontory cultures of the 13th century AD as facets in the origin of the Kiowa and Southern Dene. In 2018, he initiated a new research program at Wally’s Beach, an internationally significant archaeological and paleontological locality in southern Alberta, as part of a project to explore the earliest peopling of the recently deglaciated interior of western North America at the end of the last Ice Age.
Archaeology of western North America; oral histories and ethnography; lithic technology; ceramics; traditional games and gambling; culture contact; social identity and ethnogenesis; first peopling of the Americas; repatriation and the history of archaeological collecting
Yanicki, Gabriel (2022, in press). Follow the women: Ceramics and ethnogenesis in the intermountain West. In Holes in Our Moccasins, Holes in Our Stories: Apachean Origins and the Promontory, Franktown, and Dismal River Archaeological Records, John W. Ives and Joel C. Janetski (eds.). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Yanicki, Gabriel, William T.D. Wadsworth, Christopher N. Jass, and Christina Barrón-Ortiz (2022). Prospects for Wally’s Beach: Findings from the 2018-2019 field seasons. In Tracks and Traces: Archaeology and Paleontology at Wally’s Beach, Alberta, Brian Kooyman and Tatyanna Ewald (eds.), pp. 283–313. Occasional Papers Vol. 16. Calgary: Archaeological Society of Alberta.
Yanicki, Gabriel (2021). Gambling in ancient North America: The bettor-wager pattern in continental perspective. Critical Gambling Studies 2(2):123–140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29173/cgs87.
Ives, John W., Gabriel Yanicki, Kisha Supernant, and Courtney Lakevold (2019). Confluences: Fluted points in the ice-free corridor. PaleoAmerica 5(2):143–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2019.1600136.
Yanicki, Gabriel, and John W. Ives (2017). Mobility, exchange, and the fluency of games: Promontory in a broader sociodemographic setting. In Prehistoric Games of North American Indians: Subarctic to Mesoamerica, Barbara Voorhies (ed.), pp. 139–162. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Yanicki, Gabriel (2014). Old Man’s Playing Ground: Gaming and Trade on the Plains/Plateau Frontier (with contributions by Allan Pard, Art Calling Last, and Henry Holloway). Mercury Series Archaeology Paper No. 173. Gatineau/Ottawa: Canadian Museum of History/University of Ottawa Press.
Ives, John W., Duane Froese, Kisha Supernant, and Gabriel Yanicki (2013). Vectors, vestiges, and Valhallas – rethinking the corridor. In Paleoamerican Odyssey, Kelly E. Graf, Catherine V. Ketron, and Michael R. Waters (eds.), pp. 149–160. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press.
