Rick Knecht
Biographic Data
| ID | 3647350 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rick Knecht |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rick |
| FAMILY NAME | Knecht |
| SIGNATURE | KNECHT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Aberdeen |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Honouring ancestry, celebrating presence – the grand opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center
Pre-contact adaptations to the Little Ice Age in Southwest Alaska
The reconstruction of diet, subsistence strategies and human-animal relationships are integral to understanding past human societies, adaptations and resilience - especially in the circumpolar Arctic. Even in relatively recent periods, climatic excursions may have posed specific challenges for hunter-gatherer groups living at latitudinal and climatic extremes, and archaeological research in Arctic North America is increasingly looking to better u…
The Old Village
Centred on the underresearched precontact archaeology of southwest coastal Alaska, the Nunalleq project is a decade-long collaboration between the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak and the University of Aberdeen. The Nunalleq archaeological site, like countless others in the Arctic, is being rapidly destroyed by the combined effects of global warming. Newly thawed permafrost soils are extremely vulnerable to rapid marine erosion from rising sea levels …
Investigating the Utility of Birds in Precontact Yup'ik Subsistence
Birds have been an integral part of traditional Yup'ik lifeways in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, southwest Alaska, both economically and symbolically. From a subsistence point of view, the rich ethnographic record for the region highlights the importance of this resource as a critical seasonal food and a source of raw materials for clothing and tools. Little is known of bird exploitation in precontact Yup'ik society, however, as a result of limited …
Activity Areas or Conflict Episode? Interpreting the Spatial Patterning of Lice and Fleas at the Precontact Yup'ik Site of Nunalleq (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries AD, Alaska)
Archaeoentomological research at the precontact site of Nunalleq (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD), Southwest Alaska, has identified hundreds of lice and fleas that infested both the human inhabitants of the site and their canine companions. As lice are host specific, staying attached to the host's hair or fur during the totality of their lifecycle, they are generally considered excellent indicators of activity areas. Fleas, however, are r…
Les pointes de projectiles polies du site de Nunalleq (village d'Agaligmiut), sud-ouest de l'Alaska
La fouille du site de Nunalleq (GDN-248) en territoire yup'ik a révélé une succession d'au moins trois niveaux allant vers 1570-1630 après J.C. à 1645-1675 après J.C. correspondant à plusieurs phases de construction et d'habitation d'une maison semi-souterraine de l'époque précontact du village historiquement appelé Agaligmiut. Les occupations du site s'inscrivent dans le cadre historique des Bow-and-Arrow Wars, et le dernier niveau concerne just…
The Fabric of Basketry
More than two thousand archaeological grass artifacts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century have been recovered from Nunalleq (GDN-248), an archaeological site located near the village of Quinhagak, southwest Alaska, in eight seasons of fieldwork at the site. This growing collection of basketry and cordage provides unprecedented insights on the use of grass artifacts in precontact Yup'ik households. Permafrost soils have preserved …
Hunted and Honoured
The precontact lifeways of Yup'ik people in Southwest Alaska were poorly known until the 2009-2018 excavations at the Nunalleq site near the village of Quinhagak. Until recently, the site dating from around AD 1400-1675 had been locked in permafrost that secured the extraordinary preservation of organic artefacts and faunal materials. As in many other hunter-gatherer communities across the North, animals were economically and culturally central t…
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact (Nunalleq, GDN-248)
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact restait assez méconnue avant la mise au jour du site de Nunalleq (sud-ouest alaskien). Exceptionnel par la richesse et la préservation de ces niveaux d'occupation, ce gisement a livré plus de 3400 vestiges d'industrie osseuse dont l'étude est en cours. Les modalités d'approvisionnement en bois de caribou, ainsi que les modes de fabrication et d'utilisation des…
Nunalleq
In this paper, we present an overview of the most recent results of the ongoing research on the Nunalleq site in Southwestern Alaska, a late pre-contact Yupik settlement. This endeavor is a long-term project that has taken place in the context of the threat that the combined effects of climate change poses to archaeological heritage in the sub-Arctic. Recent climate-change research highlights local involvement and monitoring as the way forward, a…
Bridging Past and Present
This article examines precontact Yup’ik masks, maskettes, and mask fragments recently recovered from the Nunalleq site (16th–17th century AD) near the village of Quinhagak, Alaska. Remarkable in their number, size, and variety of designs, the Nunalleq masks, which represent spirits, humans, and animals, indicate a very active ceremonial life among the residents of Nunalleq settlement. This paper combines archaeological, ethnographic, and oral his…
Reconstructing caribou seasonal biogeography in Little Ice Age (late Holocene) Western Alaska using intra-tooth strontium and oxygen isotope analysis
The palaeobiogeography of key prey-species can provide valuable insights into animal-human interactions, human subsistence activities and landscape use in the past. In many contemporary indigenous Arctic societies, caribou (Rangifer tarandus spp.) are an important seasonal subsistence species, and recent climatic shifts have influenced the seasonal and spatial distribution and migrations of herds. The impact of larger scale climatic change on thi…
Early Medieval Shellfish Exploitation in Northwest Europe
Coastal shell middens represent a well-known element of the archaeological record of island and coastal regions across the world and shellfish have been an important resource for subsistence since the mid Holocene. However, the factors that influence shellfishing remain poorly understood and in many regions investigations into the role of shellfish gathering often have remained focused on prehistoric examples to the detriment of shell middens of …
Early medieval shellfish gathering at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire
From 2010 to 2014, extensive shell middens were excavated at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire, and the wider landscape explored through a programme of soil and geophysical survey. The middens were dated to the 1st millennium AD and appear to represent intensive gathering and cooking of shellfish, particularly mussels. To date, few middens of the scale of the Forvie examples have been identified in Scotland, but the middens share some parallels …
Dog-human dietary relationships in Yup'ik western Alaska
Stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope analysis of permafrost preserved human hair from rescue excavations (2009, 2010) at the precontact site of Nunalleq, Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral to understanding hunter-gatherer societies in the past, and is particularly of interest in high latitude environments as they can illuminate human-environmental interactions and adaptations. Until recently, very little archaeological research had been undertaken on the Bering Sea coasts of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and relatively little is known about precontact lifeways in this r…
The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic
Arctic genetics comes in from the cold Despite a well-characterized archaeological record, the genetics of the people who inhabit the Arctic have been unexplored. Raghavan et al. sequenced ancient and modern genomes of individuals from the North American Arctic (see the Perspective by Park). Analyses of these genomes indicate that the Arctic was colonized 6000 years ago by a migration separate from the one that gave rise to other Native American …
Preliminary archaeoentomological analyses of permafrost-preserved cultural layers from the pre-contact Yup'ik Eskimo site of Nunalleq, Alaska
After the Typhoon
In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best preserved of …
Maritime adaptations and dietary variation in prehistoric Western Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral in understanding early human colonizations and cultural adaptations, especially in the Arctic—one of the last areas of North America to be permanently inhabited. However, evidence for early subsistence practices in Western Alaska varies, particularly with regards to the emergence, importance, and intensity of sea mammal hunting. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope d…
Peleliu 1944
In September 1944, US Marines invaded the tiny Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group, held by the Japanese. It would become one of the worst battles of the Pacific War, but the struggle for Peleliu was afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness in favour of the better- known conflicts on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Tourist impact on the island, with its community of only six hundred native Palauans, poses acute issues of h…
The Old Village
Centred on the underresearched precontact archaeology of southwest coastal Alaska, the Nunalleq project is a decade-long collaboration between the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak and the University of Aberdeen. The Nunalleq archaeological site, like countless others in the Arctic, is being rapidly destroyed by the combined effects of global warming. Newly thawed permafrost soils are extremely vulnerable to rapid marine erosion from rising sea levels …
Maritime adaptations and dietary variation in prehistoric Western Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral in understanding early human colonizations and cultural adaptations, especially in the Arctic—one of the last areas of North America to be permanently inhabited. However, evidence for early subsistence practices in Western Alaska varies, particularly with regards to the emergence, importance, and intensity of sea mammal hunting. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope d…
Preliminary archaeoentomological analyses of permafrost-preserved cultural layers from the pre-contact Yup'ik Eskimo site of Nunalleq, Alaska
Dog-human dietary relationships in Yup'ik western Alaska
Stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope analysis of permafrost preserved human hair from rescue excavations (2009, 2010) at the precontact site of Nunalleq, Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral to understanding hunter-gatherer societies in the past, and is particularly of interest in high latitude environments as they can illuminate human-environmental interactions and adaptations. Until recently, very little archaeological research had been undertaken on the Bering Sea coasts of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and relatively little is known about precontact lifeways in this r…
Nunalleq
In this paper, we present an overview of the most recent results of the ongoing research on the Nunalleq site in Southwestern Alaska, a late pre-contact Yupik settlement. This endeavor is a long-term project that has taken place in the context of the threat that the combined effects of climate change poses to archaeological heritage in the sub-Arctic. Recent climate-change research highlights local involvement and monitoring as the way forward, a…
Bridging Past and Present
This article examines precontact Yup’ik masks, maskettes, and mask fragments recently recovered from the Nunalleq site (16th–17th century AD) near the village of Quinhagak, Alaska. Remarkable in their number, size, and variety of designs, the Nunalleq masks, which represent spirits, humans, and animals, indicate a very active ceremonial life among the residents of Nunalleq settlement. This paper combines archaeological, ethnographic, and oral his…
Reconstructing caribou seasonal biogeography in Little Ice Age (late Holocene) Western Alaska using intra-tooth strontium and oxygen isotope analysis
The palaeobiogeography of key prey-species can provide valuable insights into animal-human interactions, human subsistence activities and landscape use in the past. In many contemporary indigenous Arctic societies, caribou (Rangifer tarandus spp.) are an important seasonal subsistence species, and recent climatic shifts have influenced the seasonal and spatial distribution and migrations of herds. The impact of larger scale climatic change on thi…
Honouring ancestry, celebrating presence – the grand opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center
After the Typhoon
In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best preserved of …
The Fabric of Basketry
More than two thousand archaeological grass artifacts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century have been recovered from Nunalleq (GDN-248), an archaeological site located near the village of Quinhagak, southwest Alaska, in eight seasons of fieldwork at the site. This growing collection of basketry and cordage provides unprecedented insights on the use of grass artifacts in precontact Yup'ik households. Permafrost soils have preserved …
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact (Nunalleq, GDN-248)
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact restait assez méconnue avant la mise au jour du site de Nunalleq (sud-ouest alaskien). Exceptionnel par la richesse et la préservation de ces niveaux d'occupation, ce gisement a livré plus de 3400 vestiges d'industrie osseuse dont l'étude est en cours. Les modalités d'approvisionnement en bois de caribou, ainsi que les modes de fabrication et d'utilisation des…
Activity Areas or Conflict Episode? Interpreting the Spatial Patterning of Lice and Fleas at the Precontact Yup'ik Site of Nunalleq (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries AD, Alaska)
Archaeoentomological research at the precontact site of Nunalleq (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD), Southwest Alaska, has identified hundreds of lice and fleas that infested both the human inhabitants of the site and their canine companions. As lice are host specific, staying attached to the host's hair or fur during the totality of their lifecycle, they are generally considered excellent indicators of activity areas. Fleas, however, are r…
Les pointes de projectiles polies du site de Nunalleq (village d'Agaligmiut), sud-ouest de l'Alaska
La fouille du site de Nunalleq (GDN-248) en territoire yup'ik a révélé une succession d'au moins trois niveaux allant vers 1570-1630 après J.C. à 1645-1675 après J.C. correspondant à plusieurs phases de construction et d'habitation d'une maison semi-souterraine de l'époque précontact du village historiquement appelé Agaligmiut. Les occupations du site s'inscrivent dans le cadre historique des Bow-and-Arrow Wars, et le dernier niveau concerne just…
Hunted and Honoured
The precontact lifeways of Yup'ik people in Southwest Alaska were poorly known until the 2009-2018 excavations at the Nunalleq site near the village of Quinhagak. Until recently, the site dating from around AD 1400-1675 had been locked in permafrost that secured the extraordinary preservation of organic artefacts and faunal materials. As in many other hunter-gatherer communities across the North, animals were economically and culturally central t…
Peleliu 1944
In September 1944, US Marines invaded the tiny Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group, held by the Japanese. It would become one of the worst battles of the Pacific War, but the struggle for Peleliu was afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness in favour of the better- known conflicts on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Tourist impact on the island, with its community of only six hundred native Palauans, poses acute issues of h…
Peleliu 1944
In September 1944, US Marines invaded the tiny Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group, held by the Japanese. It would become one of the worst battles of the Pacific War, but the struggle for Peleliu was afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness in favour of the better- known conflicts on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Tourist impact on the island, with its community of only six hundred native Palauans, poses acute issues of h…
After the Typhoon
In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best preserved of …
Maritime adaptations and dietary variation in prehistoric Western Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral in understanding early human colonizations and cultural adaptations, especially in the Arctic—one of the last areas of North America to be permanently inhabited. However, evidence for early subsistence practices in Western Alaska varies, particularly with regards to the emergence, importance, and intensity of sea mammal hunting. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope d…
The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic
Arctic genetics comes in from the cold Despite a well-characterized archaeological record, the genetics of the people who inhabit the Arctic have been unexplored. Raghavan et al. sequenced ancient and modern genomes of individuals from the North American Arctic (see the Perspective by Park). Analyses of these genomes indicate that the Arctic was colonized 6000 years ago by a migration separate from the one that gave rise to other Native American …
Preliminary archaeoentomological analyses of permafrost-preserved cultural layers from the pre-contact Yup'ik Eskimo site of Nunalleq, Alaska
Dog-human dietary relationships in Yup'ik western Alaska
Stable carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope analysis of permafrost preserved human hair from rescue excavations (2009, 2010) at the precontact site of Nunalleq, Alaska
The reconstruction of diet and subsistence strategies is integral to understanding hunter-gatherer societies in the past, and is particularly of interest in high latitude environments as they can illuminate human-environmental interactions and adaptations. Until recently, very little archaeological research had been undertaken on the Bering Sea coasts of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and relatively little is known about precontact lifeways in this r…
Reconstructing caribou seasonal biogeography in Little Ice Age (late Holocene) Western Alaska using intra-tooth strontium and oxygen isotope analysis
The palaeobiogeography of key prey-species can provide valuable insights into animal-human interactions, human subsistence activities and landscape use in the past. In many contemporary indigenous Arctic societies, caribou (Rangifer tarandus spp.) are an important seasonal subsistence species, and recent climatic shifts have influenced the seasonal and spatial distribution and migrations of herds. The impact of larger scale climatic change on thi…
Early Medieval Shellfish Exploitation in Northwest Europe
Coastal shell middens represent a well-known element of the archaeological record of island and coastal regions across the world and shellfish have been an important resource for subsistence since the mid Holocene. However, the factors that influence shellfishing remain poorly understood and in many regions investigations into the role of shellfish gathering often have remained focused on prehistoric examples to the detriment of shell middens of …
Early medieval shellfish gathering at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire
From 2010 to 2014, extensive shell middens were excavated at the Sands of Forvie, Aberdeenshire, and the wider landscape explored through a programme of soil and geophysical survey. The middens were dated to the 1st millennium AD and appear to represent intensive gathering and cooking of shellfish, particularly mussels. To date, few middens of the scale of the Forvie examples have been identified in Scotland, but the middens share some parallels …
Nunalleq
In this paper, we present an overview of the most recent results of the ongoing research on the Nunalleq site in Southwestern Alaska, a late pre-contact Yupik settlement. This endeavor is a long-term project that has taken place in the context of the threat that the combined effects of climate change poses to archaeological heritage in the sub-Arctic. Recent climate-change research highlights local involvement and monitoring as the way forward, a…
Bridging Past and Present
This article examines precontact Yup’ik masks, maskettes, and mask fragments recently recovered from the Nunalleq site (16th–17th century AD) near the village of Quinhagak, Alaska. Remarkable in their number, size, and variety of designs, the Nunalleq masks, which represent spirits, humans, and animals, indicate a very active ceremonial life among the residents of Nunalleq settlement. This paper combines archaeological, ethnographic, and oral his…
Pre-contact adaptations to the Little Ice Age in Southwest Alaska
The reconstruction of diet, subsistence strategies and human-animal relationships are integral to understanding past human societies, adaptations and resilience - especially in the circumpolar Arctic. Even in relatively recent periods, climatic excursions may have posed specific challenges for hunter-gatherer groups living at latitudinal and climatic extremes, and archaeological research in Arctic North America is increasingly looking to better u…
The Old Village
Centred on the underresearched precontact archaeology of southwest coastal Alaska, the Nunalleq project is a decade-long collaboration between the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak and the University of Aberdeen. The Nunalleq archaeological site, like countless others in the Arctic, is being rapidly destroyed by the combined effects of global warming. Newly thawed permafrost soils are extremely vulnerable to rapid marine erosion from rising sea levels …
Investigating the Utility of Birds in Precontact Yup'ik Subsistence
Birds have been an integral part of traditional Yup'ik lifeways in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, southwest Alaska, both economically and symbolically. From a subsistence point of view, the rich ethnographic record for the region highlights the importance of this resource as a critical seasonal food and a source of raw materials for clothing and tools. Little is known of bird exploitation in precontact Yup'ik society, however, as a result of limited …
Activity Areas or Conflict Episode? Interpreting the Spatial Patterning of Lice and Fleas at the Precontact Yup'ik Site of Nunalleq (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries AD, Alaska)
Archaeoentomological research at the precontact site of Nunalleq (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD), Southwest Alaska, has identified hundreds of lice and fleas that infested both the human inhabitants of the site and their canine companions. As lice are host specific, staying attached to the host's hair or fur during the totality of their lifecycle, they are generally considered excellent indicators of activity areas. Fleas, however, are r…
Les pointes de projectiles polies du site de Nunalleq (village d'Agaligmiut), sud-ouest de l'Alaska
La fouille du site de Nunalleq (GDN-248) en territoire yup'ik a révélé une succession d'au moins trois niveaux allant vers 1570-1630 après J.C. à 1645-1675 après J.C. correspondant à plusieurs phases de construction et d'habitation d'une maison semi-souterraine de l'époque précontact du village historiquement appelé Agaligmiut. Les occupations du site s'inscrivent dans le cadre historique des Bow-and-Arrow Wars, et le dernier niveau concerne just…
The Fabric of Basketry
More than two thousand archaeological grass artifacts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century have been recovered from Nunalleq (GDN-248), an archaeological site located near the village of Quinhagak, southwest Alaska, in eight seasons of fieldwork at the site. This growing collection of basketry and cordage provides unprecedented insights on the use of grass artifacts in precontact Yup'ik households. Permafrost soils have preserved …
Hunted and Honoured
The precontact lifeways of Yup'ik people in Southwest Alaska were poorly known until the 2009-2018 excavations at the Nunalleq site near the village of Quinhagak. Until recently, the site dating from around AD 1400-1675 had been locked in permafrost that secured the extraordinary preservation of organic artefacts and faunal materials. As in many other hunter-gatherer communities across the North, animals were economically and culturally central t…
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact (Nunalleq, GDN-248)
L'exploitation du bois de caribou chez les peuples yupiit pendant la période précontact restait assez méconnue avant la mise au jour du site de Nunalleq (sud-ouest alaskien). Exceptionnel par la richesse et la préservation de ces niveaux d'occupation, ce gisement a livré plus de 3400 vestiges d'industrie osseuse dont l'étude est en cours. Les modalités d'approvisionnement en bois de caribou, ainsi que les modes de fabrication et d'utilisation des…
Honouring ancestry, celebrating presence – the grand opening of the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center
Archaeology (19 works) · Geography (18 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (17 works) · Indigenous Studies and Ecology (15 works) · Ecology (11 works) · History (9 works) · Biology (8 works) · Subsistence agriculture (8 works) · Agriculture (7 works) · Arctic (7 works)