William Nathaniel Irving (1927-1987)

Abstract

William Nathaniel Irving died on November 25, 1987. He was an arctic archaeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, internationally recognized as a leading scholar in arctic prehistory. His contributions were significant and appreciated during his lifetime. His initial research interests were in the Inuit cultures of northern Alaska and their antecedents, which led him to study both their ethnoarchaeology and the systematics and technology of stone implements, e.g., those of the arctic small tool tradition. His major research focus in the last two decades of his career was in searching in the northern Yukon for answers to a problem that puzzled anthropologists for over a century - when did humans enter the New World? Irving spent a good deal of time studying this topic while continuing to fulfill his university responsibilities as teacher, administrator and director of numerous graduate students. ...