DR. WILLIAM NATHANIEL IRVING

Award: Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award

Bill Irving (1927-1987) was an internationally recognized arctic archaeologist and professor of anthropology. In 1965, Irving was an archaeologist with the National Museum of Man in Ottawa, conducting surveys and excavations in the Yukon and teaching at Carleton University.

He then took a teaching position at the University of Toronto where he became the director of the multi-disciplinary Northern Yukon Research Program.

He focused the last two decades of his career on looking for clues about where humans entered in North America.

Irving was excavating a location near Old Crow in 1966 when he became interested in the Old Crow River and Bluefish cave sites. Irving’s first paper about the Yukon appeared in 1968 and it was followed by a steady flow of publications about Yukon Beringia as he spent 17 consecutive field seasons in the Old Crow region. He always involved Old Crow residents in his work and gave them full credit for their assistance, discovery and insights.