Aron L. Crowell
Director ASC Alaska Office/ Anthropologist

Dr. Aron L. Crowell is the director of the Arctic Studies Center's Alaska office in Anchorage, where he is responsible for cultural and archaeological research, exhibitions and educational programs. A special feature of this work is that Native communities and organizations have joined as partners in many of ASC's Alaska projects along with museums, universities and government agencies. Aron's research specialties include indigenous adaptations to coastal environments, the history of interaction between Alaska Natives and Europeans, historical archaeology, museum-based anthropology and oral history.

Aron came to study the arctic through his early interests in geology and natural history. As an undergraduate in anthropology at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, D.C., he took part in archaeological research expeditions to Labrador and southern Africa. He completed an M.A. in anthropology at GWU and went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. As a graduate researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, he co-curated the international traveling exhibition Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska and edited the exhibition catalog with William Fitzhugh. His PhD research in Alaska focused on an historical study and excavation at Three Saints Harbor, one of the earliest Russian colonial settlements in Alaska, and was published as Archaeology and the Capitalist World System: A Study from Russian America (1997). Currently, he directs interdisciplinary studies of coastal environments and cultural history of the Gulf of Alaska, with a special focus on the Kenai Peninsula (Archaeology and Coastal Dynamics of Kenai Fjords National Park, 1998).

Aron has utilized the ASC's Alaska office as a means to develop collaborative study and exhibition of the Smithsonian's extensive collections from the region. He worked with Alutiiq communities of southern Alaska to develop the traveling exhibition Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People (Crowell, Steffian, and Pullar 2001), which joins anthropological and historical scholarship with the insights and perspectives of Alutiiq Elders, educators and writers. Currently, he is collaborating with Elders from all parts of the state on the Alaska Collections Project, which will include a website, community consultations and exhibitions, all aimed at bringing Alaska's cultural heritage objects back to the community.

Click here to download Dr. Crowell's CV.