Dr. Gabriel Yanicki is Curator of Western Archaeology at the Canadian Museum of History and an adjunct research professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
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. He is particularly interested in the role of gaming and gambling in mediating intergroup conflict and building social ties.
Gabriel earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Alberta in 2019, working under the supervision of Dr. Jack Ives—a Crow Canyon webinar presenter in 2022—at Utah’s Promontory Caves. As a member of the Promontory research team, he offered a resolution to the “Promontory problem” by using ceramics and women’s gaming materials to show interaction between Fremont and Promontory-culture contemporaries in the 13th century AD.
His ongoing research has included work with Elders and knowledge keepers from First Nations in southern Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan related to ancient meeting and gaming places and the archaeology of traditional games. He is the author of Old Man’s Playing Ground: Gaming and Trade on the Plains/Plateau Frontier, published by the Canadian Museum of History and University of Ottawa Press.