Circling back to Adak: Diane Hanson’s life as an archaeologist

"I'm an archaeologist. I just retired this spring, but I'm already working on a proposal to go back out to Adak."

For Diane Hanson, Ph.D., professor emerita of anthropology, retirement is not the end of a career discovering Alaska's prehistory, but rather the opening of a new chapter. Hanson is currently working on a proposal to return to Adak Island in the Aleutian Islands to investigate an archaeological site she discovered decades earlier: "I need to get back out there. And that's why I need to get my job out of the way."

Hanson's career in the sciences grew out of a childhood passion for the ocean. "When I was very young, we lived down by Bellingham, Washington," Hanson explained, "I wanted to be an oceanographer. I was interested in intertidal fauna." Then Hanson's family moved from coastal Washington to Fairbanks, Alaska, far from the ocean. "There's no intertidal fauna in Fairbanks, so I kind of gave that up."

The move to Fairbanks, however, provided Hanson with opportunities to explore new interests as a high school student. "It was during the [construction of the trans-Alaska oil] pipeline, so there [were] some really excellent teachers, the best money could buy, up there," Hanson recalled, "They had a Latin teacher [and] a teacher on ancient civilizations, and they got me interested in ancient cultures."

At age 16, Hanson began to think seriously about which future career path she wanted to pursue. "I sat down and said, 'What are the things you're interested in? You love working outside. You're interested in ancient cultures,'" Hanson related, "and so I decided archaeology was probably the best fit, which is probably the most intelligent decision I made at 16."

While her high school courses focused on ancient Western civilizations, Hanson chose to focus her education on the Indigenous cultures of Alaska: "We're in Alaska and some of the most amazing cultures in the world are right here." Hanson enrolled in anthropology courses at Anchorage Community College, the precursor to the University of Alaska Anchorage.

While studying at Anchorage Community College, Hanson had the opportunity to volunteer with Douglas Veltre, an instructor at the time (and now UAA professor emeritus), to label artifacts that originated from Atka Island, sparking her interest in the archaeology of the Aleutian Islands. Eventually Hanson realized she could combine her childhood interest in oceanography with her new passion for ancient cultures by specializing in the zooarchaeology of the North Pacific.

Hanson continued studying the cultures of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, earning an associate degree from Anchorage Community College in 1975, a bachelor's degree from Western Washington State College in 1977, a master's degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1981 and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada, in 1991.

However, her journey was not without challenges. "When you were a girl in the 1970s, you weren't expected to go on. You weren't going to go to grad school. This is just a lark until you get married," Hanson explained, discussing her first archaeological field school in Washington state, "So I kept getting pulled out of the action. So when we excavated a burial, for example, they took me out and put the guys in… But I'm a girl, so when we got to a site [I was sent] to the edge of the site… and since then I've always been looking for the edges."

Throughout her ensuing career, Hanson had opportunities to travel across Alaska working as an archaeologist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in addition to her role as an associate professor of anthropology at UAA. While on a BIA archaeological survey of Adak Island in 1983, Hanson's first saw the archaeological site that still fascinates her today: "We wandered up this hill and while we were talking to the other crew and sat down, I said, 'we're sitting on an archaeological site,' and they've been telling us there's no archaeological sites in from the coast."

While facing skepticism at the time that the features in the landscape she observed were of ancient, Indigenous origin (and not a more recent, World War II-era disturbance), Hanson never forgot the site. She was eventually able to return with a crew to Adak Island in 2007 ("we're funding this with airline miles," Hanson recalled) and verified that the upland feature was indeed an archaeological site. Her crew also discovered several other sites in surrounding upland areas of Adak: "We did a survey in that area, and we started finding sites all over the place." These upland sites defied the conventional wisdom that archaeological sites in the Aleutian Islands would only be found close to the coasts.

While Hanson retired from UAA earlier this year and was honored with professor emerita status, she doesn't see her retirement as the end of her investigations, but rather a new opportunity. She is currently working on a grant proposal along with Roberta Gordaoff, M.A., anthropology '16, to fund another expedition to Adak Island. Hanson plans to explore the upland sites she discovered and understand why they were built so far away from the coast. "I'm not done. I've got stuff to do," explained Hanson, "I've got a sign on a big map of Adak that says 'Adventure Awaits.'"

"There's an Athabaskan, or Dene, idea that time travels in a spiral," Hanson stated, reflecting on her career, "but the spiral keeps coming back and coming back and coming back. Based on what I've been going through, I totally see that. From wanting to be an oceanographer as a kid, going to Adak in 1983, and then seeing this upland site, everything just keeps spiraling back… These things that happen to you create the opportunities in your future."