Otto W. Geist

Otto William Geist (December 27, 1888 – August 2, 1963), a.k.a. Aghvook, was an archaeologist, explorer and naturalist who worked in the circumpolar north and for the University of Alaska for much of his adult life.

Early life Geist was born on December 27, 1888 in Kircheiselfing, Bavaria to Franz Anton Geist and his wife. He was their eleventh child and had fourteen siblings. His father was a school superintendent, as well as an amateur archaeologist, and Geist grew learning about Hallstatt, La Tene, and Roman archaeology. He was educated at traditional Bavarian schools, as well as by his brother and at a Benedictine school in the Tyrol, where he learned mechanical drawing techniques. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he enlisted for army service again, and after receiving his U.S. citizenship, was sent to France to serve as a truck driver. Some drawings were also included in Geist's report Archaeological Excavations at Kukulik, published by the United States Department of the Interior.

Geist became close with the natives of St. Lawrence Island, and even lived with notable Eskimo hunter, Otiyahok. He served on Otiyahok's whaling crew and was given the name "Aghvook", and was one of few white people allowed to engage with the cultural ceremonies and rites associated with whaling, death, and birth. He also worked closely with Froelich Rainey, who went on to establish the UAF anthropology program.

In the late 1920s, Geist began collecting Pleistocene fossils from mining areas for the University and the Fairbanks Exploration Company, as well as the Frick Laboratory based at the American Museum of Natural History. By 1935, he was largely focused on paleontological work, and sent thousands of bones to the museum, including a large collection of polar bear skulls and a baby Alaskan mammoth skeleton, which was given the name Effie. The polar bear skulls were later realized as funerary objects, making their excavation illegal under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The repatriation process began in 2013.

In 1936, Geist conducted research on the Black Rapids Glacier, then traveling at the rapid rate of a mile per month. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, and the Arctic Institute of North America.

Geist Road, a section line road marking the southern boundary of the UAF campus, as well as a major arterial road on the west side of Fairbanks and the road connecting the Johansen Expressway to the Parks Highway, was also named for him.