Background
Froelich grew up in eastern Montana, where he worked as a farm hand for the Rainey Brothers Ranch, otherwise known as the "R-Lazy-B".
Froelich grew up in eastern Montana, where he worked as a farm hand for the Rainey Brothers Ranch, otherwise known as the "R-Lazy-B".
He attended Yale University and taught at the University of Alaska (1935–1942), specializing in Alaskan prehistory.
During the Second World War, he worked for the United States Board of Economic Warfare. As the war began he assigned as "director of the United States. Quinine Mission in Ecuador". In 1944 he was assigned to Robert Murphy"s staff for the Allied Control Commission for Occupied Germany, part of the Foreign Services.
After the war he was appointed United States. Commissioner for the Rhine and faced with the daunting task of rebuilding Ruhr coal industry.
Later he worked as an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, eventually becoming director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He hosted the popular television show, "What in the World?", which was aimed at stumping experts as the analyzed archaeological artifacts.
Rainey"s log cabin on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in recognition of his role at the university, in 1975. Arctic
Froelich"s work spanned across four continents, but it is his early work in Arctic Alaska which is regarded as his most significant.
In September of 1936 he arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska after voyaging from Portugal to work with German naturalist Otto Geist.
Geist had collected specimens from all across the island and Froelich began his study by sorting and labeling the specimens. Come spring he began "a regular pattern of research: early summer hunting for Athapascan sites in the interior, late summer working on the tundra with Eskimos, and the rest of the time teaching and writing up his collections. In 1939 Froelich joined forces with Helge Larsen on a expedition to Point Hope, Alaska.
A place where in 1920 Knud Rasmussen found what he "thought to be the most interesting site in the American Arctic" In 1939 they were joined by J. Louis Giddings and discovered one of the largest archaeological sites in the Arctic, the Ipiutak Site, which became the type site of the Ipiutak culture.
At this point his journey led him to join a whaling crew and write what is now a well known ethnography. The value of this ethnography comes from its emphasis on the interrelatedness and combined usefulness of ethnographical and archaeological research".
