FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Anthropology

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Archaeology Research Program

As a program, we encourage graduate students to engage in guided individual research projects.

 

Our approach is to use theory and methods as tools for understanding the past rather than as ends in themselves. Consequently, research design is an integral part of every student’s program. We generally advocate syntheses of existing data and/or innovative collections analysis, augmented, where appropriate, with field research. Faculty research interests cover a range of societies, including hunter-fisher-gatherers, Neolithic village societies, and pre-industrial states.

 

We incorporate an array of topical interests, methods, and theoretical orientations in our work. We support graduate student research that incorporates elements of all these interests and approaches. The primary areas of faculty research expertise are in the areas of Mesoamerica, Andean South America, the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Eastern Mediterranean, but we supervise graduate student research that complements our topical interests in a wide range of geographic locations.

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Areas of Study

  • Characterization analyses
  • Coastal and fisheries studies
  • Early hominid studies
  • Political and economic organization
  • Social identities
  • Social interaction
  • Social technologies
  • Foodways
  • Resilience studies
  • Socio-environmental history and ethnoecology
  • Applied archaeology
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Methods

  • Ceramic technology
  • Compositional analysis
  • Faunal analysis
  • Lithic technology
  • Mortuary archaeology
  • Paleoethnobotanical analysis
  • GIS applications
  • Regional and landscape archaeology
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Theoretical Orientations

  • Agency and theories of practice
  • Archaeology as history
  • Archaeology as political practice
  • Cognitive and linguistic approaches
  • Multi-scalar analysis and interpretation

Centres, Facilities and Labs

Faculty

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Aubrey Cannon PhD

Professor, Anthropology

(905) 525-9140 ext. 23912

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Tristan Carter Headshot

Tristan Carter PhD

Professor, Anthropology

(905) 525-9140 ext. 23910

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Andy Roddick

Andy Roddick PhD

chair, Anthropology

Associate Professor, Anthropology

(905) 525-9140 ext. 23913

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Shanti Morell-Hart

Shanti Morell-Hart PhD

Associate Professor, Anthropology

(905) 525-9140 ext. 23909

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Associate Faculty

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James Conolly

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Eduard Reinhardt

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Henry Schwarcz

Adjunct Faculty

Christopher Ellis

Christopher Ellis

(Western Ontario) – Associate Professor (PhD Simon Fraser, 1984)

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Andrew Martindale

Andrew Martindale

(U of British Columbia) – Assistant Professor (U of Toronto, 1999)

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robert park

Robert W. Park

(Waterloo) – Associate Professor (PhD Alberta, 1989)

View Robert W. Park's Profile
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Michael Spence

(Western Ontario) – Professor (PhD Illinois, 1971)

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Gary Warrick

(Wilred Laurier U) – Associate Professor (PhD McGill)

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Theses awarded in Archaeology

Viseu, Bianca
2020 The Window on the (South)west: The Southwest Iberian Bronze Age from a Long-Term Perspective (ca. 3500 – 800 BCE)

 

Tincombe, Eric

2020 Persistent Places in the Late Archaic Landscape

 

Rennie, Lauren

2019 Running Amuq with Obsidian

 

Wildenstein, Roxanne

2018 Intensification of a Lapita fishery at the Hopoate site on Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga

 

Reilly, Sophie E.

2017 Meals in Motion: Ceramic and Botanical Investigations of Foodways in the Late Formative and Tiwanaku IV/V, Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

 

Wallace, Peter

2017 Lime Plaster Use at Late Bronze Age Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios (Cyprus): Evidence for Application-Specfiic Recipes and the Creation of Social Space

 

Rivas-Tello, Daiana

2017 Putting Pottery in Place: A Social Landscape Perspective on the Late Formative Upper Desaguadero Valley, Bolivia

 

Berube, Eloi

2017 Mixtec Foodways in Achiutla: Continuity Through Time. A Paleoethnobotanical Study Comparing the Postclassic and Early Colonial Diet

 

Carter, Kari

2016 Phosphate as an indicator of occupational intensity at shell midden sites on the central coast of British Columbia

 

Batist, Zachary

2014 Obsidian Circulation Networks in Southwest Asia and Anatolia (12,000 – 5700 B.P.): A Comparative Approach

 

Zepf, Lena

2014 The Middle and Late Woodland transition in southern Ontario: smoking culture as an index of social change in the context of sedentism

 

Schumacher, Jennifer S.

2013 Exploring Technological Style and Use in the Ontario Early Late Woodland: The Van Besien Site

 

Cook, Katherine

2011 Deathscapes: Memory, Heritage and Place in Cemetery History

 

Densmore, Nadia

2010 An Archaeological Assessment of Fisheries in Vava’u, Tonga

Woolsey, Cora

2018 A Historial Approach to Shifting Technologies of Ceramic Manufacture at Gaspereau Lake, Kings County, Nova Scotia

 

Dogiama, Triantafyllia

2017 Points of Reference: Projectile Points, Hunting and Identity at the Neolithic Catalhoyuk, Turkey

 

MacDonald, Brandi Lee

2015 Methodological Developments for the Geochemical Analysis of Ochre from Archaeological Contexts: Case Studies from British Columbia and Ontario, Canada (December 2015)

 

Freund, Kyle

2014 A Multi-Scalar Analysis of the Politics Of Obsidian Consumption in the West Mediterranean (ca. 6th – 2nd millennia B.C.)

 

Burchell, Meghan

2013 Shellfish Harvest on the Coast of British Columbia: The Archaeology of Settlement and Subsistence Through High-Resolution Stable Isotope Analysis and Sclerochronology

 

Patterson, Catherine

2013 The Heritage of Life and Death in Historic Family Cemeteries of Niagara, Ontario

 

Reimer,Rudy

2011 The Mountains and Rocks are Forever: Lithics and Landscapes of SKWXWÚ7MESH UXWUMIXW

 

Birch, Jennifer

2010 Coalescent Communities in Iroquoian Ontario