Research Description

I conduct research in two areas. The first is coastal British Columbia where I conduct archaeological research into the emergence of cultural complexity among pre-European cultures of the Strait of Georgia (Coast Salish) and western Vancouver Island (Nuu-chah-nulth). I specialize in zooarchaeology, subsistence and seasonality and interpret these data in terms of sociocultural complexity. The second area I research is the fur trade of western Canada. Again, zooarchaeological data are an important component of this research, but it also involves much history, archival research and material culture. I am particularly interested in the growth of the Red River Settlement and the emergence of cultural complexity in an emerging, multicultural settlement.

Teaching Description

Human Origins and Antiquity

Faunal Analysis

Advanced Faunal Analysis

Archaeological Theory

Cultural Resource Management (undergraduate)

Cultural Resource Management (graduate)

Historical Archaeology

Public/Media (Non-Technical) Description

I am interested in the indigenous cultures of Canada's west coast, particularly those of Vancouver Island. I look at the animal bones they left behind in their occupation sites in order to understand what they ate, where they got it, what time of the year they got it, and how this way of making a living changed over time. This research addresses a larger issue of how cultures change and how, in other parts of the world, similar processes led to the domestication of plants and animals by people who also developed increasingly elaborate social structures.

I am also interested in the fur trade of western Canada. The conflict and competition between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company and the growth in size and complexity of the Red River Settlement are my main research foci. Most of my field excavations have been at Upper Fort Garry. I find this work important because it shows how Canada emerged, how Winnipeg was founded and how it grew.