|
 Click here for List of Anthropology M.A. Thesis Publications FEATURES: Focus Trent: Elspeth Ready (2011) page 3 Graduate Profiles: Teresa Wagner (2010) Michelle Bissonnette (2009) Upcoming Episode of CSI: Miami to Feature Work of Trent Graduate Student: Stephanie Marciniak (2008) SPOTLIGHTS: Dagmara Zawadzka (2007) Thomas Dormon (2007)
The MA in anthropology at Trent provided a foundation to pursue a PhD in archaeology. At the University of Pittsburgh I had the opportunity to do fieldwork in Panama and Colombia and to direct my own survey and excavations in Central Pacific Panama. My dissertation was focused on some of the issues that I engaged with in my Master’s thesis, especially craft production in complex societies. This has led to a collaborative and multi-scalar project in the Río Parita Valley of Central Panama (el Proyecto Arqueológico Río Parita) investigating the factors involved in the emergence of chiefdoms in this region. - Adam Menzies, M.A., 2003 After completing my M.A. in Art and Archaeology in Trent's Department of Anthropology, I went on to complete a PhD at McMaster University under Dr. Richard Preston. This was followed by a SSHRC post-doctoral grant supervised by Dr. Ruth Phillips at Carleton and by Dr. Joan Vastokas at Trent. As a part-time lecturer at Trent, I was subsequently awarded a SSHRC research grant to continue my research on the historical ethnographic material culture of the James Bay Cree. Over the years this research has taken me to innumerable museums in Europe, Britain and North America as well as the opportunity to do limited fieldwork and to work with the Crees on several occasions. Greater than thirty published articles document the results of this research, as does the CD-ROM compiled specifically for the Crees. The opportunity to present conference papers internationally has taken me to places I might not have otherwise visited. Without a doubt, the strong academic and research-oriented foundation provided by the M.A. programme at Trent has engendered exciting and rewarding experiences over the years.
My Trent Masters fieldwork was on the Labrador coast, an experience that stimulated a broader interest in northern societies and "complex" hunter-gatherers. My doctoral research (Massachusetts, Amherst) took me to northern Norway where, among other things, I looked at Stone Age chert sources and lithic technological organization. I then spent five years at Memorial University, during which I re-engaged with Labrador archaeology, including serving as a consultant to the Labrador Inuit Association for a large environmental impact project. During those years I experienced some rewarding winter and summer hunting trips with my Inuit friends. I then took a position in comparative Arctic archaeology at the University of Tromsø in northern Norway, where I have been for 10 years, teaching in Norwegian. During that time I have returned to Labrador on several occasions and have done fieldwork on Russia's Kola Peninsula. Over the years I have also worked twice on Greenland and once on Baffin Island (with Trent alumnus Doug Stenton). I am currently involved in north Norwegian research: early post-glacial colonisation (an International Polar Year project), the prehistory of the poorly known inland region, Stone Age shellfish exploitation, and the social and environmental context of pit-house settlements ca. 2000 BC. Within the coming year my monograph on the archaeology of the Nain region, Labrador (incorporating my old M.A. material), will be published by the Smithsonian's Arctic Studies Center. At some point I will have an article on circumpolar archaeology in the Oxford Handbook of Archaeology, and our Russian work will eventually be published in Arctic Anthropology. I am also preparing a theoretically-informed research history of early North American Arctic archaeology. I probably never would have done all this if I didn't have the freedom at Trent to foolishly and naively go out and do my own fieldwork in Labrador.
After getting married in August of 2005 (thus the name change from Miles
to Biittner), I started my PhD programme at the University of Alberta. I
am working with Dr. Pamela Willoughby on Stone Age lithics from
Tanzania. In 2006, we conducted field work in the Iringa
Because I spent so much time making my Master's thesis look pretty with my own in-line illustrations, I left archaeology to pursue a career in information design. Currently, I work at IBM as an information developer for online help, and work remotely from Peterborough so that I can enjoy more time with my daughter. My current career may not be at all related to archaeology, but having a Master's degree is definitely what got my foot in the door. I spend my spare time writing creatively, painting, and canoeing. Visit my web portfolio here.
Since I left Trent in 1999, I did a second, course-based Masters at SUNY-Buffalo, and then transferred to the University of California at San Diego in 2004, where I completed my PhD in Mesoamerican Archaeology. My PhD research was done under the auspices of Dr. Gyles Iannone's SARP project at Minanha in western Belize, but I've also done some work over the past few years at Pusilha, in southern Belize with my PhD supervisor, Dr. Geoff Braswell.
Since leaving Trent in 1999 I have completed my PhD in Anthropology at McMaster University, a SSHRC Postdoc in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario, and am now a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg (since January 2006). My field research continues to focus on the seasonal lifeways of the earliest cultures occupying the Canadian Arctic, specifically in the interior of southern Baffin Island. I completed a two-year project focusing on Palaeo-Eskimo inland land use strategies on southern Baffin, which was funded by a SSHRC Northern Research Development Grant. This work formed the basis for my current research project in the same area, which is funded by a three-year SSHRC Standard Research Grant. I am also expanding my research focus to include a project in the Boreal Forests of northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. This is a collaborative project between myself, Kevin Brownlee (Principal Investigator, Archaeology Curator, Manitoba Museum), Mostafa Fayek (Department of Geological Sciences, University of Manitoba), Margaret Hanna (Royal Saskatchewan Museum), and the community of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba. This is a three-year initiative funded by a variety of institutions, including SSHRCs Aboriginal Research Grants Program, and we hope to further expand it as a long-term community-university research alliance project (CURA). The work focuses on the long-term use of several large quartz quarries in the Granville Lake district, and how this toolstone was being used and traded by local populations over the millennia.
I started my Ph.D. in Archaeology at Memorial University of Newfoundland in January. My Ph.D. research focuses on Pre-Contact and Proto-Historic Mi'kmaq contact across the Cabot Strait with the Island of Newfoundland. Presently, there the Mi'kmaq have a land claims dispute with the Government of Newfoundland, who say the Mi'kmaq were brought to Newfoundland by the French during the Historic period, and thus do not have any title to the land. My research will look at both sides of the coin and my fieldwork will bring me to Cape Breton, the southwest coast of Newfoundland (around Cape Ray), and St. Paul Island (a small abandoned island in the middle of the Cabot Strait). I have also started a archaeological consulting firm,The Central Archaeology Group.
|