About the Archaeology Centre
The Archaeology Centre is a community that brings archaeologists and people interested in archaeology together across the University of Toronto and beyond. We aim to provide a centralized hub of information about opportunities (e.g., field schools, scholarships, etc.) and events (e.g., lectures, interest groups, symposia, etc.) related to archaeology. We are not an academic unit at the university and do not offer courses for credit or degree programs. Please do not email the Archaeology Centre with questions about degree requirements. If you are interested in academically pursuing archaeology at the University of Toronto, please see the following departments for more information and contacts, as well as UofT’s Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization (MACS):
- Department of Anthropology
- Department of Art History
- Department of Classics
- Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
- Department of Earth Sciences
Regular Interest Groups
The Faunal Interest Group
The group has convened by-weekly (times TBA; in the Archaeology Centre boardroom AP140 at 19 Ursula Franklin Street) since September 2007. The group discusses new and old issues of zoo archaeological method and theory. For more information, please contact Alicia Hawkins at alicia.hawkins@utoronto.ca.
Next meeting:
Our next FIG meeting will be next Friday, and we are really looking forward to welcoming David Orton who will be speaking on the RATTUS project. He has provided a couple of readings for us. This will be an on-line presentation (Zoom link below). If anyone wishes to attend in the Arch Centre boardroom, please email me so I can make arrangements.Title:Rats and the Archaeology of Trade, Urbanism, and Disease in Historic Europe: Introducing the RATTUS projectDescription:Both originally from Asia, black and brown rats (Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus) have spread globally thanks to their ability to exploit anthropogenic niches around settlements and to disperse with human transport. As such, their history is closely linked with human settlements and economies, and the RATTUS project aims to understand this history in Europe over the past c.2500 years.After introducing the project objectives and methods, the talk will present initial results regarding the dispersal of both black and brown rats – during the Iron Age and early modern periods respectively – and the ebbs and flows of rat distribution in response to broad economic trends across the Roman and medieval periods. The relationship between rat distribution and major plague events is also considered.For readings:
- McCormick 2003. ‘Rats, communications, and plague: toward an ecological history’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 34(1): 1-25.
- Yu et al. 2022. ‘Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history’. Nature Communications, 13: 2399. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30009-z
- Munshi-South et al. 2024. ‘The evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats (Rattus norvegicus)’, Science, 385(6715): 1292-1297. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp1166
Topic: FIG Guest Speaker – Dr. David Orton
Time: Mar 28, 2025 12:00 PM America/Toronto
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/89107026566
Meeting ID: 891 0702 6566
NEW: The Collections Interest Group
Join the Collections Interest Group and discuss a wide array of topics regarding the care, preservation, and public education of artifacts and histories in a collections setting. Whether you are interested in a career in the museum world, plan on interacting with collections in some capacity, or simply find an interest in the curation and preservation of histories, this group is for you. Topics of discussion look to explore the relationship between ‘the institution’ which houses objects and the communities which interact with its stories, the role of ever-evolving technology in a collections/museum setting, and sustainable collections management that serves present, past, and future generations. Interested? Please contact Savanna for more information (s.buehlmanbarbeau@mail.utoronto.ca).
Next meeting: April 3rd at 3-4pm in AP140
This month, we’re talking repatriation: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ll look at two readings which address the current state of Canada’s repatriation laws: Feld’s “Museum reconciliation and reparations: Canadian context” (2025), and Hook’s “Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains in Canada: An Analysis of the Issue and Relevant Policies” (2023). Conversations will be held around the critique and hopeful futures for these policies in a museum/collections setting – and archaeology’s role in all of it.
March Talks
The AIA (Toronto society) presents: “The Archaeology of Tibetan Buddhism,” by Prof. Mark Aldenderfer (Anthropology and Heritage Studies, University of California Merced). Tuesday, March 25th at 6:10 pm EST, in AP130 (Archaeology Centre, 19 Ursula Franklin St). Registration information to follow.
March Talks
The Archaeology Centre presents: “Proxies, Affiliates, and Uneasy Territorialities: Exploring the Chronology and Materiality of Chimú Imperial Expansion,” by Dr. Robyn Cutright (Marlene and David Grissom Professor of Anthropology, Centre College). Friday March 28th , 2025, at 3:00 pm in AP130 (at 19 Ursula Franklin St). Recently, Parker Van Valkenburgh has drawn attention to the importance of considering the materiality of imperial power as it is enacted on and through specific, historically constituted social and physical landscapes. Drawing on his evocative discussion of the alluvial deposits left by subsequent waves of empire on the north coast, and Khatchadourian’s concepts of affiliates and proxies as categories of political materials that act outside or alongside the direct agency of imperial sovereigns, this talk examines the expansion of the Chimú empire in late prehispanic coastal Perú. I present my ongoing research in two northern provinces that represented different kinds of imperial peripheries: the Jequetepeque Valley, one of the earliest valleys to be conquered and consolidated, but where local continuities are well-documented in both rural communities and the multiethnic chaupiyunga, and the Chira Valley, located in the far northern reaches of the empire in an ecologically and politically transitional landscape. While at first glance the extent and date of Chimú imperial expansion seem to be well-known, this talk will demonstrate how territory and chronology become slippery in the face of attempts to define strict material correlates of imperial presence, especially given the roles of local participants and landscapes in shaping empire at distant and ethnically distinct frontiers.
April Talks
The Archaeology Centre presents: “A Geometric Morphometric Approach to Regionalism in Roman Theatre Architecture,” by Dr. John Sigmier (Psotdoctoral Researcher, University of Toronto). Friday, April 11 at 3:00 pm in room AP130 at 19 Ursula Franklin St. Gallo-Roman theatre – a group of buildings constructed between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE in Rome’s northwestern provinces – are difficult to typologize because they exhibit numerous non-canonical architectural features. Architectural historians have traditionally relied on qualitative description to characterise these theatres’ irregular ground plans, but this method is limiting when drawing comparisons across a large corpus of buildings. Geometric mophometrics, an approach that represents shapes as coordinate scatters for statistical analysis, can overcome some of these limitations. By digitizing a set of plans using geometric morphometrics software and then running a series of statistical tests on the morphometric dataset, I identify several theatre shape clusters that appear to correspond geographically to major watersheds in the Roman Northwest. I argue that these clusters are plausibly explained as products of regional communities of architectural practice that developed around waterways as communicative arteries.
