Contents. Life Born in (now part of ), Trigger received a doctorate in archaeology from in 1964. His research interests at that time included the history of archaeological research and the comparative study of early cultures. He spent the following year teaching at and then took a position with the Department of Anthropology at in, and remained there for the rest of his career. Contributions Ethnohistory He was arguably best known for The Children of Aataentsic, his two-volume study of the, a work which remains the definitive study on the history and ethnography of that people. The Children of Aataentsic earned Trigger numerous accolades, including adoption by the as an honorary member.

• History Of Archaeological Thought Trigger 2006
• A History Of Archaeological Thought

Trigger would later reiterate some of the key arguments of the book in Natives and Newcomers, a work aimed at educating laypeople. In Natives and Newcomers Trigger, writing in the tradition of, argued that the colonial and Aboriginal societies of early Canada all possessed rich and complex social and cultural systems, and that there are no grounds to argue that any society of early Canada was superior to the others. History of archaeology Trigger's book A History of Archaeological Thought investigates the development of theory and archaeology as a discipline. A second and expanded edition was published in 2006. Archaeological theory In Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study Trigger uses an integrated theoretical approach to look at the meaning of similarities and differences in the formation of complex societies in and, of China, and Classic of Mesoamerica, of the Andes, and of Africa. In 2004 a session at the (SAA) conference was dedicated to the research of Bruce Trigger.

Trigger also made significant contributions to theory and debates on issues within archaeology. The 2003 book 'Artifacts and Ideas' is a collection of previously published papers that trace the history and development of these contributions. In particular were his arguments about how the social and political contexts of research affect archaeological interpretation. One essay entitled 'Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian' documents how archaeological interpretation reflected and legitimated of Native American peoples and expressed the dominant ideas and interests of Euro-American culture. For example, prior to 1914 stereotypes resulted in a prehistory that saw native cultures as being primitive and inherently static.

It was commonly believed that Native Americans had not undergone any significant developmental changes and that they were incapable of change. It was believed that natives had arrived in the only recently, and this 'fact' explained their alleged lack of cultural development.

Some early Euro-American archaeologists explained away the contrary evidence of as the creations of 'more enlightened' non-native peoples who had been exterminated by Native American. These popular beliefs, supported by the claims of early archaeologists, served to legitimate the displacement of native peoples from their homelands., who led the of the myths, not coincidentally also recognized that great injustices had been perpetuated against Native American peoples.

Although Trigger recognized that Euro-American political interests tended to influence and distort interpretations of the archaeological record, he also argued that the accumulation of evidence served to correct these distortions. Honours and awards In 1979 Trigger was awarded the. In 2001, Trigger was made an Officer of the. In 2005, he was made an Officer of the. A Fellow of the, he won their in 1985. In 1991, he won the Quebec government's. Trigger died of cancer on December 1, 2006.

His archive is kept at the McGill University Archives. Selected bibliography.

History and Settlement in Lower Nubia. New Haven: Yale University Publications in Anthropology, 1965. The Late Nubian Settlement at Arminna West. New Haven: Publications of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt, 1965. Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory.

New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. The Huron: Farmers of the North. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, revised edition, 1990. The Impact of Europeans on Huronia. Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1969. The Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West. New Haven: Publications of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Egypt, 1970.

Pendergast) Cartier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972.

History Of Archaeological Thought Trigger 2006

The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1976. Nubia Under the Pharaohs. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978 (U.S.

Edition New York: Columbia University Press). Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. Northeast, Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. Time and Traditions: Essays in Archaeological Interpretation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978.

Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980. O'Connor, and A.B. Lloyd) Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Natives and Newcomers: Canada's 'Heroic Age' Revisited.

Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1985. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. New York: Columbia, 1993. The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas vol. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003.

Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. A History of Archaeological Thought.

2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. References.

The development of archeological thought is analyzed by examining archeological history to determine to what extent its trends reflect archeologists' personal & collective interests. List of Illustrations Preface The relevance of archaeological history Classical archaeology & antiquarianism The beginnings of scientific archaeology The imperial synthesis Culture-historical archaeology Soviet archaeology Functionalism in Western archaeology Neo-evolutionism & the new archaeology The explanation of diversity Archaeology & its social context Bibliographical Essay References Index. This book, as its title says, is a history of archaeological thought. The book opens with a short explanation of Triggers own theoretical stance, which serves to explain the underlying dismissive attitude towards certain other theoretical positions. Following that, the beginnings of archaeology in various countries are explored. For the main part, it offers a very condensed overview over the entirety of archaeological theory.

It follows the US/UK discourse on the topic in some detail, focusing on prehistoric archeology. Historic archaeologies are mostly left out. Although Trigger discusses this discrepancy, readers interested in historic archaeologies might feel that a lot of the issues discussed in this book do not apply to them (which is wrong), or apply to them in a very different way. Additionally, while Trigger very valiantly tries to incorporate non-English literature and even non-Western perspectives, they are still severely underrepresented. This can hardly be blamed on the author, as the current book as it is already incorporates a vast amount of literature, and Trigger does offer the starting point for several other perspectives both in the text and the bibliography. The book ends with a conclusion by Trigger, in which he discusses limitations, problems and methods of contemporary archaeology.

A History Of Archaeological Thought

This part is among the most complex of the book, and assumes that the reader has understood the last few hundred pages of archaeological thought. It is also the part that will be of interest to readers already familiar with archaeological thought, and want to know Trigger's opinion on the subject. The commented and exhaustive bibliography is a good starting point for anyone interested in specific problems. I found the book relatively accessible and easy to read. It is however not the beginner-friendly entry into archaeological theory that some reading lists make it appear to be. Even though most terms are (briefly) explained, without general knowledge about the history of science readers will probably feel overwhelmed by the many -isms that appear and reappear throughout the book.

Without some idea about archaeological literature it will also be hard to understand its relevance. A further complication is that the book actually follows a narrative, in the sense that it tries to explain the archaeological thought as a gradual development. The constant cross-referencing within the text means the individual chapters do not stand alone too well, and it is advisable to read them in order. 'A History of Archaeological Thought' is therefore of interest mainly to advanced students of archaeology and scientists from other disciplines, trying to understand where archaeology came from and where it currently stands.

Despite any claims to the contrary, it is not an introduction to archaeological theory, and it will probably be terribly boring for anyone not interested in scientific thought. Well, I ended up reading it in less than a year. The breaks in reading were many.

I don't feel particularly qualified to write a review about it, as approximately the entirety of everything I know about the history of archaeological thought is what I learned in this book-I don't know how to evaluate its content in a way external to it itself. I would say that it seemed like Trigger tried to strike an interesting balance between summarizing 300ish years of different schools of thought in archaeology, including ongoing controversies, and putting forth his vision for an ideal theory of archaeology. In the last few chapters, in particular, he tries to find a middle way between hyper-relativists and hyper-positivists, and has pretty strong words for both extremes. The last 20 pages really successfully recapitulate a lot of the rest of the content of the book.

They were a nice way to finish reading it, as they left me feeling like I had a better grip of the broader themes that he was dealing with than I had had when lost in the very specific details. My current interest in archaeology is stimulated by a desire to situate myself to do collaborative research with archaeologists in the future, or to incorporate archaeological methods/findings into my work in historical linguistics. There was no discussion of interdisciplinary work with linguists, which was a little bit disappointing to me, but also is not obviously an issue of theory, but rather of practice, so I can see it not having as much of a place in this book. Additionally, collaboration between linguists and archaeologists may not have been as prominent in 1989, when my edition of this book was published, as it is now.