Prof. Bruce G. Trigger

Research Interests

In recent years most of my research time has been divided between studying the history of archaeology and carrying out a comparative study of early civilizations in order to see in what ways they were similar and different.

My recently published UNDERSTANDING EARLY CIVILIZATIONS (2003) sheds important light on the forces that shape social change and especially on the respective roles played by cultural traditions, biologically-grounded cognitive tendencies, and practical reason. These findings call into question the adequacy of current explanations of human behaviour.

I intend to devote the next several years to studying the history of archaeology with the aim of revising and updating A HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL THOUGHT. My two interests converge in their implications for general theory construction in anthropology and provide a basis for critiquing and transcending postprocessual approaches in archaeology.

Books

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.

(with J.F. Pendergast) Cartier's Hochelaga and the Dawson Site, Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1972.

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. 15, 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.

(with B.J. Kemp, D. 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. I], North America, 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.

© 2001, Anthropology Department, McGill University
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/anthro/
Last update : September 24, 2003