Canadian archaeologist
Bruce Graham Trigger
OC
OQ
FRSC
(June 18, 1937 ? December 1, 2006) was a
Canadian
archaeologist
,
anthropologist
, and
ethnohistorian
. He was appointed the James McGill Professor at McGill University in 2001.
[3]
Life
[
edit
]
Born in
Preston, Ontario
(now part of
Cambridge
), Trigger obtained his undergraduate education at the
University of Toronto
earning a B.A. in
anthropology
in 1959.
[3]
Trigger received a doctorate in
archaeology
from
Yale University
in 1964.
[3]
He was taught by
George Peter Murdock
and
Benjamin Irving Rouse
.
[4]
He was co-supervised by
William Kelly Simpson
and
Michael D. Coe
.
[5]
He became friends with
K. C. Chang
, a Chinese archaeologist, who joined the department during his final year of his PhD at
Yale
.
[4]
His doctoral work was funded by a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Award.
[6]
His PhD thesis, entitled "History and Settlement of Lower Nubia," argued that four principle parameters determined the density of Nubia over 4,000 years: the height of floods, agricultural techniques, foreign trade and wars.
[1]
He spent the following year teaching at
Northwestern University
[3]
and subsequently took a position as assistant professor,
[3]
with the Department of
Anthropology
at
McGill University
in
Montreal
, and remained there for the rest of his career.
[3]
He was married to Dr Barbara Welch,
[7]
a
British
geographer
trained in
Physical Geography
, who, despite being less-known than her husband, was considered an equally sophisticated thinker.
[2]
Pamela Jane Smith writes in her obituary of Bruce Trigger that "It is little known outside Canada that Bruce had a deep and profound influence on the development of archaeology in his homeland and is seen as one of the great Canadian intellectuals along with
Harold Innis
,
Northrop Frye
and
Marshall McLuhan
."
[2]
Contributions
[
edit
]
Bruce Trigger contributed to a wide range of fields and wrote on many aspects of archaeology. He published over 20 books including the book "A History of Archaeological Thought" which became required reading in the discipline.
[8]
Leo Klejn
(2008:4, (Lev Samuilovich Klejn, known as Leo Klejn, who was an internationally acclaimed Russian archaeologist) who corresponded with him for a considerable period of time wrote of him "Since then I always felt (and said) that if there were another archaeologist in the world whose positions were the most similar to mine, it would be Bruce Trigger."
[9]
Klejn described (2008:4) Bruce and his contributions after his death as: "Today no other scholar is able to skillfully embrace the whole multifaceted range of activities of this modest and calm man. There must have been something unique about his spirit or personality that inspired and equipped him to deal creatively with American Indians, Ancient Egypt, world civilizations and the theory and
history of archaeology
, and it is interesting to try to understand some of the principles underlying his explorations of these very different themes."
[9]
The topics of his thirteen PhD students (in order
R. F. Williamson
(1979);
Alexander D. Von Gernet
(1982);
Robert J. Pearce
(1984);
Peter A Timmons
(1984);
Brian D. Deller
(1988); Gary Warrick (1990);
William R. Fitzgerald
(1990);
Frances L. Stewart
(1997); Eldon
Yellowhorn
(2002);
Robert I. McDonald
(2002);
Stephen Chrisomalis
(2003);
Jerimy Cunningham
(2005) and
Alicia Colson
(2006) reflect his wide ranging interests. He co-supervised two PhD candidates with
Fumiko Ikawa-Smith
and Robin Yates (
Katrinka Reinhardt
1997) and with Colin Scott (
Audra Simpson
2003) .
Archaeological fieldwork
[
edit
]
While Trigger studied for his doctoral degree at
Yale
he was also the Chief Archaeologist for the 1962 Yale/Pennsylvania
excavations
at Armina
West in Egyptian
Nubia
. These
excavations
were directed by
William Kelly Simpson
. Bruce was also the Staff Archaeologist with the 1963-1964 Oriental Institute Sudan Expedition for the
UNESCO
campaign.
[10]
Ethnohistory
[
edit
]
In Canada, he was arguably best known for
The Children of Aataentsic
, his two-volume study of the
Huron peoples
, 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
Huron-Wendat Nation
as an honorary member. Trigger would later reiterate some of the key arguments of the book in
Natives and Newcomers
, a
polemical
work aimed at educating laypeople. In
Natives and Newcomers
Trigger, writing in the tradition of
Franz Boas
, 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
[
edit
]
Trigger's book
A History of Archaeological Thought
investigates the history of the development of theory and
archaeology
as a discipline. The first version was published by Cambridge University Press in 1989.
[11]
This book was described as "the first ever to examine the history of archaeological thought from medieval times to the present in world-wide perspective"
[12]
A second and expanded edition of this book was published in 2006.
[12]
The second book "introduces new archaeological perspectives and concerns. At once stimulating and even-handed, it places the development of archaeological thought and theory throughout within a broad social and intellectual framework."
[12]
He published a number of articles on this topic:
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1981 Anglo?American Archaeology
World Archaeology
13(2: Regional traditions of archaeological research 1): 138?155.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1983 American Archaeology as Native History: A Review Essay.
The William and Mary Quarterly
40(3): 413?452.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1984 Archaeology at the Crossroads: What's New?
Annual Review of Anthropology
13: 275?300.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1984 Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.
Man
New Series, 19(2): 355?370.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1986 Prospects for a World Archaeology.
World Archaeology
18(1) Perspectives in World Archaeology: 1?20.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1994 Ethnicity: An Appropriate Concept for Archaeology.
Fennoscandia Archaeologica
XI: 100?103.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1995 Expanding Middle Range Theory.
Antiquity
69: 449?458.
- Trigger, Bruce Graham 1998 ‘The Loss of Innocence’ in Historical Perspective.
Antiquity
72(277): 694?698.
Archaeological theory
[
edit
]
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
ancient Egypt
and
Mesopotamia
,
Shang
of China,
Aztecs
and Classic
Maya
of Mesoamerica,
Inka
of the
Andes
, and
Yoruba
of
Africa
. In 2004 a session at the
Society for American Archaeology
(SAA) conference was dedicated to the research of Bruce Trigger.
Trigger also made significant contributions to theory and debates on
epistemological
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
stereotypes
of Native American peoples and expressed the dominant
political
ideas and interests of Euro-American culture. For example, prior to 1914
Euro-American
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
Americas
only recently, and this "fact" explained their alleged lack of cultural development. Some early Euro-American archaeologists explained away the contrary evidence of
earthwork
mounds
as the creations of "more enlightened" non-native peoples who had been exterminated by Native American
savages
. These popular beliefs, supported by the claims of early archaeologists, served to legitimate the displacement of native peoples from their homelands.
John Wesley Powell
, who led the
debunking
of the
mound builder
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
[
edit
]
He received a number of academic awards and numerous other honours such as a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada
from 1976, he became a recipient of their
Innis-Gerin Medal
in 1985.
[3]
In 1979 he was awarded the
Cornplanter Medal
.
[13]
In 1991, he was recipient of the Quebec Government's
Prix Leon-Gerin
. The Quebec Government in 2001 made him an Officer of the
National Order of Quebec
while five years later, in 2005, he was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada
.
His most cherished honour was his adoption in 1989 into the Great Turtle Clan of the
Wendat
(Huron) Confederacy, with the name Nyemea.
[14]
Trigger died of
cancer
on December 1, 2006. His archive is kept at the
McGill University Archives
.
[15]
Selected bibliography
[
edit
]
- 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]
. 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
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Klejn, Leo S. (2008).
"Bruce Trigger in World Archaeology"
.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
.
18
(2): 7.
doi
:
10.5334/bha.18202
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Smith, Pamela Jane (2007).
"Necrology: A reflection on Bruce and Barbara Trigger based on oral-historical interviews and personal correspondence"
.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
.
17
(1): 52.
doi
:
10.5334/bha.17116
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Patterson, Thomas (2014). "Trigger, Bruce Graham". In Smith, C. (ed.).
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology
. New York: Springer Verlag. p. 75.
doi
:
10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1298
.
ISBN
978-1-4419-0465-2
.
- ^
a
b
Klejn, Leo (2008).
"Bruce Trigger in World Archaeology"
.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
.
18
(2): 6.
doi
:
10.5334/bha.18202
.
- ^
Phillips, Jackie S. (2007).
"Bruce Graham Trigger (1937-2006)"
(PDF)
.
Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin e.V
. Heft 18: 219.
- ^
Phillips, Jackie S. (2007).
"Bruce Graham Trigger (1937-2006)"
(PDF)
.
Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin e.V
. Heft 18: 219.
- ^
Smith, Pamela Jane (2007).
"Necrology: A reflection on Bruce and Barbara Trigger based on oral-historical interviews and personal correspondence"
.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
.
17
(1): 53.
doi
:
10.5334/bha.17116
.
- ^
"Bruce Trigger, 1937-2006 News"
.
McGill University
. Newsroom Institutional Communications, McGill University
. Retrieved
23 April
2020
.
- ^
a
b
Klejn, Leo (2008).
"Bruce Trigger in World Archaeology"
.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
.
18
(2): 4.
doi
:
10.5334/bha.18202
.
- ^
Phillips, Jackie S. (2007).
"Bruce Graham Trigger (1937-2006)"
(PDF)
.
Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin e.V
. Heft 18: 219.
- ^
Trigger, Bruce G. (1989).
History of Archaeological Thought
. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN
9780521338189
. Retrieved
24 April
2020
.
- ^
a
b
c
Trigger, Bruce G. (2006).
A History of Archaeological Thought
. Cambridge University Press Books.
doi
:
10.1017/CBO9780511813016
.
ISBN
9780521840767
. Retrieved
24 April
2020
.
- ^
Fenton, William N.
(April 1980). "Frederick Starr, Jesse Cornplanter and the Cornplanter Medal for Iroquois Research".
New York History
.
26
(2). New York State Historical Association: 186?199.
JSTOR
23169465
.
- ^
Phillips, Jackie S. (2007). "Bruce Graham Trigger (1937-2006)".
Mitteilungen der Sudanarchaologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin e.V
. Heft 18: 220.
- ^
"Bruce Trigger Fonds"
.
McGill Library Archival Catalogue
. Retrieved
2018-02-01
.
- 2003
Artifacts and Ideas, Essays in Archaeology
. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ.
- 2003 (1980) Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian. In
Artifacts and Ideas
. Originally published in
American Antiquity
45:662-676.
- Williamson, Ronald F. and Michael S. Bisson (eds)
- 2006
The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger: Theoretical Empiricism
. McGill-Queens's University Press, Montreal.
External links
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