Previous Education

M.A. (Archaeology), Memorial University, 2014

Supervisors

Dr. Oscar Moro Abadía
Dr. Michael Deal

Keywords

Rock art, landscape archaeology, Maritime Algonquian culture, relational ontology, photogrammetry, RTI.

Research statement

My Ph.D. research focuses on the contents and contexts of the rock art of the Canadian Maritimes in order to discuss its role in Indigenous societies in the past.

Combining formal archaeological techniques (survey, computational photography and GIS analysis) with informed ethnohistorical and ethnographic data, the petroglyph sites are investigated at various scales - from motif, to panel, to site, to landscape setting - in order to articulate the different functional and ideological levels at which these phenomena operated. Such an approach may inform how traditional Indigenous concepts of landscape, the environs of the rock art site, the material conditions of the rock itself,  as well as the content and composition of the images engraved, combine to make socially significant places in the landscape.

I hope that my research can contribute to narratives attempting to understand precontact Indigenous cultural life in the Maritimes, as well as how Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik and Pestomuhkati First Nations of the region adapted to the arrival of Europeans from the 16th century onwards.

Contact

Email: bwpt48@mun.ca