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The Department of Anthropology offers faculty and students access to state of the art facilities for learning, teaching, and research. You should familiarize yourself with Health and Safety requirements. An FAQ can be found HERE.

Departmental Laboratory/Research Facilities

The department houses eleven facilities dedicated to anthropological teaching and research. Notable amongst these facilities is a new Digital Media Lab, a gathering space for faculty members, visiting fellows and graduate students who share a common interest in conducting computer-aided research. The laboratory is used for: 1) conducting primary computer-aided research including use of GIS and making ethnographic audio and film records; 2) organizing training sessions on specific equipments and software; and 3) teaching computer-based upper-level courses and graduate seminars. A separate computer lab is available exclusively for Graduate Student use. The department also houses the Centre for Research and Teaching of Native Languages. The Centre publishes the TEXT+ monograph series of scholarly studies of text and discourse in Native languages, sponsors conferences and workshops, and maintains a library of research materials on Canadian Native Languages emphasizing unpublished materials. Special projects have been completed under the auspices of the Centre providing teaching materials, dictionaries, and other language materials for use by Canadian Native groups.

The remaining eight facilities are labs dedicated to research and teaching in biological anthropology and archaeology. In addition to an x-ray facility/darkroom, these labs include a zooarchaeology lab housing extensive comparative collections with an emphasis on fauna of the Arctic and Great Lakes area, labs used for sample preparation for isotopic and genetic analyses, a lab with a microscopic analysis research facility, and a lab with extensive comparative collections and analytical equipment dedicated to Great Lakes archaeology. The department labs house a wide-range of analytical equipment ranging from a Piximus bone densitometer to thin-sectioning equipment to clinical, polarizing and dissecting microscopes. The department also maintains a wide range state of the art equipment used in fieldwork such as three total stations, two Topcon Hyperlite+ High Precision GPS unit mapping systems, a Garmin Legend GPS unit and a gradiometer/magnetometer.
 

Other Campus Facilities

Our students also have access to a number of other on campus facilities. These include:

• Laboratory for Stable Isotope Science (under the direction of Fred Longstaffe, Department of Earth Sciences). Dr. Christine White of Anthropology has been involved in the major funding for this facility. Consequently, it is the best equipped isotopic facility in Canada for anthropological applications.
• Experimental Analysis Laboratory (directed by Penny King, Department of Earth Sciences)
• Genomics Facility (under Robert Hegele, Robarts Research Centre)
• Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF/SIMS)
• Synchroton Radiation Analysis (SRA) and Ultra-Trace Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP/MS) trace elements facility (directed by Ron Martin, Department of Chemistry)
• Global Information/Global Positioning (GI/GPS) Facility in Geography (under the leadership of Peter Ashmore)

Off Campus Facilities

• Museum of Ontario Archaeology
  The Museum of Ontario Archaeology is one of the three largest and most significant “Research Institutes” at Western and houses one of the largest, as well as best documented, archaeological collections from Ontario. It is one of only four Museums in Canada dedicated solely to archaeology and it is the only one dedicated to Ontario archaeology. In addition to extensive lab facilities and equipment for analysis the Museum houses a library that has many rare archaeology books and manuscripts. The Museum is located in northwest London next to the Lawson prehistoric village, a large 15th Century Neutral Iroquoian village that has been declared of provincial and national significance. The village has been partially reconstructed and has ongoing excavations.
• Peruvian Research Centre
  The University is currently developing a Guañape Research Centre in Peru, a base camp that researchers from The University of Western Ontario will be able to use when conducting fieldwork at the nearby Gallinazo Group, a major archaeological site located in the Virú Valley. The research facility is currently being constructed in the village of Puerto Moorin, a fishing village only 5 km away from the archaeological site. When completed, it will include a 0.5 ha adobe bricked research compound containing dorms, labs, artifact/record storage space, a garage and living areas/kitchen. Western personnel, led by Dr. Jean-François Millaire, will use the facility while conducting archaeological excavations during the summer months and this centre will also be used throughout the year by grad students conducting laboratory analyses on the collections temporarily stored on the premises.
   

Information for Students

• Anthropology @ Western
• Undergraduate
• Graduate
• Interdisciplinary Minor Programs
• Careers in Anthropology: An Overview
• Anthropology Society
• Faculty Publications