2012 News Archives
November 2012
The 39th Annual Meeting of the Ontario Archaeological Society was held November 9-11 in Windsor, Ontario and Western’s anthropology program was well-represented! Professors Chris Ellis, Neal Ferris, Lisa Hodgetts, Peter Timmins and Christine White, as well as adjunct Professor Fred Longstaffe and Professor Emeritus Michael Spence presented or were co-authors on no less than seven papers. Post-Doctoral Fellow Christopher Watts and Lab Manager Edward Eastaugh contributed to another three papers and graduate students John Dunlop, Adria Grant, Adam Hossack, James Keron, Kelly Miller and Zoe Morris were involved in another six presentations. Ellis, Timmins and Watts also organized and chaired three of the presented symposia sessions and at the meeting banquet, Professor Ellis was presented with the Ian Kenyon Memorial Award by the Society. It is given to a professional archaeologist who over his/her career has “made an exceptional contribution to the development of Ontario archaeology and who has earned acclaim for excellence and achievement.” Five other individuals who have obtained MA or PhD degrees from Western’s graduate program contributed to yet another seven papers.
Please join us in congratulating Anthro PhD student Ian Puppe who has just been awarded The Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award for the Best Student Paper at this year's Ethnohistory Conference. His winning paper is entitled "No Home on the Range: Ruin, Reclamation, and Revitalization in Algonquin Provincial Park." This is a huge achievement and well deserved!
October 2012
Mummy with mouthful of cavities discovered. Researchers led by Andrew Wade, then at the University of Western Ontario, used new high-resolution CT scans of his teeth and body, reporting their dental-packing discovery recently in the International Journal of Paleopathology. Researchers said this is the first known case of such packing treatment done on an ancient Egyptian. [MORE]
August 2012
The latest issue of the Cambridge University Press Journal Ancient Mesoamerica (July 2012; Volume 23, pages 1-7) provides an autobiographical sketch of Professor Emeritus Michael W. Spence entitled “Finding a Balance”. The sketch details his career and many contributions to Mesoamerican (and Ontario!) archaeology. Mike is only the fourth Mesoamerican archaeologist to be honoured for their career contributions in this way in that journal.
Two news stories about the project that Namir Ahmed (MA candidate) is leading at the Sustainable Archaeology Facility. They call it the Sustainable Archaeology Animation Unit, for the past summer they've been digitizing artifacts and visualizing Southern Ontario history via CG recreations and interactive environments. Michael Carter and Jenn Morgan, Phd candidates at Western and of course Neal Ferris were instrumental in setting this up.
Link to the CTV story
Link to the LFP Story
Mariacarmen Vega, Bioarchaeology PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology is one of eight Western graduate students have been named recipients of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, Canada’s most prestigious scholarship for doctoral students. She will use the scholarship to support her research in a project entitled: A history of violence: 3000 years of interpersonal and intergroup conflicts from the Late Pre-ceramic to Republican times in the Peruvian Andes: A bioarchaeological perspective. For more information about his award and project click [HERE].
July 2012
Dr. Chris Ellis, Professor of Anthropology at Western was recently quoted in the London Free Press on the potential significance of human remains found at two locations in southwestern Ontario.
April 2012
Western Anthropology department members Drs. Andrew Nelson and Neal Ferris discussed the research potential of the Sustainable Archaeology Facility and particularly the new Micro-Ct Scanner housed at that facility, in Western University’s Gazette newspaper. This Canadian Foundation for Innovation funded facility is located adjacent to the Western-based Museum of Ontario Archaeology. [MORE]
April 2012
Congratulations go out to three of our PhD candidates: Dina Najjar, Megan Lowthers, and Candie Thomas who have been awarded the 2012 Africa Institute Student Mobility Award.
April 2012
Canadian archaeologists Brian Deller and Christopher Ellis have been studying the Crowfield site in southwestern Ontario since the 1980s. In a recently published report, the researchers make the bold claim that the area is “one of the most important Paleo-Indian sites ever reported.” [MORE]
February 2012
Anthropology Department's Graduate Program Coordinator, Diane Belleville, was awarded the 2012 Western's Award of Excellence. The internal award is designed to recognize the tremendous work staff performs in support of providing an outstanding Western Experience. [MORE]
January 2012
Ancient Egyptians paid special attention to the organs of their dead, embalming them so they would continue to function in the afterlife. Now it seems they did the same for sacrificed ibis birds, and even packed their stomachs with food so they wouldn't go hungry. This story features Andrew Wade - a grad student in Anthro. [MORE]
January 2012
Matthew Beaudoin was awarded the Society of Historical Archaeology's 2012 Student Paper Award for their conference in Baltimore, Maryland. It's an award presented for best student paper at the conference. The papers title was "Continuously Colonizing the Colonized: Essentialized Colonial Legacies within the Archaeology of Colonialism" and was presented at the 2012 Society for Historical Conference held in Baltimore, Maryland between Jan 4-8, 2012.
January 2012
Two Western researchers have won international grants for their projects, one of which will make the university the "ground zero" of mummy studies. Using CT scans to help him look inside mummies, researcher Andrew Nelson and his team are trying to determine cultural, political and foreign influences in ancient Egypt. [MORE]
