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Cannon Aubrey, Professor

photo of Aubrey Cannon

Aubrey Cannon

Professor

Faculty
Department of Anthropology

Area(s) of Interest:

Biography

Research & Supervisory Interests

My general interests include archaeological theory, and the archaeology of hunter-gatherer settlement and subsistence, marine-based economies, mortuary practices, and material fashion. I am engaged in fisheries archaeology research on the Northwest Coast and Tonga, which is looking at the temporal and spatial variability of fisheries in relation to environmental, social, demographic, and ideological structures and events.

I also have a research interest in the dialectical relationship between material culture and individual and social attitudes and perceptions. My research has looked at fashions in adornment and housing, but is focused on Victorian gravestones and prehistoric mortuary practices.

I am also more broadly interested in the relationship between archaeology and history, and in the writing of archaeological histories that explicitly incorporate conceptions of structure, agency, and contingency.

I am interested in taking MA or PhD students looking to pursue research that falls within my areas of research interest and expertise: hunter-fisher-gatherers, fisheries archaeology, Pacific Northwest Coast, historical cemeteries, mortuary practice, material culture studies. Prospective students should contact me in advance to discuss their specific interests.

 

Completed PhD Supervision Titles and Current Employment

Maribeth S. Murray, PhD 1996 - Economic Change in the Palaeoeskimo Prehistory of the Foxe Basin, N.W.T
Current Employment – Director of the Arctic Institute of North America, and Professor, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary

Paul Prince, PhD 1998 - Settlement, Trade and Social Ranking at Kitwanga, B.C.
Current Employment – Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Grant MacEwan University.

Brooke Milne, PhD 2003 - Peopling the Pre-Dorset Past: A Multi-Scalar Study of Early Arctic Lithic Technology and Seasonal Land Use Patterns on Southern Baffin Island
Current Employment - Vice Provost and Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Alberta.

Rhonda R. Bathurst, PhD 2005 - Health and Settlement Implications of Parasites from Pacific Northwest Coast Archaeological Sites
Current Employment – Executive Director, Museum of Ontario Archaeology, London.

Neal Ferris, PhD 2006 - In Their Time: Archaeological Histories of Native-Lived Contacts and Colonialisms, Southwestern Ontario, A.D. 1400-1900
Current Employment - Professor and Lawson Chair in Canadian Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario.

Jennifer Birch, PhD 2010 - Coalescent Communities in Iroquoian Ontario
Current Employment - Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia.

Rudy Reimer, PhD 2012 - The Mountains and Rocks Are Forever: Lithics and Landscapes of Skwxwu7mesh Uxwumixw
Current Employment - Associate Professor, Departments of Archaeology and First Nations Studies, Simon Fraser University.

Meghan Burchell, PhD 2013 - Shellfish Harvest on the Coast of British Columbia: The Archaeology of Settlement and Subsistence through High-resolution Stable Isotope Analysis and Sclerochronology
Current Employment - Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Catherine Paterson, PhD 2013 - The Heritage of Life and Death in Historical Family Cemeteries of Niagara, Ontario
Current Employment – Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Ottawa.

Brandi Lee MacDonald, PhD 2015 - Methodological Developments for the Geochemical Analysis of Ochre from Archaeological Contexts: Case Studies from British Columbia and Ontario, Canada
Current Employment – Assistant Research Professor, Archaeometry Division, University of Missouri Research Reactor Center; Adjunct Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri.

Cora Woolsey, PhD 2017 - A Historical Approach to Shifting Technologies of Ceramic Manufacture at Gaspereau Lake, Kings County, Nova Scotia.
Current Employment – Research Assistant, University of New Brunswick

Education

PhD Cambridge, 1987

Teaching

Search course offerings in Anthropology

 

 Courses (2022-2023)

Fall

  • ANTHROP 3X03 - Zooarchaeology
  • ANTHROP 4HF3 - Archaeology of Hunter-Fisher-Gatherers
  • ANTHROP 714 - Readings in Archaeology 

Winter

  • ANTHROP 3DD3 - Archaeology of Death
  • ANTHROP 4CL3 - Archaeology of Climate Change and Culture

 

 Courses (2021-2022)

Fall:

  • ANTHROP 2O03 - Themes in the Archaeological History of North America
  • ANTHROP 3DD3 - Archaeology of Death
  • ANTHROP 4G03 - Independent Research I

Winter:

  • ANTHROP 2C03 - Archaeology of Environmental Crisis and Response
  • ANTHROP 4E03 - Advanced Topics in Archaeology I 

 

 

 

 

 

Research

Recent Publications

*** - undergraduate when paper submitted; ** - graduate when paper submitted; * - McMaster alumnus

Morin, Jesse, Thomas C.A. Royle, Hua Zhang, Camilla Speller, Miguel Alcaide, Ryan Morin, Morgan Ritchie, Aubrey Cannon, Michael George, Michelle George, and Dongya Yang 2021 Indigenous sex-selective salmon harvesting demonstrates pre-contact marine resource management in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, Canada. Scientific Reports 11, 21160 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00154-4


Cannon, Aubrey, **Roxanne Wildenstein, Debbi Yee Cannon, and David V. Burley 2019 Consistency and Variation in the Focus, Intensity and Archaeological Histories of Lapita and post-Lapita Fisheries in Ha'apai, Kingdom of Tonga. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 14(4):515-540. 

Cannon, Aubrey and Andrew P. Roddick 2019 Infrastructure and Innovation in Canadian Archaeological Science. Society for Archaeological Science Bulletin Online. http://socarchsci.blogspot.com/2019/07/forum-funding-opportunities-and.html                                                                                                                                                            

*Burchell, Meghan, Marianne P. Stopp, Aubrey Cannon, Nadine Hallmann and Bernd R. Schöne 2018 Determining Seasonality of Mussel Collection from an Early Historic Inuit Site, Labrador, Canada: Comparing Thin-Sections with High-Resolution Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In Press.

Cannon, Aubrey 2018 Less Invasive Approaches to Site Investigation. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 42:20-27.

Carter, Kari and Aubrey Cannon 2018 Phosphate as an Indicator of Occupational Intensity at Shell Midden Sites on the Central Coast of British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 20:468-475.

Royle T.C.A., D. Sakhrani, C.F. Speller, V.L. Butler, R.H. Devlin, A. Cannon, D.Y. Yang
2018 An Efficient and Reliable DNA-based Sex Identification Method for Archaeological Pacific Salmonid (Oncorhynchus spp.) Remains. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193212. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193212

**Carter, Kari and Aubrey Cannon 2017 Phosphate as an Indicator of Occupational Intensity at Shell Midden Sites on the Central Coast of British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In Review.

*Burchell, Meghan, Marianne P. Stopp, Aubrey Cannon, Nadine Hallmann and Bernd R. Schöne
2017 Determining Seasonality of Mussel Collection from an Early Historic Inuit Site, Labrador, Canada: Comparing Thin-Sections with High-Resolution Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In Press.

Cannon, Aubrey and *Meghan Burchell 2017 Reconciling Oxygen Isotope Sclerochronology with Interpretations of Millennia of Shellfish Seasonality on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Quaternary International 427:184-191.

Cannon, Aubrey and *Katherine Cook 2015 Infant Death and the Archaeology of Grief. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25:399-416.

Cannon, Aubrey 2014 Historical and Humanist Perspectives. In Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter Gatherers, edited by Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan and Marek Zvelebil, pp.92-103. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

**Burchell M, N. Hallmann, B.R. Schöne, A. Cannon and H.P. Schwarcz 2014 Biogeochemical Signatures of Marine and Estuarine Bivalves: Implications for Interpreting Seasonality at Shell Midden Sites Using High-Resolution Stable Isotope Sclerochronology. In The Cultural Dynamics of Shell-Matrix Sites, edited by M. Roksandic, S. Mendonça de Souza, S. Eggers, M. Burchell and D. Klokler, pp. 241-249. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press

Cannon, Aubrey 2013 Revealing the Hidden Dimensions of Pacific Northwest Coast Shell Middens. In Shell Energy: Mollusc Shells as Coastal Resources, edited by G.N. Bailey, K. Hardy, and A. Camara, pp. 21-34. Oxford: Oxbow.

*Ferris, Neal, John Welch, and Aubrey Cannon 2013 Towards a Sustainable Archaeology. In Archaeology and Sustainability, edited by Scarlett Chiu and Cheng-hwa Tsang, pp. 387-410. Taipei: Center for Archaeological Studies, Research Center for Humanities and Social Science, Academia Sinica.

**MacDonald, Brandi Lee, Ron Hancock, Aubrey Cannon, Fiona McNeill, *Rudy Reimer, and Alice Pidruczny 2013 Elemental Analysis of Ochre Outcrops in Southern British Columbia, Canada. Archaeometry 55:1020-1033.

**Burchell, Meghan, Nadine Hallmann, Andrew Martindale, Aubrey Cannon and Bernd R. Schöne 2013 Seasonal Patterns and Intensity of Shellfish Harvesting on the Northern Coast of British Columbia. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 8:152-169.

**Burchell, Meghan, Aubrey Cannon, Nadine Hallmann, Bernd Schöne, and Henry Schwarcz 2013 Refining Estimates for the Season of Shellfish Collection on the Pacific Northwest Coast:  Applying High-Resolution Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis and Sclerochronology. Archaeometry. 55:258–276.

**Burchell, Meghan, Aubrey Cannon, Nadine Hallmann, Henry Schwarcz, and Bernd Schöne. 2013 Inter-site Variability in the Season of Shellfish Collection on the Central Coast of British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science 40:626-636.

Cannon, Aubrey (Editor) 2011 Structured Worlds: The Archaeology of Hunter Gatherer Thought and Action. London: Equinox.

Cannon, Aubrey 2011 Cosmology and Everyday Perception in Northwest Coast Production and Reproduction. In Structured Worlds: The Archaeology of Hunter Gatherer Thought and Action, edited by Aubrey Cannon, pp. 54-68. London: Equinox.

Moss, Madonna L. and Aubrey Cannon (Editors) 2011 The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.

Cannon, Aubrey, Dongya Yang and Camilla Speller 2011 Site-Specific Salmon Fisheries on the Central Coast of British Columbia. In The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries, edited by Madonna L. Moss and Aubrey Cannon, pp. 57-74. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.

Cannon, Aubrey and Dongya Y. Yang 2011 Pushing Limits and Finding Interpretive Balance: A Reply to Monks and Orchard. American Antiquity 76:585-595.

**MacDonald, Brandi Lee, R.G.V. Hancock, Aubrey Cannon and Alice Pidruczny 2011 Geochemical Characterization of Ochre from Central Coastal British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Archaeological Science38:3620-3630Cannon, Aubrey

2009 Mortuary Expressions of Mother-Daughter Inheritance and Identity. In Que(e)rying Archaeology: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Chacmool Conference, edited by  Susan Terendy, Natasha Lyons, and Michelle Janse-Smekal, pp. 67-76. Calgary: University of Calgary Archaeological Association.

Cannon, Aubrey and **Meghan Burchell 2009 Clam Growth-Stage Profiles as a Measure of Harvest Intensity and Resource Management on the Central Coast of British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:1050-1060.

Cannon, Aubrey, **Meghan Burchell, and *Rhonda Bathurst 2008 Trends and Strategies in Shellfish Gathering on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. In Early Human Impact on Megamolluscs, edited by A. Antcsak and R. Cipriani, pp. 7-22. BAR International Series. Oxford: Archaeopress

Cannon, Aubrey and ***Nadia Densmore 2008 A Revised Assessment of Late Period (AD 1 - European Contact) Fisheries at Namu, British Columbia. Canadian Zooarchaeology 25:3-13.

Cannon, Aubrey and Dongya Y. Yang 2006 Early Storage and Sedentism on the Pacific Northwest Coast: Ancient DNA Analysis of Salmon Remains from Namu, British Columbia. American Antiquity 71:123-140.

Cannon, Aubrey 2005 Gender, Agency, and Mortuary Fashion. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F.M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, pp. 41-65. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.