This session seeks to evaluate the state of archaeological activism in Canada. Activism can take various forms: reshaping educational programs or heritage laws; engaging on-the-ground participation in protests; researching how today’s injustices have been shaped and left untouched by past practices; engaging with a broader public using social or traditional media outlets; developing collaborative projects and critically evaluating their outcomes; unionizing initiatives in private or academic settings; speculation as to what tomorrow could look like.

Topics can vary as well, from general concerns stemming from the capitalist and colonial structure of Canada, to the place that archaeology and bioarchaeology as practices should hold in a changing educational and socio-political climate, or to how (bio)archaeologists may engage in the day-to-day concerns of the communities that host their work.

We welcome contributions ranging from coast to coast, and from practitioners at work in archaeological and/or bioarchaeological settings. We prioritize slightly shorter papers than usual, so that more time can be devoted to increasing the workshops coverage and discussions afterwards. We consider this workshop as a step towards knitting stronger relationships between archaeological activists across Provinces and Nations, identifying their most pressing concerns, easing the sharing of knowledge and tools, and organizing at a larger scale.

Climate change is a significant threat to the places and stories in archaeology. We see the direct impacts of sea level rise, loss of sea ice, melting of permafrost, more intense storms, flooding, erosion, drought and wildfires on archaeological sites and resources. As these effects intensify, more and more archaeological sites and culturally significant places - and the stories they hold - may be damaged or lost.

We can find hope in collaboration and action. Archaeologists are working with communities, activists and other disciplines to respond to the impacts of climate change on these communities and their stories. This session will focus on these collective responses to the threats of climate change.

Historical archaeologists rely on written documents to provide contextual information on broadscale trends in resource consumption and the availability of materials. Often, this is the only approach applied to historical assemblages and subtle variations in technologies, resource procurement, reuse or raw materials procurement are not captured. While still rare in historical archaeology, analytical methods commonly used in archaeological science are beginning to fill this gap, particularly in colonial contexts where populations were establishing themselves in unfamiliar landscapes without access to stable, familiar resources. We invite papers for this session focused on analytical, novel and rare approaches to historical assemblages that go beyond associated historical written documentation and contribute to our understanding of these assemblages.

Public archaeology is an integral part of sharing the recent discoveries and changes with in protected historic properties. Archaeology in Barkerville Historic Town and Park is dynamic as it covers the need for archaeological oversight in any ground disturbing work to presenting archaeological finds to the public. Public interpretation allows for the education on archaeological and heritage conservation and why sites are important for protection. Currently the park offers two public archaeology programs, one is a journey to the Barkerville Cemetery and why it was recently declared an archaeological site. The other program was based on a recent excavation beneath the historic property’s iconic Theater Royal, where there was a significant discovery was made that allowed for the positive identification of the town's first rich mining claim.  A public program was developed to share how the archaeology was conducted during the project and the process of identifying a structure as a mine shaft with reuse for waste management. In this session I would like to share the results of this excavation. 

The Department of Archaeology Graduate (DAG) Society at Memorial University is proud to host the Student Poster Session as part of the CAA's Annual Meeting in St. John's, NL. 

This session will be a safe space for students of all backgrounds and research areas in archaeology to practice presenting a poster. 

This session is open to graduate and undergraduate students. 

Light refreshments will be provided during the session. 

I expect most people are familiar with that situation where you have an insight into some episode in the archaeological past: you feel sure you suddenly understand why something happened or how two events are connected, or you experience a vague understanding of some general process underlying some of the broad episodes in ancient human history.  Sometimes these insights come to us in the course of conversations over bar tables, which can go late into the night.  But I also expect that for most of us, those insights generally remain as vague notions: trying to write a paper or book about them would be just too time consuming and might not work out anyway.  And we have other chores, and other bar conversations, to get on with.

In this session I invite people to share some of those unformulated insights - without the tedious necessity of presenting evidence or making well-reasoned arguments.  Just tell us what your crazy idea is. And if you can do it 10 minutes (preferably) while showing us some interesting pictures, so much the better.  If you're interested in participating, contact me at ramsden@mcmaster.ca.

Archaeology has eternal love for shipwrecks, especially those with a rich cargo and a famous name. Archaeology has been slower to warm to nearshore and shoreline sites, even though these sites do not lack suitors. Recreational divers succumb to the charm of boat and ship graveyards, wharf remains and scattered jetsam in harbours and moorages. Beach-walkers, after a major storm, discover the haunting remains of a ship long hidden by sand, or dislodged from its previous resting place. Kids and families tirelessly scramble on the overgrown ruins of their favourite abandoned canal, dam, wharf or timber slide. Many people intuitively espouse these sites as a true record of a land built on wood and water. A growing community of maritime archaeologists has also recognised the inner beauty of these abundant nearshore and shoreline sites, and reflected on the special challenges facing their inventory, protection and study.

The springboard for this session is the underwater site of a 19th-century boomtown on the Saint Lawrence River, Anse-aux-Batteaux, and its sister shoreline site, the monumental ruins of the Canal de Soulanges. Students from the Université de Montréal have investitaged these sites since 2017. To build a broader session, we invite updates on nearshore and shoreline sites – from both research and heritage perspectives. We invite reports on the vital community role in reporting, monitoring and investigating these sites. We invite multi-site, regional syntheses. We invite contributions from all archaeological periods that will deepen our understanding of strategic places in shaping the fluvial, lacustrine and maritime archaeological record over time. The work of Westerdahl (1992, 2006), Sherratt (2006) and Ford (2011) on maritime cultural landscapes, seen as physical networks of transport routes, nodes and portages, may help to structure such regional, deep-time archaeological approaches.

Innu living in Labrador and eastern Québec today maintain that they are closely related to the Eeyou (Cree) and Naskapi with whom they share the Québec-Labrador Peninsula, that they have a long history of interacting with other peoples within this region (and to the south and west), and that they descend from First Nation peoples who occupied this region before and when Europeans arrived.

The archaeological record shows that First Nation peoples inhabited the coast and interior of the eastern Québec-Labrador Peninsula for at least 6,000 years before colonization. Scholars generally point to cultural continuity across much of the region over the past one to two millennia, linking present-day Innu, Eeyou, and Naskapi to their precontact ancestors. However, some contend that the Innu may be more recent arrivals in Labrador, unrelated to earlier Indigenous groups. A key question is whether archaeological evidence can show a link between the First Nation groups of the late precontact period and the Innu during colonization. The answer has significant implications for the Innu and for federal and provincial governments. 

This session invites contributors to share insights on cultural continuity over the past two millennia in the Québec-Labrador Peninsula, with a focus on its eastern and central portions. Although inspired by a recent court case involving Innu in Labrador, the session seeks a broader approach, exploring data-driven, methodological, and theoretical perspectives on questions such as: How do the archaeological and historical records document cultural continuity or discontinuity? What biases are present within these records and how are they mitigated? How are "home" territories understood and described for groups with wide-ranging settlement patterns? What role do provincial borders play in studying groups who may have moved throughout the peninsula at different times? Who interprets, revises, or retells these stories, and how do their motivations matter?