The Archaeology Team is directed by Professor Scott Hamilton of the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University. Kevin Brownlee of the Manitoba Museum co-led the team from 2017-2020, and continues to work with the team. The team will conduct fieldwork at six sites identified by the community as the setting for each of the stories with a field crew of archaeologists, student researchers, and community members. The team will build upon existing collections and research in the central boreal forest of Canada. Community members will be the primary source of information on landscapes and site use. The Archaeology Team will record oral history on the sites and document the places using still photos and videos of sites and adjacent areas and aerial photography and videography using drones.
In addition, the team will conduct research in archival and museum collections to contextualize their fieldwork; the Manitoba Museum cares for over 500,000 artifacts from northern Manitoba archaeological sites recovered over the past 50 years. These collections have been the basis of numerous research projects; this project will apply new types of analysis including AMS dating, residue and sourcing analysis on these collections which will advance our knowledge of this area and enrich the books. The team will also acquire or create replicas and reproductions of artifacts (some through 3D printing) for use in exhibits and EduKits; and digitize the tools from the Nagami Bay Woman’s burial to support the development of the books, ancillary texts, and exhibits.
The results of their work will be available for use by all other project teams, including the picture-book illustrators, the digital text designers, and the curriculum development team.
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Scott Hamilton
Team Leader
Scott Hamilton is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University. He specializes in the pre-contact archaeology and post-contact ethnohistory of northern Plains and Subarctic. His research also includes community-based heritage research with northern Ontario First Nations communities, and has recently expanded to address the utility of new technologies in archaeology.
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Jill Taylor-Hollings
Team Leader
Currently, Jill is an adjunct professor and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University with the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak SSHRC partnership grant project. She works on building archaeological information for interpretive sidebars in the books, teachers’ guides, and apps. She is also researching some of the pottery from the Manitoba Museum that was found in Asiniskaw Īthiniwak traditional territory.
Since moving to NW Ontario in 2001, Jill has been working for Lakehead University in different capacities including sessional lecturing and research assistantships while occasionally taking on cultural resource management projects. She is also President-Elect for the Ontario Archaeological Society and previously was on the executive of the Thunder Bay Chapter since 2007.
Jill is passionate about studying, protecting, and promoting Canada’s heritage. Her PhD (University of Alberta, 2017) focused on archaeological research with Lac Seul, Little Grand Rapids, and Pikangikum Anishinaabe communities and Ontario Parks personnel along the Miskweyaabiziibee (Bloodvein River) in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park, which is now part of the Pimachiowin Aki UNESCO World Heritage site. She also completed a Masters of Arts at the University of Saskatchewan and Bachelor of Arts Honours at Brandon University in archaeology. Her research interests include precontact pottery, Indigenous archaeology, and lithic raw material studies. Jill also enjoys replicating traditional technology such as pottery, other containers, textiles, beading, and leatherwork. She has over 25 years of academic, CRM, and museum experience in four Canadian provinces and Tasmania.
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Clarence Surette
Technician
Clarence Surette is an archaeology technician and curator in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University. He is also the current president of the Thunder Bay Chapter of the Ontario Archaeological Society. Clarences lives with his wife Jen and two children in Thunder Bay.
After moving from New Brunswick to Thunder Bay in 2001, Clarence earned an HBA in Anthropology and a MSc in Geology from Lakehead University. Over the last 20 years, Clarence has worked on various archaeological projects both in the field and lab. Most notably, he has worked extensively with Dr. Matthew Boyd, in the same department, investigating the ancient usage of maize, wild rice and other foods in NW Ontario and the prairie provinces. Besides archaeobotany, Clarence has developed research interests in geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, experimental and digital archaeology. His role in the Six Seasons Project has been to digitize pottery and other artifacts from Northern Manitoba (on loan from the Manitoba Museum) by creating 3D models for research and teaching purposes. While working with other archaeology team members at Lakehead University, he has been mentoring students and training some on how to complete carbonized residue analysis. This method is used to try and determine what people were cooking or storing in pots.
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Chris McEvoy
Technician
Christopher McEvoy is an archaeologist, researcher, and professional photographer from Thunder Bay, Ontario. With his first archaeological dig dating to 2009, Chris completed a HBA in Anthropology (2014) with a research focus on the study of gunpowder residues on artifacts recovered from northwestern Ontario. In 2018, Chris graduated from Lakehead’s MES program where he examined the capabilities of consumer-grade sonar for documenting inundated archaeological sites.
As part of the Six Seasons project, Chris has been working with Dr. Scott Hamilton, Professor of Anthropology at Lakehead University, and Kevin Brownlee, Curator of Archaeology at The Manitoba Museum. He is tasked with helping create 3D models of artifacts, as well as performing residue analysis on artifacts associated with the Six Seasons project.
In his spare time, Chris enjoys scuba diving, photographing wild places, and kayaking.
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Steph Skelton
Archaeology Team (2023-2026)
My name is Steph Skelton (they/them). I graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2020 with a BSc. hon Bio-Anthropology. I am now a part of the Six Seasons archaeology team (Lakehead University), as a graduate student at the master’s level. My work is part of an effort to establish how archaeologists can best determine past human diet from archaeologically recovered ceramics, non-destructively. I’ve been interested in Six Seasons for several years now and I’m glad to now be part of this project myself. Outside of Six Seasons, I spend a fair amount of time researching and canoeing fur trade routes and working on my own experimental archaeology projects.