Professor Bruce Trigger JUNE 18, 1937 - DECEMBER 1, 2006
Prolific archaeologist who made authoritative contributions to Egyptology and Canadian anthropology
Bruce Trigger was a leading expert in three distinct fields of archaeology: as a historian of the discipline; as an Egyptologist; and as an authority on the aboriginal cultures of ancient North America. He placed archaeology as an academic discipline and a practice within a broader context of social and cultural evolution.
Bruce Trigger was a leading expert in three distinct fields of archaeology: as a historian of the discipline; as an Egyptologist; and as an authority on the aboriginal cultures of ancient North America. He placed archaeology as an academic discipline and a practice within a broader context of social and cultural evolution.
As a historian of his discipline, Trigger was best known for his monumental History of Archaeological Thought, published by Cambridge University Press in 1989; the 2006 revised edition, which appeared just before his final illness, was in many ways a new book. It critically analysed not only the distant history of antiquarianism from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the present day, but dissected the variety of current approaches to archaeology, including the “ processual”, “post-processual”, “critical” and “feminist” variants, with even-handed expertise.
Trigger also wrote an important critical biography, Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology (1980), of the Australian Marxist prehistorian who did much to create the climate of understanding of European and Near Eastern archaeology in the mid-20th century. His other books on the philosophy and methodology of archaeology included Beyond History: The Methods of Prehistory (1968) Time and Traditions (1978), and Archaeology as Historical Science (1985).
After he gave the prestigious Context and Human Society Lectures at Boston University in 1997 he incorporated his talks and the response to them into Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (1998).
In Egyptology Trigger’s fieldwork was mainly in Nubia, notably at Arminna West. Apart from many papers in professional journals, his books and monographs in this area included History and Settlement in Lower Nubia (1965), The Late Nubian Settlement at Arminna West (1967), The Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West (1970), Nubia under the Pharaohs (1976) and Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context (1993).
His works on northeastern Amerindian and Colonial archaeology and ethnohistory were pioneering, and assured his position as Canada’s leading prehistorian. They included The Huron: Farmers of the North and The Impact of Europeans on Huronia (both in 1969), Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site (with James Pendergast, 1972), The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (1976), Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s ‘Heroic Age’ Reconsidered (1985), and Native Shell Mounds of North America: Early Studies (1986), together with numerous journal articles. He was adopted as an honorary member of the Huron-Wendat nation in recognition of his contributions to its cultural history.
Trigger’s most recent book, the substantial Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (2003) embraced Old and New World cultures with impressive breadth and depth of scholarship, and provides a global view similar to that of his History of Archaeological Thought.
Most of his dozen and a half books went into multiple editions, many into translation, and had a significant impact on archaeological thought and practice across the globe, as did his hundreds of articles.
His contributions to the archaeology of Nubia and Canada, to the history of archaeology, to archaeological theory and method, and to the broader understanding of archaeological and antiquarian studies, both within the profession and in the public arena, made Trigger one of the most influential archaeologists of his age.
Bruce Graham Trigger was born in 1937, in Preston, Ontario, and took his doctorate at Yale in 1964. He was hired by Northwestern University but after a year returned to Canada, to the Department of Anthropology at McGill University, Montreal, where he spent the rest of his career and served as Professor of Anthropology until his recent retirement.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he won its Innis-Gérin Medal in 1985 and 1991 won the Quebec government’s Prix Léon-Gérin. In 2001 Trigger was made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec and in 2005 an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC). Equally gratifying to him was the volume of tributes, The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger: Theoretical Empiricism, in which colleagues across North America placed his work into a broad perspective of intellectual history.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara Welch, whom he married in 1968, and by two daughters.
Professor Bruce Trigger, OC, archaeologist, was born on June 18, 1937. He died of cancer on December 1, 2006, aged 69
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Posts: 1549 | From: California, USA | Registered: Jan 2006
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Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko by Aaron Kamugisha (2003)
Excerpt:
The impact of the attack on the Hamitic myth by Greenberg, MacGaffey, Sanders et al. seems to have first seriously affected the scholarly approach and popular understanding of the other great African civilisation that shared North Africa with Egypt, ancient Nubia. The Egyptologist Bruce Trigger's article for the 1978 exhibition 'Africa in antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan', held in Brooklyn, captures this point well. Trigger caustically cites the 'bizarre and dangerous myths' associated with previous racist scholarship on northeast Africa. These studies were quite simply 'marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism'. In his comment on the 'racial' affinities of the people of northeast Africa, Trigger declares that 'all of these people are Africans. To proceed further and divide them into Caucasoid and Negroid stocks is to perform an act that is arbitrary and wholly devoid of historical or biological significance.' Trigger's disavowal of the 'race' concept leads him to conclude:
"The people of Nubia are an indigenous African population, whose physical characteristics are part of a continuum of physical variation in the Nile Valley. This population has occupied the middle portion of the Nile Valley throughout recorded history and probably for much longer. There is no evidence to suggest that it is as a result of a mixing of different racial stocks."
quote:Originally posted by Myra Wysinger: Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko by Aaron Kamugisha (2003)
Excerpt:
The impact of the attack on the Hamitic myth by Greenberg, MacGaffey, Sanders et al. seems to have first seriously affected the scholarly approach and popular understanding of the other great African civilisation that shared North Africa with Egypt, ancient Nubia. The Egyptologist Bruce Trigger's article for the 1978 exhibition 'Africa in antiquity: the arts of Nubia and the Sudan', held in Brooklyn, captures this point well. Trigger caustically cites the 'bizarre and dangerous myths' associated with previous racist scholarship on northeast Africa. These studies were quite simply 'marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism'. In his comment on the 'racial' affinities of the people of northeast Africa, Trigger declares that 'all of these people are Africans. To proceed further and divide them into Caucasoid and Negroid stocks is to perform an act that is arbitrary and wholly devoid of historical or biological significance.' Trigger's disavowal of the 'race' concept leads him to conclude:
"The people of Nubia are an indigenous African population, whose physical characteristics are part of a continuum of physical variation in the Nile Valley. This population has occupied the middle portion of the Nile Valley throughout recorded history and probably for much longer. There is no evidence to suggest that it is as a result of a mixing of different racial stocks."
The above has been posted a few times on ES, but just as well as it is one of the best Essay's on the state of modern Egyptology I've read.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
It took me damn near two hours to read the article and its references ...
I started that article before but I should have finished it earlier ... I think that I would be a lot further ahead ...
I've been reading all of Shomarka O.Y. Keita articles trying to grasp a deeper understanding in the biological aspect of Egyptology as well as Human Biology.
This articles deserves 5 *'s.
Rasol you said that this article is one of the best that you've read on the state of modern Egyptology ...
Do you have references to more articles??? It would be greatly appreciate if you can pass them on ...
Thank you ...
P.S. If anyone have article that can enlighten ... I'll take it.
Peace!~
Posts: 951 | From: where rules end and freedom begins | Registered: Jun 2004
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Trigger was an excellent archaeologist and scholar whose work as Myra has shown was not only objective but profound!
He was one of the few white Western scholars who spoke out against the racism that plagued Egyptology and deprived Nile Valley cultures (including Egypt) of their true African origins.
He will be missed!
Posts: 26649 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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