Artefacts have the potential to reveal a diverse range of information about everyday life in the past, including the inner workings of social institutions, class-based dynamics, and expressions of ethnic and gendered identities. Along with archival documents and oral histories, these materials are the interpretive building blocks that Historical Archaeologists use to answer larger research questions around micro and macro-level negotiations of power, the impact of industrialization on modernity, and the dynamic relationships between individuals and society. Over the semester, students in this course will gain experience in identifying, classifying, and analyzing artefacts from Ontario that date to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to learning these applied skills, students will hone their inference skills by using artefacts and archives to develop research-based interpretations of daily life in the Toronto-area which will be presented publicly through a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Storymap.
Artefacts have the potential to reveal a diverse range of information about everyday life in the past, including the inner workings of social institutions, class-based dynamics, and expressions of ethnic and gendered identities. Along with archival documents and oral histories, these materials are the interpretive building blocks that Historical Archaeologists use to answer larger research questions around micro and macro-level negotiations of power, the impact of industrialization on modernity, and the dynamic relationships between individuals and society. Over the semester, students in this course will gain experience in identifying, classifying, and analyzing artefacts from Ontario that date to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to learning these applied skills, students will hone their inference skills by using artefacts and archives to develop research-based interpretations of daily life in the Toronto-area which will be presented publicly through a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Storymap.
