Tel: 778.782.3594 • Fax: 778.782.5666 • Email: rudyr@sfu.ca
Brief Bio
I am from the Squamish Nation and have been practicing archaeology for the past 15 years across the Northwest. I was born in Kitchener, Ontario and I completed my Bachelors and Masters degrees in archaeology at Simon Fraser University. I am currently finishing my PhD at McMaster University in anthropology. I enjoy the outdoors, soccer, and playing guitar.
General Research Interests
My main research interests are archaeological. I focus on taking an Indigenous Landscape perspective to field and lab work and move that into writing narratives about the past. I work toward meaningfully integrating Indigenous Perspectives into archaeological interpretations. This includes drawing upon oral history and traditions, place names, language and cultural practices to draw a sense of place and meaning.
I am also interested in spatial and temporal variability in lithic technology, geochemical material characterization and sourcing, geoarchaeology, settlement and subsistence, rock art, public archaeology and cultural resource management, museums and collections management, field methods paleoecology, history, and land and resource management planning.
Current Research
I am currently conducting Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis on lithic materials from Squamish Nation territory. I am characterizing lithic raw materials at their source(s) and tracking their regional distributions over the past 10,000+ years. I interpret the results of these data by acknowledging the Indigenous social and ideological meaning of the place those materials come from and the effect that had on their regional distributions.