M. Stopp

My degrees are in archaeology (B.A., Wilfrid Laurier U.; M.A., Memorial U.; M.Phil., Cantab.; Ph.D., Cantab.). Earliest fieldwork was on St. Lawrence Iroquoian, Palaeoindian, and Huronia Iroquoian sites in Ontario. This was followed by a move to Newfoundland and Labrador and a decade of fieldwork and research that included working on the land and underwater sites at Red Bay National Historic site, followed by extensive coastal surveys of the Labrador side of the Strait of Belle Isle as well as western Notre Dame Bay, work at Port au Choix National Historic site, at sites along the Quebec North Shore, on Newfoundland's Avalon peninsula, and elsewhere. M.Phil and doctoral research that began in the late 1980s shifted my focus to taphonomy, examining Lower and Middle Pleistocene European faunal collections, comparing these to palaeontological deposits such as those from Old Crow, and querying whether the archaeological collections were in fact the result of human activity (several were not). A return to Canada led to decades of CRM fieldwork, mainly in Labrador, as well as historical, ethnohistorical, oral history, and public history research. In 2022, I retired after 15 years as an historian at Parks Canada that included interesting secondments to archaeology and history projects in Labrador and on the island of Newfoundland as well as eight years as Parks Canada's delegate on the Geographical Names Board of Canada. My research has focussed on cultural history of the far Northeast, forager food storage systems and mobility, cultural contacts, complex systems that underpin long-term cultural persistence, 16th-18th century Labrador Inuit-European engagement, the iconography of Inuit contact dynamics and Inuit performance, among others. I have worked with a number of fine researchers and colleagues over the years and an enduring pleasure has been, and continues to be, supporting their research through conversation and review.