Basic Biographical Information
Archaeologist, historian, theorist, activist-critic, Bruce Graham Trigger was born on June 18, 1937, in Preston, Ontario, and died on December 1, 2006, in Montreal, Quebec. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Toronto (B.A. in anthropology, 1959) and took his doctorate at Yale University (Ph.D. in anthropology, 1964) studying under George Murdock and Irving Rouse. He taught briefly at Northwestern University before joining the faculty of McGill University in 1964 as an Assistant Professor. He rose quickly through the ranks, promoted to Associate Professor in 1967 and then Professor in 1969. He was appointed the James McGill Professor of Anthropology in 2001.
Trigger was the recipient of numerous honors and prizes. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (elected 1976). He is the recipient of the Canadian Silver Jubilee Medal (1977), the Cornplanter Medal (1979), the Innis-Gérin Medal, Royal Society of Canada (1985), and the...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Trigger, B. G. 1965. History and settlement in Lower Nubia. (Yale University Publications in Anthropology 69). New Haven: Yale University.
- 1966. Sir Daniel Wilson: Canada’s first anthropologist. Anthropologica 8: 3-28.
- 1976a. The children of Aataentsic: a history of the Huron peoples to 1660, 2 vols. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- 1976b. Inequality and communication in early civilizations. Anthropologica 18: 27-52.
- 1978. Time and traditions: essays in archaeological interpretation. New York: Columbia University Press.
- 1979. Egypt and the comparative study of early civilizations, in K. Weeks (ed.) Egyptology and the social sciences: 23-56. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press.
- 1980a. Gordon Childe: revolutions in archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press.
- 1980b. Archaeology and the image of the American Indian. American Antiquity 45: 662-676.
- 1981. La arqueología como ciencia histórica. Boletín de Antropología Americana 4: 55-89.
- 1984. Alternative archaeologies: nationalist, colonialist, imperialist. Man 19: 355-370.
- 1985. The past as power: anthropology and the North American Indian, in I. McBryde (ed.) Who owns the past: 11-40. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
- 1995a. Romanticism, nationalism, and archaeology, in P. L. Kohl & C. Fawcett (ed.) Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology: 262-279. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 1998. Sociocultural evolution: calculation and contingency. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
- 2003a. Artifacts and ideas: essays in archaeology. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
- 2003b. Understanding early civilizations: a comparative study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Trigger, B. G. & I. Glover. 1981. Editorial: regional traditions of archaeological research, I. World Archaeology 13: 133-137.
- 1982. Editorial: regional traditions of archaeological research, II. World Archaeology 13: 271.
- 1988. A present of their past? Anthropologists, native people and their heritage. Culture 8(1): 71-85.
- 1989. A history of archaeological thought, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 2006. A history of archaeological thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Further Reading
Pendergast, J. F. & B. G. Trigger. 1972. Cartier’s Hochelaga and the Dawson Site. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Trigger, B. G. 1985a. Natives and newcomers: Canada’s “heroic age” reconsidered. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- 1985b. Generalized coercion and inequality: the basis of state power in early civilizations, in H. Claessen et al. (ed.) Development and decline: the evolution of sociopolitical organization: 46-61. South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey.
- 1990. Maintaining economic equality in opposition to complexity: an Iroquoian case study, in S. Upham (ed.) The evolution of political systems: sociopolitics in small-scale sedentary societies: 119-143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 2004. Cross-cultural comparison and archaeological theory, in L. Meskell & R. W. Preucel (ed.) A companion to social archaeology: 43-65. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers.
Williamson, R. F. & M. S. Bisson.(ed.) 2006. The archaeology of Bruce Trigger: theoretical empiricism. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Patterson, T. (2014). Trigger, Bruce Graham. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1298
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1298
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law