Trigger, Bruce G. 1937-2006

(Bruce Graham Trigger)

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born June 18, 1937, in Preston (now Cambridge), Ontario, Canada; died of cancer, December 1, 2006. Anthropologist, educator, and author. Trigger was a leading archeologist in Canada who was best known for his work on Canadian prehistory and in Egyptology. After completing undergraduate work in 1959 at the University of Toronto, he participated in expeditions to Egypt and the Sudan and earned a doctorate at Yale University in 1964. He taught at Northwestern University for a year before settling in at McGill University in Montreal. Here he would spend the rest of his academic career, chairing the department of archeology in the early 1970s. The author of numerous scholarly works, ranging from studies of the Nubian region of Egypt to native Canadian tribes and general theoretical works on archeology, Trigger has been credited with contributing greatly to the understanding of archeological methods, theories, and antiquarian studies in general. Among his many publishing contributions are History and Settlement in Lower Nubia (1965), Gordon Childe(1980), Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (1985), History of Archeological Thought (1989; revised edition, 2006), and Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (2003). Trigger received many honors and prizes for his work, including the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, the Cornplanter Medal in 1979, the Innis-Gerin Medal in 1985, and the John Porter Prize from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1989. He was named an Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2001 and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), December 7, 2006, p. 78.