Gary Coupland

Biography

Dr. Coupland has been conducting archaeological research on the Northwest Coast of North America for almost two decades. His main theoretical area of interest is complex hunter-gatherers, for which the Northwest Coast is famous. He is particularly interested in the development of ranked societies in the region and the insights that may be gained into this development from the study of households and communities. He is director of the Northwest Coast Housing Project on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, where he has conducted archaeological surveys and excavated house features and shell midden deposits from villages dated to within the last 5000 years. This research explores the rise of the corporate, multi-family household on the Northwest Coast, and through it, the evolution of social inequality, intensification of production, specialization, and exchange. He has published numerous articles and books on Northwest Coast archaeology (see below), and is currently working on a book on the evolution of households and villages on the Northwest Coast. The Northwest Coast Housing Project Laboratory, in the Sidney Smith Building, is in the process of analyzing artifacts, features and faunal samples from a number of village sites on the northern Northwest Coast. Some of the research is being conducted jointly with Dr. Kathlyn Stewart of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The work has been funded primarily by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Research Interest

Archaeology, complex hunter-gatherers