People

Dr. Iain McKechnie is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria affiliated with the Hakai Institute and the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre. He is a coastal archaeologist interested in how food provides an understanding of human social relations, human-environmental relations, and human-animal relations. He specializes in zooarchaeology (the archaeology of animal bones) and historical ecology (contextualizing modern ecosystem observations with those from well before the 19th or 20th centuries) and conducts research on these issues using archaeological and ecological data from Northwest Coast of North America. He has taught an archaeological field school in Nuu-chah-nulth territories on western Vancouver Island for several years with the support of Tseshaht First Nation and Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

Current Lab Members

Matt Johnson is an PhD Student who will be conducting research on bone tools in the Pacific Northwest.
Dylan Hillis is a PhD Candidate working to contribute to the related Coastal Voices and NSERC RESNET projects. In 2022, Dylan completed a masters on Indigenous fisheries and has previously studied domestic dog diet using stable isotopes.

Recent Members

to view recently completed graduate degrees view this link

Fynley Calder-Rasmussen recently completed an honours degree examining Indigenous dispossession in the historic Northern Fur Sealing industry.

Robert Gustas (PhD, 2024) is a geospatial archaeologist who completed a dissertation on coastal demography in Barkley Sound and has a background in GIS modelling. Read more about his research here and here.
Kathryn McKenzie (MA, 2024) completed a masters degree on the UVic zooarchaeology comparative collection. Learn more about Kathryn’s research here and about her prestigious ICAZ award HERE.
Luke George is from Tseshaht First Nation and working to pursue masters research on Indigenous fisheries but is currently taking leave to get back to his full time work at North Island College.

Taylor Vollman (MA, 2024) recently completed a masters on the archaeology of Olympia Oysters in collaboration with Dr. Marco Hatch at Western Washington University. Watch her talk on her research here or read this Nature Communications paper.

Dr. Kristina Barclay (Banting PostDoc, 2022-24) is a conservation paleobiologist who conducts research on coastal ecology and ocean acidification. Her project focused on the role of sub-lethal predation scars on clams and led a recently published a paper in Biological Conservation.

Dr. Jasmin Schuster recently completed a Mitacs post doc in the HECA Lab focused on the marine historical ecology of Indigenous fisheries while also contributing to dive based observations of ReefLife survey and the Hakai Institute’s Kelp node. Dr. Schuster is currently the scientific director of the Kelp Rescue Initiative

Freya Harrison recently completed her honours research in 2023 and followed this up by a NSERC Undergraduate Research Award which continued her honours research on salmon morphometrics.
Justin Walker was a field school student in 2021 and helped manage the field school material from Keith Island in 2022 as a work study student and is currently working in consulting archaeology.

Alyssa Ball completed a masters on fish scales and ancient eulachon fisheries with support of Wuikinuxv Nation resource stewardship office, Mitacs, and the Hakai Institute. Alyssa also designed the LAB logo for which we are grateful and is a professional consulting archaeologist working for Baseline Archaeological Services.

Katie Dierks completed an undergraduate honours degree, an NSERC Undergraduate Research Award in 2019. Katie conducted research on the osteobiography of a domestic dog from Tseshaht territory in Barkley Sound as part of the Keith Island Archaeological Project and is currently a masters candidate at Simon Fraser University.

Heather Earle completed a masters in resource & environmental management at Simon Fraser University focused on the historical ecology of sea otters, co-supervised by Iain McKechnie & collaborator Anne Salomon. Heather has recently been working with Parks Canada and the Hakai Institute & help produce the amazing SeaGardens website https://www.seagardens.net

Meaghan Efford defended her masters research on the archaeology of shellfishing, specifically gooseneck barnacle harvesting in Nuu-chah-nulth territories. She is now pursuing a PhD at UBC’s Institute of Oceans and Fisheries and working with Tsleil-Waututh Nation.

Erin Slade completed her MRM thesis on the archaeology of mussel shell size variation in the presence of humans and sea otters co-supervised by Dr. McKechnie and Dr. Anne Salomon at SFU. Erin is currently working with Gulf Islands National Park Reserve on the Clam Garden restoration project and was the lead author of this recent paper in Ecosystems.

Dr. Kira Hoffman is an accomplished dendro-ecologist who was the deserving recipient of the first Bamfield Marine Science Centre Postdoctoral Fellowship (Summer 2018). Dr. Hoffman worked with the BC Ministry of Environment in Northern British Columbia and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo and UBC.

Jacob Salmen-Hartley completed a masters thesis on the archaeology and historical ecology of Pacific halibut fisheries (Aug 2018) and contributed to the Keith island Archaeological Project and the UVic archaeology field school in Barkley Sound and is currently an archaeologist with Parks Canada working in coastal British Columbia.

Arianna Nagle (Honours Student) completed an honours thesis on Indigenous marine conservation and sea urchin size distribution in the archaeological record.

Seonaid Duffield completed a masters thesis (Dec 2017) that explored how vibracoring can be used to better understand Indigenous fisheries on the Central BC coast. She additionally contributed to implementing this approach on western Vancouver Island with generous support from the Hakai Institute and Mitacs.

Kelda Helweg-Larsen conducted her cultural anthropological Masters research with Tseshaht First Nation on western Vancouver Island and participated during 2016 & 2017 UVic field school excavations in the Broken Group.

Paige Lewis conducted zooarchaeological lab research in 2017 as a work-study student including experimenting with methods for preparing specimens for the zooarchaeology comparative collection for which she won an award.

Anne Tuominen (MA, Sheffield) assisted with zooarchaeological research tasks in 2016 and 17 and is now working for the Province of BC.

Friends of the Lab

Denis St. Claire (top), Ian Sellers (top right), Walker Tottman (right in the unit) and many others.

Dr. Angelica Tivoli and Dr. Francisco Zangrando from CONICET in Ushuaia, Argentina who are featured in this incredible long-form science journalism story published by Hakai magazine