Matthew Walls

The University of Calgary · Anthropology and Archaeology

Central European forests have been shaped by complex human interactions throughout the Holocene, with significant changes following the introduction of domesticated animals in the Neolithic (~7.5 – 6.0 kyr BP). However, understanding early pastoral practices and their impact on forests is limited by methods for detecting animal movement across past...

In the lowlands and uplands of Central Europe, which were inhabited continuously from the very start of the Holocene to the present times, it is difficult to find territories suitable for investigation of natural baselines. For this reason, we picked the complicated rocky terrain of one upland area in NE Bohemia called Adrspach because, based on th...

In Bohemia (western part of Czech Republic), known Mesolithic sites are located in a variety of landscape zones and natural settings. The extent of research on each of these landscapes and understandings of the relationships between them are quite variable. In this paper, we compare selected case studies from three different Bohemian landscape type...

In a continuous, perfectly stratified sedimentary sequence which was discovered under a large sandstone overhang in northern Bohemia, Czech Republic, we analysed multiple biological remains, archaeological features and artefacts. This multi-proxy record has allowed us to examine the interactions between woodland and humans in a permanently wooded e...

In the High Arctic, recent acceleration of geomorphological processes is having extreme impact on archaeological landscapes. In this paper, we consider implication for circumpolar archaeology, and focus analysis on a study area of critical importance to the local Inughuit community at Siorapaluk – a small settlement in Northwest Greenland. Using a...

The purpose of this paper is to explore research frameworks for understanding the relationship between northern communities and environmental change, which present an alternative to the currently prevailing concept of resilience. We contribute to a growing literature that identifies a chief problem with resilience thinking— that despite much discus...

In this paper, I draw on postphenomenology and material engagement theory to consider the material and emergent character of sociality in Homo faber. I approach this through the context of the bow and arrow, which is a technology that has received recent attention in cognitive archeology as a proxy for assessing criteria that made early human cogni...

6 Part article in Greenlandic language about the Morris Bay Kayak

In this paper, we present results from a project to reanalyze the Morris Bay Kayak, which was discovered by Lauge Koch in Washington Land, northwest Greenland in 1921. This reanalysis is significant because the role of kayak hunting in Inughuit origins, development, and cultural transitions is poorly understood. Indeed, the subject is complicated b...

Although fundamental to learning and making, the notion of creativity in university culture often implies an internalized and reflective cognitive process, resulting in something judged to be unique or even useful. This perspective is under challenge within anthropology, where there have been calls to see creativity as a situated, ordinary, and cen...

This report re-examines the Morris Bay Kayak, which was discovered in Washington Land, Northwest Greenland in 1921. Kayaks rarely preserve archaeologically, and the find is especially significant because the closest Inuit group, the Inughuit, were thought to have lost the technology sometime before the nineteenth century. In this context, radiocarb...

The chaîne opératoire is one of the most powerful tools that archaeologists can use to link artifacts and people through the physicality of skilled movement. In many applications, interpretations developed through the use of the chaîne opératoire are based on the idea that patterned gestures are guided by a representational or schematic knowledge t...

Inuit kayaks are a hunting technology that requires a high degree of developed skill to operate. The practice involves special types of physical fitness, technical ability, social relationships and extensive environmental knowledge. Hunters must be able to work intuitively as a team, to recognize and react instantly to subtle environmental cues, an...

Although the natural availability and quality of wood is variable across the Arctic, there is great continuity in how it was traditionally used. This article considers the value of wood to Arctic peoples and the criteria that would distinguish the utility of different pieces. The topic is explored in the case of kayak construction, one of the most...