Christopher Watts

Office:  PAS 2010

Phone: 519-888-4567 x36925

Email:  c3watts@uwaterloo.ca

Background

Christopher Watts received his PhD from the University of Toronto and is an archaeologist with interests in monumentality, landscape practices, materiality, and relational ontologies, particularly among Woodland Period (ca. CE 1-1550) communities in the lower Great Lakes.

Prior to joining the Department, Dr. Watts held postdoctoral fellowships at the Royal Ontario Museum (2009-2011) and the University of Western Ontario (2012-2014) and worked as an archaeologist in both the commercial and regulatory sectors. His past research has explored the agentive/animistic qualities of ceramic artifacts, notions of food collection vs. production, and the experiential aspects of longhouse life among Ontario Late Woodland groups. Currently, his work focuses on Woodland Period earthen enclosures in southwestern Ontario, including field investigations in Essex Co., and the extent to which such monuments emerged out of histories and understandings of inhabitation that were unique to specific times and places.

Dr. Watts welcomes students who are interested in pursuing graduate studies as part of Waterloo’s MA in Public Issues Anthropology. See here for more information.

Some of the courses Dr. Watts teaches include:

ANTH 201             Archaeological Anthropology

ANTH 322             Archaeology of the Great Lakes Area

ANTH 372             Archaeological Field School

ANTH 309             Archaeology of North America 

ANTH 415             Archaeologies of Landscape  

ANTH 489             The Lives of Things (formerly ANTH 400)

Recent Publications

Watts, C. M. (forthcoming) Counter-monuments and the Perdurance of Place. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28(3).

Watts, C. M. (2016) Recent Investigations at the Cedar Creek Earthworks (AaHq-2), Essex County, Ontario. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 41(1):1-25.

Watts, C. M. (in review) Points of Passage/Points of View: Iroquoian Animal Effigy Pipes and the Crossing of Corporeal Boundaries. Ms. submitted to American Anthropologist.

Watts, C. M. (ed.) (2013) Relational Archaeologies: Humans, Animals, Things. Routledge, New York.

Watts, C. M., C. White and F. J. Longstaffe (2011) Childhood Diet and Western Basin Tradition Foodways at the Krieger Site, Southwestern Ontario, Canada. American Antiquity 76(3):446-472.

Watts, C. M. (2009) Coming to our senses: Toward a unified perception of the Iroquoian longhouse. In Archaeology and the Politics of Vision in a Post-Modern Context, edited by J. Thomas and V. Jorge, pp. 209-224. Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.