Lakehead University professor 'taken aback' by lifetime achievement award

A Lakehead University professor was taken by surprise at receiving a prestigious lifetime achievement award from the Ontario Archaeological Society.

Scott Hamilton, a professor in, and the chair of Lakehead's anthropology department, received the J.V. Wright Lifetime Achievement Award at a virtual ceremony earlier this month.

"I was quite taken aback when I got told that I have been, first, nominated, and then awarded this," Hamilton said. "This is a very big deal for a Canadian archaeologist to receive any kind of award, but especially one named in honour of J.V. Wright."

Hamilton's career goes back to the 1970s.

"I got bitten by the bug as part of a summer job doing archaeology on a fur trade site in southern Manitoba," Hamilton said. "And I got my first dirt experience as part of those summer jobs, and then was drawn into going to university and much to the chagrin of my mother, who was quite concerned about me spending all that money to get an undergraduate degree in something as outlandish as archaeology, it's actually worked out for me quite well against all betting odds."

"So, you know, I've been poking around across western Canada and northern Ontario probably since 1973 and one disguise or another."

Hamilton joined Lakehead in 1988.

As for career highlights, Hamilton has difficulty picking one.

"I've been in this for a very long time," he said. "At one level, it's the personal relationships with my co-workers that are particularly important."

"As you can imagine, living and working with the same group of people in a bush camp for weeks or months, at a time, results in very close friendships," Hamilton said. "Those friendships just sort of resurface and resurface and resurface over the years, because it's such a small discipline."

Outside of his day job in academic research, he's also spent a lot of time doing consulting research.

"This sort of is the role of heritage studies in environmental impact assessment," he said. "Since most of my students will find their careers in that applied field, I find it particularly satisfying to be able to sort of ground my teaching in that real-world of consulting archaeology."