Amanda Crompton

Amanda Crompton is an archaeologist who obtained her PhD in 2012 at Memorial University in Canada, focusing on the archaeology of early modern French colonialism on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. She has subsequently held postdoctoral research fellowships at Memorial University and at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. She has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Canada) and Memorial University, and holds adjunct affiliations with both institutions. In addition to publishing about the early modern French fishery in Newfoundland, she has also published articles on French Atlantic travel narratives, and on the interactions between French and Inuit peoples in southern Labrador. Her publications include articles in Historical Archaeology, Études/Inuit/Studies, and the International Journal of Heritage and Sustainability. She has been an invited speaker in the Archaeological Institute of America’s Lecture Program, and serves on the Executive Board of the Council for Northeastern Historical Archaeology. 

Amanda’s collaborative research project examines the transatlantic French cod fishery in Newfoundland, focusing on the ways that mariners shaped the island’s coastlines between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her work brings together documentary, archaeological, and cartographic sources, augmenting them with digital data. She uses low-elevation, high-resolution aerial data captured by drone flights, in addition to soil chemistry analysis, to reveal the anthropogenic legacy of French fishing efforts. At the MPIWG, she is a member of the Body of Animals Working Group in Department III.