Stephen Andrew Chrisomalis, Ph.D.

Affiliation: Department of Anthropology, McGill University
Leacock Building, Rm. 717
855 Sherbrooke St. West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
H3A 2T7
E-mail:


Current Positions Research Interests Education Fellowships and Awards Publications Teaching
Research Employment Scholarly Presentations Service Languages Other Experience Professional Associations
Research Interests cross-cultural comparison; numerals and numeration; archaeology of ancient science, mathematics, and technology; ancient eastern Mediterranean cultural contact; writing systems and literacy; cognitive anthropology; ethnomathematics; history of anthropology and archaeology
Professional Appointments Faculty Lecturer
Department of Anthropology
McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
Aug. 2006 -

Postdoctoral Fellow / Lecturer
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
Sept. 2003 - Aug. 2006

Associate Scholar
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
Sept. 2004 - Aug. 2006

Education Ph.D, Anthropology
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
August 2003
The Comparative History of Numerical Notation
Advisor: Prof. Bruce G. Trigger
Dean's Honours List


B.A., Anthropology
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
1996
Major in Anthropology, minor in International Justice and Human Rights; magna cum laude
Fellowships and Awards SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
May 2004 - April 2006
Linguistic and Graphic Representations of Number


Prix d'Excellence de l'ADESAQ
Association des doyens des Etudes Supérieures au Québec
September 2004
Award for the best 2003 Quebec dissertation in all humanities, social sciences and fine arts disciplines

Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research Fellowship
McGill University
December 2001
Funding awarded for doctoral thesis writing

SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
September 1997- August 2001
Funding awarded for doctoral thesis research and writing

Max Stern Recruitment Fellowship
McGill University
September 1996 - August 1997
Entry fellowship awarded to undertake Ph.D. coursework
Publications (forthcoming) A Comparative History of Numerical Notation. Cambridge University Press.


(forthcoming) The origins and co-evolution of literacy and numeracy. IN The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds. Cambridge University Press.

(forthcoming, 2007) The perils of pseudo-Orwellianism. Accepted for publication in Antiquity.

(forthcoming, 2006) Book review of Numbers, Language, and the Human Mind by Heike Wiese. Explorations in Media Ecology 5(4).

(forthcoming, 2006) Comparing cultures and comparing processes: diachronic methods in cross-cultural anthropology. Cross-Cultural Research 40(3): 1-28.


(2006) Comparative archaeology: an unheralded cross-cultural method. In The Archaeology of Bruce G. Trigger: Theoretical Empiricism, Ronald Williamson and Michael Bisson, eds., pp. 36-51. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.


(2004) A cognitive typology for numerical notation. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14(1): 37-52.


(2004) (with Bruce G. Trigger) Reconstructing prehistoric ethnicity: problems and possibilities, in A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, James V. Wright and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds., pp. 419-433. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.


(2003) The Egyptian origin of the Greek alphabetic numerals. Antiquity 77(297): 485-496.
BBC News report on this paper.


(in preparation) Numeration and calculation. IN Handbook of the History of Mathematics, Eleanor Robson, Jacqueline Stedall and Tom Archibald, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(in preparation) Hooke's abaci: European interpretations of East Asian computational technologies, 1600-1750. For submission to Isis.

(in preparation) What are the Maya positional numerals? For submission to Latin American Antiquity.


Teaching Faculty Lecturer
McGill University, Department of Anthropology
September 2006 - May 2007
Courses taught:
History of Archaeological Theory (honours core program requirement)
Evolutionary Anthropology (introductory four-field course)
Current Issues in Archaeology (senior honours seminar)
Writing and Literacy (senior special topics seminar)

Lecturer / Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology
September 2003 - May 2006
Courses taught:
Comparative Civilizations (senior special topics seminar)
Introductory Anthropology (intensive introductory course, archaeology and biological anthropology subsections)
Advanced Archaeological Theory (senior core theory seminar)

Lecturer
McGill University, Dept. of Anthropology
2001-2002
Comparative Cultures (intensive introductory cultural anthropology course)

Teaching Assistant
McGill University, Dept. of Anthropology
2002
Social Evolution; Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Research Employment Research Assistant, Prof. Bruce G. Trigger
May - August 2003
Reading, note-taking and research of literature in the history and sociology of archaeology for B.G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd ed. (in preparation).

Research Assistant, Prof. Bruce G. Trigger
July - August 2002
Proofreading, editing and indexing of manuscript of Artifacts and Ideas (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003).

Research Assistant, Prof. Bruce G. Trigger
January - April 2002
Research and data collection on the topic of prehistoric ethnicity and the 'race-language-culture' polemic, leading to the co-authored paper, 'Reconstructing prehistoric ethnicity' (see above)
Scholarly Presentations Lecture: "Outnumbered: A Sociocultural Analysis of the Decline and Fall of Numeral Systems"
October 2005
University of Toronto, Dept. of Anthropology Colloquium Series


Conference Paper: "Evaluating Ancient Numeracy: Social versus Developmental Perspectives on Ancient Mesopotamian Numeration"
June 2005
Jean Piaget Society (Vancouver, British Columbia)


Conference Paper: "Diachronic Comparison: An Archaeological Method for Cross-Cultural Research"
April 2004
Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting (Montreal, Quebec)


Lecture: "Rethinking the Typology of Numerical Notation"
March 2004
York University Seminar in History and Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematics Education (Toronto, Ontario)


Lecture: "Reckoning, Recording, and 'Rithmetic: Rethinking the Spurious Functional Linkage between Numeration and Mathematical Efficiency"
January 2004
University of Toronto, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Colloquium Series (Toronto, Ontario)


Lecture: "Zero is No Hero: Misgivings on Progressivism in Numeration"
February 2002
McGill University Department of Anthropology Speaker Series (Montreal, Quebec)

Lecture: "Why 2K? Millennial Observations on Numerical Notation"
December 1999
McGill University Archaeology Colloquium (Montreal, Quebec)
Service 2006-07: Co-chair, McGill Anthropology Visiting Speakers Series
Duties include arranging speakers and topics for regular departmental seminar series, advertising and managing speaker visits

2001: Co-presenter, McGill Anthropology Department pro-seminar
'Academic hiring: dossier, letters, c.v.s, interviews, presentations'

1999-2000: Graduate representative, Joint Anthropology and McGill School of the Environment Hiring Committee
Duties included reviewing dossiers, attending all meetings and interviews with candidates, liaison with graduate student body, full voting privileges

1999: Graduate representative, McGill Anthropology department Chair Selection Committee
Duties included attending all meetings, full voting privileges

1998 –1999: Member, McGill Anthropology department Graduate-Faculty Liaison Committee
Duties included attending meetings with faculty, liaison with graduate students over concerns, co-authorship of graduate student report on funding and research opportunities within the department

1997 –1998: Graduate representative, McGill Anthropology Department Graduate Admissions Committee
Duties included reviewing applicant dossiers, attending meetings with faculty, full voting privileges

Languages English (fluent - native speaker)
French (high proficiency reading, writing and speaking)
German, Latin, Middle Egyptian (read for research purposes)
Other Experience December 1996 - present: Webmaster, The Phrontistery
This web site, which currently receives over 120,000 page views per month, is oriented around the study of English words. as well as academic topics related to my research focus in numeration.
Professional Associations American Anthropological Association
Society for American Archaeology
History of Science Society
Archaeological Institute of America
Society for Cross-Cultural Research
Jean Piaget Society
References Available upon request