Donations

“The act of taking a picture of someone, something, or someplace is capturing a moment of intensity, and sharing it is an act of dispersing this engagement and intensity.” (Michael Shanks and Connie Svabo, 2013)

Since the 1990s the museum has collected over one hundred thousand 35 mm slides, photographs and other visual material from students, alumni, faculty members, staff, volunteers and friends of the museum. This photographic archive preserves images that archaeologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, paleontologists and many more took during their excavations and visits of archaeological sites over the world. In addition, some images document the history of the SFU Department of Archaeology and of this museum.

The collection today consists of several very rare and valuable images, mostly dating as from the 1940s. They document early excavations on the BC coast, restoration and salvation projects of major archaeological sites and also show sites that have changed dramatically over the years. We have for example images of the early excavations at Olduvai Gorge (1950s), of Nubian temples before they were flooded by the Aswan Dam (1960s), of Palmyra before its destruction by ISIL in 2015-2016.

Over the years volunteers have digitized and catalogued these images to make them available for teaching, research and also to share them with the wider public. Combined with supportive texts these photographs can explain human experiences in ways that words alone cannot. Many thanks to our wonderful volunteers.