This is one of three bold and innovative McMaster projects that received a total of $35 million in federal investment from the Canada Foundation for Innovation this week.
Click here to learn about the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy.
Click here to learn about the Canadian Neutron Beam Laboratory.
What if we could uncover thousands of years of history without damaging the very evidence researchers are trying to understand?
That question sits at the heart of a major new initiative at McMaster University that aims to reshape how archaeological science is done in Canada.
Backed by $6.7 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the McMaster Archaeological Centre for Minimally Invasive / Non-Destructive Science (MACMINDS) will bring together advanced technology, interdisciplinary expertise and a community-first approach to research. Construction is scheduled to begin in winter 2026-27.
MACMINDS will serve as a new national hub for archaeological science that is more precise, less invasive and more connected to the communities whose histories are being studied.
Led by co-directors and associate professors Tracy Prowse and Andrew Roddick, the McMaster Anthropology-led initiative builds on a major shift underway in the field: a move away from extractive research models and toward approaches that preserve materials, strengthen collaboration and place community priorities at the centre.
“This really represents a new way of doing archaeological science,” said Prowse. “It combines world-leading expertise with state-of-the-art technology and positions McMaster as a global hub for ethical, sustainable archaeological science.”
MACMINDS will bring together specialized analytical tools and researchers from multiple disciplines to study artefacts, skeletal remains, soil samples and archaeological sites with little or no damage. The centre will support work across three major themes: human relationships with the environment, cultural practices such as crafting and foodways, and the history of health and disease.
These projects will examine a range of topics, from 8,000 years of ecological change around Crawford Lake, to 16th-century Indigenous Attawandaron communities near Cootes Paradise, to the health impacts of land transformation among early settlers in Ontario.
For Roddick, the significance is straightforward: MACMINDS will give researchers in Canada a new way to do world-class archaeological science.
“This will be a world-leading centre,” he said. “We have some of the best archaeological scientists here at McMaster, and this facility will allow us to do collaborative research using the latest technology in more ethical, less invasive ways.”
A field in transition
Archaeological science has a chequered past. Colonialism and extractive research practices meant that, for much of its history, many practitioners often failed to serve the communities they studied, eroding trust along the way.
Now, the field is changing.
Researchers are increasingly pushing back on the old “helicopter research” model, in which scientists fly in and out of communities without proper collaboration or exploration of needs and interests.
Instead, they are building approaches that are more collaborative, more transparent and more responsive to community needs.
At MACMINDS, that shift is not a side note: It’s the starting point.
“How can we still do important research, but in an ethically better way?” said Prowse.
“How do we put the needs of the community at the forefront of our research?”
MACMINDS is being built to help answer those questions.
Tools of the trade
At its core, MACMINDS aims to bring together leading experts and the latest technology to address an important challenge: How to examine sites, communities and artefacts without destroying them.
That is the “Minimally Invasive / Non-Destructive” vision in practice. By combining tools such as ground-penetrating radar, mass spectrometers, drones and 3D scanners, researchers will be able to examine ancient pottery, tools, bones and even landscapes with minimal disruption.
Many of these tools are already well-established in environmental and health sciences. What makes MACMINDS distinct is that it will bring them together in one integrated archaeological science research centre, the first of its kind in Canada.
For Roddick, the potential was clear from the start.
“I thought, ‘Oh wow, we can do this now,’” he said. “These are really magical tools.”
Take the mass spectrometer: It’s a tool that detects the chemical fingerprint of ancient materials, allowing researchers to detect what foods were cooked in a pot thousands of years ago. It’s so sensitive that it only needs a microscopic fragment, sometimes just a trace scraped from the interior of a vessel, a small soil sample, or a sliver of a bone.
“We can do so much more with tiny samples,” said Prowse. “Which I think is incredible.”
Some of the tools are portable, too, allowing researchers to bring technology to communities and field sites rather than moving materials away from them. That flexibility can reduce the invasive nature of more traditional archaeological methods and support more collaborative research on the ground.
A McMaster-built team, a Canada-wide network
But it’s not just the best tools that the lab aims to bring together. Prowse and Roddick have assembled a team of the best and brightest researchers from across McMaster.
Joining Roddick and Prowse are Megan Brickley, Tristan Carter, Hendrik Poinar and Amanda Wissler from the Department of Anthropology, and Joseph Boyce, Sang-Tae Kim, Eduard Reinhardt and Gregory Slater from the School of Earth, Environment and Society.
Further afield, collaborators on the grant include a network of academic archaeological scientists from across Canada and a wide range of cross-sectoral research partners from institutes such as Fisheries and Parks Canada, cultural resource management firms and international NGOs.
“This is a truly interdisciplinary facility,” said Roddick. “It’s being built by the expertise and experience of the core team and other researchers from all across Canada.”
Built for transparency. Designed for community.
Transparency and community relations have been baked into the MACMINDS projects from the start and are woven throughout the plans for governance and sustainability.
“Even the blueprints for the facility include large windows between the labs and a purpose-built community room,” said Roddick. “So when the community members visit, they can see exactly what we’re doing in the labs.”
The centre will also include a strong education and outreach component, helping communities understand how minimally invasive technologies can support research that complements oral histories and deepens shared understanding of the past.
“We want to get out there and let people know that we now have the technology to do minimally invasive processes to build histories of communities that complement oral histories,” said Roddick.
For the MACMINDS team, that reflects one of the biggest changes in archaeological science itself.
“Community engagement used to be an afterthought,” said Roddick. “Now it’s front and centre.”
The McMaster community was also instrumental in making the lab possible.
“We are grateful to many of our colleagues across campus. From our dean and associate dean of Research, who championed the project, to our talented colleagues in the research office who helped us put the proposal together, we couldn’t have done it without them,” said Prowse.