Silvia Tomášková

Professor

Anthropology, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Other Titles: Dean, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Office: ASC 402
Office Hours: Fridays from 9am to 12pm
Phone: 250.807.9286
Email: silvia.tomaskova@ubc.ca

Research Summary

A feminist anthropologist/archaeologist with field and historical research in Eastern & Central Europe, Siberia, South Africa, Dr. Tomášková is interested in knowledge production, particularly about places and spaces in the deep past, as alternatives to modernity.

Biography

A native of a country no longer in existence – Czechoslovakia, Dr. Tomášková came to Canada as a political refugee in the 1980’s. She found her new home in academia, in the discipline of Anthropology. Dr. Tomášková taught at Deep Springs College in California, the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Degrees

Postdoc, Harvard University
PhD, University of California - Berkeley
MA, University of California - Berkeley
MA, Yale University
BA, McGill University

Selected Publications & Presentations

Wayward Shamans: The Prehistory of an Idea. The University of California Press. (2013)

Reindeer as a toggle: Animal agency in domestication. In M. Smith (ed.) The Power of Nature: Agency and the Archaeology of Human-Environmental Dynamics. (2021) Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press.

Prehistoric art as a boundary object: Technology and temporality of South African petroglyphs, in Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 27 (2020)

Skills and traces: Imagining differences in engravings, Northern Cape, South Africa.  In Jan Magne Gjerde and Mari Strifeldt Arntzen (eds.) Perspectives on Differences in Rock Art. (2020) Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing.

Feminist mapping for archaeologists: at the intersection of practices.  In Piraye Haçigüzeller, Gary Lock, Mark Gillings (eds) Re-Mapping Archaeology: Critical Perspectives, Alternative Mappings (2018) Routledge.

Digital technologies in context: Prehistoric engravings in the Northern Cape, South Africa, in Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 2 (2015) Elsevier Publishers.

Seasons of difference: stone tool use and Palaeolithic seasonality in Central Europe, Canadian Journal of Archaeology 37 (1 (2013)

Selected Grants & Awards

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Leakey Foundation Research in Human Origins

National Geographic Society

National Humanities Center, residential fellowship

School for Research on the Human Experience (Santa Fe, NM), residential fellowship

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Stellenbosch Advanced Institute (South Africa), residential fellowship

Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

American Anthropological Association

Society for American Archaeology

Society for Feminist Anthropology

Media

2019 – Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, Schloß Conversations: “Venus in Transit: Prehistoric Art and Religion”