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Experience Makes a Difference

Academic studies. Career exploration. Community involvement.

We aim to enrich undergraduate education in the Faculty of Social Sciences through fostering unique approaches to learning within the classroom and more actively engaging students in the community, as well as promoting strong relationships between academic studies, career exploration and community involvement.

Welcome to the Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project [SNAP], a geo-archaeological excavation of a chert source and associated early prehistoric stone tool workshops, conceivably first exploited as long as 260,000 years ago, with some of its early visitors likely including Neanderthals.

The project is directed by Dr. Tristan Carter of McMaster University, our work began in 2013, working under the auspices of the Canadian Institute in Greece.

This website provides you with background information on the site, our research aims and an overview of our results from the 2013 season, both archaeological and geo-archaeological. It also tells you about the team, and the various institutions and funding agencies that made our work possible.

One of the reasons for this site is to share our work and discoveries with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Our project’s discoveries will hopefully have many audiences, not just our academic colleagues and community, but also the broader public, if you're a local to Naxos, a visitor to the island, or someone simply interested in the Aegean islands and/or the study of our prehistoric ancestors more generally.

Alongside this website we also hope to represent our work through public lectures, press coverage (see the News section for all updates), and popular science writing.

Thank you for your interest in the project—we hope to hear from you soon!

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Petrography and geochemistry of the siliceous rocks at Stelida

New research paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science by the Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project (SNAP) team.
Apr 11, 2017

SNAP in The Toronto Star

Neanderthals in a boat? Not such a far-fetched notion after all – McMaster University research bolsters theory that our primitive cousins were more sophisticated than previously thought.
Dec 27, 2016

The Stélida Naxos Archaeological Project – 2016 Season

A recap and summary of our work done in our second summer excavation season at Naxos, Greece.
Sep 02, 2016