Heather Miller

Heather Miller’s research and teaching continues to focus on her long-term interests in applying the study of ancient technologies to questions in anthropological archaeology. In 2025, she is beginning a new research project on the technology of writing.  This project aims to apply established approaches to elucidating ancient social and political information through ancient technological data to the study of technologies associated with record-keeping and writing. In her own case of the Indus civilization, she hopes to use such data to identify possible ancient bureaucracies and/or centers for record-keeping. 

Her past and continuing research streams include a focus on production and technological innovation in high-temperature pyrotechnologies of the Indus or Harappan civilization (third millennium BCE), most recently faience and glazed steatite but also metals and ceramics. She is also collaborating with other researchers on the technology of food, from food production to cooking. Her co-directed project (Caravanserai Networks Project), on travel routes and amenities in northern Pakistan and India during the Late Historic/Islamic period (second millennium CE) is on long-term hold, although her interest in cross-cultural interactions in multiple time periods continues. 

Recent and current PhD students under her supervision have engaged in archaeological, historical, and anthropological research on ceramics in relation to regional connections in Western Asia and ritual activities in Ontario and Peru; metals in relation to regional connections across Central Asia; pastoralist economies in ancient India as seen through archaeological scientific investigation; Buddhist architecture in Cambodian cities; and historical Hindu pilgrimage at Vijayanagara in South India. She is particularly interested in working with future students interested in topics associated with her new project on the technologies of ancient record-keeping/writing.

Education

BA (Rice University, 1987)
MSc (Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 1988)
MA (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989)
PhD (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999)

Publications

Book: 2007, reissued 2016. Heather M.-L. Miller Archaeological Approaches to Technology. NY:Routledge / Taylor & Francis. (Originally 2007 Academic Press imprint of Elsevier, hardback & ebook only; paperback 2009 with Left Coast Press; hardback, paperback & ebook reissued by Taylor & Francis / Routledge in 2016. All editions identical.) https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315434612

Articles: See Academia.edu or Research Gate pages: https://utoronto.academia.edu/HeatherMLMiller

Graduate Students

• Rachele Andrea Bianchi
• Savanna Buehlman-Barbeau
• Alannagh Maciw