A collage featuring a range of specimens from the Manitoba Museum Human History Collections.

Curator of Archaeology

At the core of the Manitoba Museum’s mission is the extensive collection of artifacts and specimens developed, documented, and cared for by a team of curators, collections staff, and conservators.

Meet the team

Formal headshot of Dave Finch smiling at the camera.

Dave Finch

Curator of Archaeology

Dave is an archaeologist and ethnohistorian who currently works with communities in the Canadian Subarctic. He was born in Winnipeg and was raised in northern Manitoba and northwest Ontario. He is currently a PhD candidate at Memorial University, partnering with the Innu Nation to record their archaeological presence in Labrador. Dave caught the archaeology bug at the University of Winnipeg where he studied Manitoba’s culture history and human biology. Afterwards, he completed a Masters degree at Lakehead University on the experiences of Cree trappers with provincial wildlife law. He has also worked on the archaeology of mining camps, the fur trade, governments regulated land and water use, burial repatriation, and forensic cases. On this journey, he worked with our past Manitoba Museum Curators of Archaeology, Dr. Leigh Syms and Kevin Brownlee, on the Museum archaeology collections in the early 2000.

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