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I realized I wanted to be an archaeologist and anthropologist when I
was in my second year of my undergraduate education at UC Santa Barbara.
And I think I grew up, like many people in American not really knowing what
anthropology was. I knew what archaeology was of course,
but I really never knew it was a discipline that you could actually do or
get into. I went off to college to Santa Barbara
not far from where I grew up on the California coast.
And I, I wanted to be a Marine Biologist, I was really interested in.
Marine mammals and fish and all sorts of different aspects of the ocean.
But I got to the university and I found during my first couple of semesters that
I was just taking classes primarily about calculus and Ochem and all the biological
prereqs. And while those were fine, it wasn't
really wanted I wanted to do. And I sort of stumbled into an
introduction to Archeology class. during my second year as an elective, and
it was a class taught by Brian Fagan who is of course, you know, one of the famous
archaeologists. He did, at that time, and in subsequent
classes I took with him, really discouraged most students from becoming
archaeolgists. And, and I was disappointed with that at
the time, but really what he was trying to do was tell us, look, this is a
difficult field to, to make a living. And this is a difficult field to get into
and only do it if you really, really like it.
And, but this course prompted me to take another course by a guy named Mike
Lasau,who ended up being my mentor while I was an undergraduate.
And this was a course on California archaeology.
And I'd grown up on the coast of California, I'd of course Been to a lot
of the local museums. I'd seen and learned about some of the
tribes in California growing up. but it wasn't until I took this course
that it really dawned on me that, wow, you know there's, there's an incredible
amount of information about these people who lived where I grew up, you know, for
over 10,000 years. And it really struck me that while we can
learn a lot and I also found out that because Mike was doing work in the
channel islands in California. And also in the mainland coast of
California, that I could combine some of the interest that I had a Marine biology
with Archaeology. I can look at how ancient people
interacted with these marine environments I was so interested in.
One of the things about anthropology and archeology is you tend to need a lot of
education to get started in the field. Archeologists changed over the years in
that we now have a whole bunch of sub-disciplines or, or, or different
fields of archaeology that you can get involved in.
Traditionally, you know, archaeology was something that you did in a museum or
university context, and, and within the last 10 to 20 years there's been the
growth in America what's called cultural resource management.
And this is private and public sector work that deals with preserving and
protecting archaeological sites. Especially when they're going to be
developed. As a research archaeologist working in a
museum setting and then previously working in a university I needed to get a
PhD. And this started, you know, getting a
bachelor's degree as an undergraduate, building that solid Liberal Arts
background in anthropology and archaeology and linguistics and physical
anthropology, that kind of traditional four field approach.
And then I went on to graduate school And started with a masters degree.
Yeah, I did a, a research paper focused on my own independent research.
Took a series of graduate level seminars with, with other graduate students and a,
a faculty member. you ultimately end up in your PhD work.
And if you're doing the math and adding up years, you can see, you know, four
years as an undergrad, two to three years as a masters.
And then as an anthropologist or archaeologist, it's usually another four
years to get the PhD. So you're talking probably about ten
years of education total from undergraduate all the way through to a
PhD. I finished my PhD at the University of
Oregon in 2004. And this was after I'd been in graduate
school for about seven years gaining my masters degree on up.
and I, I was lucky to get a job right away teaching as an assistant professor
at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
And it was a, a fantastic place to work. I had the good fortune, I was very lucky
to get a job here at the, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History just
over a year ago. I joined the department in September of
2008 came on at a very great time. There's you know, wonderful group of
colleagues from the Archaeobiology program to the Arctic Studies program on
down the line. It's a very dynamic group within
Anthropology. and then also the museum having a, a
series of biological and a, and a geology department too.
It's just a very engaging place to be. My days here at the museum are a little
bit different than the days I spent at the university.
I guess I had you know, sort of a misconception that I could come in, and
there would be a I'll research all the time and it is that way a lot of the
time. We are encouraged to do a lot of
research. The Smithsonian, the museum is such a
dynamic place that there always opportunities to lecture for the public
and for scientists. There are always things that keep me
busy. Interacting with other colleagues and
students. We also have the opportunity to teach
courses or do, you know, informal tours and lectures of the department and what
we do. So I find that my days are punctuated
where I'll have, some days I'll have a lot of interaction with the public.
I'll maybe have a lecture to give. other days I'll have, you know, a day of
eight hours spend doing research, and I'll try and break that up with writing
for most of the time. Trying to get a scholarly publication
together perhaps to doing some data analysis to doing lab work.
I host a lot of interns too. I have a couple interns right now, one
from the University of Maryland, two from George Washington University.
Those interns work directly with me in this lab.
And we try and keep it a pretty active and vibrant place.