The first thing I noticed when getting off the plan in Austin: humidity. It’s been a long time since I felt the warm, moist embrace of the Earth’s atmosphere. Living in Tucson, the air feels like a blast furnace that’s just warming up in April. Here in Austin, it feels […]
In the course of my random discussions about working in cultural resource management archaeology and historic preservation, I seem to have come across the same conversation time and time again. It all revolves around some “hell project”— a project that went so FUBAR that the company ended up losing money. […]
This is a question I ask myself a lot. Am I supposed to be an archaeologist? Is this the best career for me? How can I know that? I’ve recently started listening to The New Man podcast hosted by Tripp Lanier. (FYI: It’s not just for men. My wife is […]
This week, the HISTARCH listserv and the rest of the blogosphere celebrated the crushing defeat of NatGeo’s poorly planned series Nazi War Diggers. As I wrote before, the show was basically a glorification of battlefield archaeological site looting with the added bonus of human remains desecration. It was an all-around […]
March, 2014 is the last month of #blogarch Part Deux. In addition to hosting an excellent discussion in the last few months about blogging, archaeology and points between, Doug Rocks-MacQueen posited a killer final question to end the series: Where do you plan on going with blogging or where would […]
Last week, Doug Rocks-MacQueen posted an article on his blog Doug’s Archaeology titled “Top Organizations Receiving NSF Archaeology Funds.” I was surprised to see my current grad school at the top of the list by a long shot. The University of Arizona dominated the list of National Science Foundation (NSF) […]
Imagine this scenario. You’re a lady grabbing some drinks at the local bar after a long day of work at your new employer— Down n’ Dirty Cultural Resource Management Archaeology. Everything is copacetic until you catch the gaze of a young guy at the end of the bar. He looks […]
Do we cultural resource management archaeologists do the same things? Are historic preservationists just following the Secretary of the Interior’s Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties? After decades of historic preservation and cultural resource management guidelines, are we all just going through the motions—just checking the boxes for our […]
First, I just want to clearly tell everyone: I’m not anti-gun; I’m anti-idiot with a gun. Self-defense is a basic right for all people. This right should not to be confused with interpretations of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution that gun aficionados seem to thing means, “it’s […]
Last weekend, I took my bi-annual CPR/AED refresher certification through the University of Arizona Recreation Center. I have long been obsessed with learning as much as I can about health and safety in order to help improve the abysmal condition of safety training and awareness in the cultural resource management […]
