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Find the township and range of your cultural resource management archaeology project area in Google Earth

Time is money in cultural resource management archaeology. Sometimes, field archaeologists and GIS specialists have strained relationships within their CRM companies because field archaeos do not always know how to create maps using GIS software. We think the GIS people can just conjure a map from thin air in less […]

Find the township and range of your CRM archaeology project area in Google Earth

Is archaeology against motherhood?

Does archaeology hate mothers? 2

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the @everyDIGsexism conversation on Twitter. The discussion highlights many of the problems women face in cultural resource management and academic archaeology. For forward-thinking intellectuals, a lot of male archaeologists and archaeology students should really be ashamed of themselves. I’ve been known to […]


Can the Plentitude Business Model save cultural resource management?

Historic preservation-minded developer Bill Naito didn’t just save buildings. He helped create ambiance, character, and augmented the quality of life in downtown Portland, Oregon. During the 1960s, Naito saw potential in the rotting waterfront warehouses. He realized that remodeling these buildings may not immediately improve property values, increase foot traffic, […]

The plenitude model is at the heart of historic preservation and it's smart money

You can use Google Earth and Trulia to identify historic properties in your project area

How to identify historic properties using Google Earth 1

Don’t you just love it when you get a PDF of a project area floating in the middle of some unidentified terrain? Just a polygon overlain upon some barren desert, forest quadrat, or urban freeway with very little context? And, you’re, somehow, expected to plan your cultural resource management archaeology […]


The shocking truth about a career in cultural resource management archaeology 4

“It’s not whether you get knocked down. It’s whether you get up.” Vince Lombardi It’s no secret most cultural resource management archaeologists give up. CRM is a hard field in which to build a career. Recently, I came across this post written in 2000 on the United Archaeological Field Technicians […]

You only have to get up one more time than you get kicked down in order to succeed

Fill existing needs within cultural resource management companies in order to get hired

How to identify open career niches in the cultural resource management industry

Cultural resource management companies don’t need archaeologists. They don’t. Think about it. Is archaeology the ONLY thing CRM archaeologists do for their companies? Do companies need employees that ONLY do archaeology? The answer is no. CRM archaeologists do a wide variety of different activities and tasks for their employers. They […]


The Number One Truth about Cultural Resource Management Reports

I have been lead author or primary contributor to over 60 cultural resource management archaeology reports. That’s not including reports where I wrote a historic background, artifact analysis, or boilerplate contribution. All of that writing represents dozens of man-hours and thousands of dollars’ worth of research. Those reports represent the […]

What is the number one truth about cultural resource management archaeology reports?

What can March Madness teach you about finding a job in archaeology?

What March Madness taught me about the archaeology job market 2

In the beginning, there are 64 teams. The NCAA selection committee ranks each team and creates four groups loosely based on regions of the country. Then, they play each other until only one remains. The NCAA mens basketball tournament, March Madness, begins with a spectacular flurry. Half of the teams […]


Does a cultural resource management report count as archaeology writing?

I was recently informed that a CRM archaeology technical report isn’t true archaeology writing. It was a shocking revelation that came from somebody that has written dozens of cultural resources reports that instantly made me start thinking about the nature of our industry and the way we value our reports, […]

Is a cultural resource management report actually archaeology writing?

Archaeological field school needs to be about more than just digging

What do you think should be included in an archaeological field school? 4

Yesterday, I received good news. The property owner of the Erma Hayman House in Boise, Idaho has given permission to conduct an archaeology project on this property. This will be the next step in my dissertation work on The River Street Digital History Project, but it is also an excellent […]