Archaeological Crew Chief


5 steps for converting a minivan into the perfect archaeology vehicle 4

A few weeks ago, while hauling my kids to a community archaeology project at 4AM, I realized that my minivan would make the perfect CRM archaeology field vehicle. With a few modifications, I could turn this old “baby hauler” into a cultural resource management archaeology beast– a petrol-fueled behemoth of […]

Minivans are the perfect archaeology fieldwork vehicle

How does cutting corners hurt our cultural resource management

Cutting corners in cultural resource management archaeology hurts everybody 4

I just finished listening to Episode 37 of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. The last 10 minutes of the show reminded me of a salient story. One day, I was sitting at my cubicle in one of the many beneficent CRM archaeology companies I used to work for when one of […]


Saving and Investing for Archaeologists

I remember loving snow days as a kid. This was long before I’d started doing archaeology and started hating snow. Every time it snowed for a few hours, I’d start getting giddy– thinking about the action-packed day of Nintendo and sledding that awaited me the next morning. I’d lay in […]

Investment and savings advice for archaeologists

15 Must have Archaeology supplies

Top 15 Must-Have Archaeology Field Gear Items 3

After months being cooped up in a classroom, I’m getting ready to go do some archaeology field work this summer and was putting together a list of items I need to buy or replace. Some people I know have called me a gear whore because I like to buy outdoors […]


#SAA2014 was loaded with good information

Giddy up for #SAA2014: Comments before the conference

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 […]


Cultural resource management companies, want to dramatically improve productivity and efficiency? 2

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. […]

Archaeology supervisors: explain what you want your employees to do before they do it

Stop archaeology site looting shows

The demise of #naziwarhunters is one small step toward reclaiming the public’s image of archaeology

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 […]


Should archaeologists carry guns in the field?

Guns in the archaeology classroom; Guns in the field 4

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 […]