Currently, I am the Field Manager for the Black Rock Field Office for the Winnemucca District Burea of Land Management. I manage the largest National Conservation Area in the lower 48 states and have been the Authorized Officer for the Burning Man Event from 2017 through 2019 (scheduled to be it for 2020, but the Covid virus nixed that). I landed in Winnemucca in 2010, when I accepted a job as an archaeologist/Native American coordinator with the Bureau of Land Management. Getting bored easily, I somehow worked my way through a variety of jobs and landed as Field Manager (i joke, but am partially serious, my career has gone upwards, despite me trying to get out of Winnemucca.)
I guess you could say, I've had careers less-ordinary. I received my BSE in metallurgy and Mining from the University of Kentucky in 1982, my Master of Science in Metallurgy and Mining from UC Berkeley in 1985. In 1992, I completed my Doctorate in Anthropology, archaeology emphasis, at UC Berkeley. During working on my PhD, and after, I've worked in the forging and heat treating business, aerospace overhaul and repair, post-doc'ed twice, and worked in museums in both the US and Japan.
Over the years, I've generally ended up researching whatever interested me at the time. Taking that approach I've been able to travel to work on museum collections and/or excavate in the Great Basin, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Mongolia, Northern Ireland and Russia. No one clear cut geographical focus or temporal period. Right now, I'm trying to focus on writing up a bunch of results from the 90's and the 00's; working on some radiocarbon assemblages with other scholars; and looking at organizing a palaeoclimate session for the 2020 AGU meeting.
4/1998 to 4/2000 Archaeology Department, National Museum of Japanese History, Sakura, Japan Postdoctoral Researcher: in collaboration with other researchers, used a variety of analytical techniques to characterize and provenience prehistoric and historic North East Asian pottery and metalwork.Some of the goals of this project were to investigate trade, exchange, and the development of craft specialization in pre-state and early state societies. Also in this position I was able to work with scholars from the Microanalysis Laboratory, Tandem Accelerator at the University of Tokyo to learn how to prepare radiocarbon and other stable isotope samples.
Post-Doctoral Researcher, UNESCO: based out of the Archaeological Research Facility at the University of California at Berkeley, I worked on a variety of geochemical and metallurgical studies of Bronze and Iron Age metalwork from Mongolia and Siberia.
Field Manager managing 2.5 million acres of Federal land that includes the Black Rock-High Rock National Conservation Area (the largest NCA in the lower 48 states) and 10 wilderness areas.