Hello  HISTARCHERS, my name is Mike Polk.  I am the owner and principal  
archaeologist of Sagebrush Consultants in Ogden, Utah.  My wife, Ann Polk,  is 
co-owner.  We are both archaeologists, having met at my first  fieldschool 
(her second) in the southern Cascades out of Sacramento State in  1969.   
I  received a BA in anthropology from San Diego State Univ. in 1972.  My 
wife  got her BA in history at UC San Diego and was a post grad in 
anthropology at  SDSU.  After spending a year working for Gwinn Vivian (then State  
Archaeologist) doing archaeology on the Central Arizona Project (72-73), we 
both  went to grad school at Idaho State and worked under Earl Swanson and B.  
Robert Butler.  I didn't quite finish my MA there.  I spent the next year in 
Oregon working  for the BLM.  Ann assisted me on survey of the John Day 
River in  75-76.  We then moved on to Michigan State where I finished  my MA in 
Anthropology, and was starting my PhD with Bill Lovis and  Chuck Cleland.  
One of my classmates and upstairs duplex  neighbor, was Bill Lees.  I was 
also in school there with Vergil  Noble, Marcy Gray, Kim and Steve McBride, 
Terry Martin, among  others.  Interestingly, while I always had a strong 
interest in  history, up to that point, I was generally heading into prehistoric  
archaeology.  My thesis dealt with Bison Jumps in the northwestern  Plains. 
But I always liked historical archaeology.  In Arizona I was the  guy who 
wanted to write up the historical sites. At MSU I spent two summers  
recording historic logging camps in the UP and historic sites in S  Michigan.  
Fortuitously, I was asked to run the field excavations on  the Tombigbee River 
Historic Sites Project in Mississippi in 1979.  We  spent a year there, with 
Ann working in the lab with director Bob Sonderman (now  NPS).   
I  loved it, but decided that was enough of grad school. Because during the 
time in  grad school CRM had blossomed, I landed a job in Dallas with 
Environment  Consultants, working for Alan Skinner.  After a time, we opened a  
branch office in Utah (because of all of the energy business).  We  arrived 
in 1981 and the energy business promptly collapsed.  After two  years, our 
office was closed and we were waved goodbye by the ECI  owner.   
While  it wasn't our intention or even interest, we ended up opening our 
own business,  for lack of another means of income.  For the last 29 years, we 
have  operated Sagebrush Consultants out of Ogden, first in our basement 
(for 7  years), then at our current location.  Our daughter is our office  
manager.  We have worked in every  western state, except Montana, but primarily 
in UT, NV, ID, WY  and CO.  While we do all aspects of archaeology, 
architectural  history, HABS/HAER, and work with Native American tribes, historical 
archaeology  has and remains our passion.  We are known as the historical 
archaeology  company in Utah.  In the last 15-20 years, I have involved 
myself in a  number of organizations, the most prominent being SHA and ACRA.   I 
have been and remain on numerous committees of the SHA, was Chair of  the 
1999 Salt Lake City Conference, a board member 2000-2003, and have run  for 
president twice.  In ACRA I was a board member from 1995-2003,  President 
1996-97, and again as Elect, President and Past from  2005-2011.   
Ann  and I are planning to remain where we are for a while and eventually 
retire  to northern California (San Rafael) where I grew  up.   
Mike  Polk 
Sagebrush  Consultants, L.L.C. 
Ogden,  Utah